The problem is not likely to affect normal viewing very often because a bright image must be held on the screen for longer-than-normal program scenes before the problem occurs. I didn't notice it while watching movies with the P60W26P.

I was delighted with the P60W26P's excellent resolution. Folds and creases in the British and American uniforms in The Patriot were superbly rendered, and frequency-sweep patterns from Video Essentials were especially well-defined, almost down to the last detail. I've seen only a couple of plasmas that could equal or better this performance. Color rendition was impressive; the overall effect was bright, clear, and precise.

Like many other plasmas I've seen, the older DPD60W was quite noisy—by which, this time, I mean video noise. This noise was best seen on stable, medium-gray images. The P60W26P reduced the noise but did not eliminate it. Many plasmas, including this one, exhibit an odd quirk: The noise completely disappears from one Contrast setting to the next lower setting. To eliminate the noise on the P60W26P, the Contrast had to be cranked down so far that the picture was too dark.

The plasma technology's greatest weakness is its inability to render black properly, and the P60W26P suffered from this deficiency as well. It could render a convincing black, but it was unable to distinguish between shades of dark gray and black, meaning that detail in dark areas was wholly missing. One test pattern on Video Essentials shows a small bar with three sections in the middle of a white field. The first section is jet black, the second slightly lighter, the third slightly lighter still. On the Zenith, the first two sections of the bar were indistinguishable; I could differentiate the third only by looking very closely.

This is not an insubstantial flaw. In dark movies or dark scenes, many areas looked like great, empty voids. This problem is universal among plasmas, but some handle it a bit better—notably Panasonic's wonderful TH-50PHW3 50-inch high-definition model.

The P60W26P converts everything to 720p (except, of course, high-definition programming already at that resolution). Numerous artifacts—stair-step patterns, line structure—were visible with NTSC material on the P60W26P. Though it's not mentioned in the literature or Specifications, the P60W26P has 3:2 pulldown correction, which should have cleaned up at least some of these artifacts. But standard-definition, 480i program material is deinterlaced to 480p using Faroudja's DCDi processing, which our prior experience suggests should be pristine. The problems I describe might be traceable to the scaler (from Sage, not Faroudja) that converts 480p to the display's native 720p. I've seen worse scalers, but I've also seen better—and a handful that are much better. Scalers are the greatest weakness of most HDTVs.

You can always buy an outboard video processor to use with the P60W26P. Faroudja's excellent NRS is custom-made for this purpose; the company promotes it for use with plasmas. But it seems perverse to spend several thousand dollars on an outboard device to overcome the weaknesses of the scaler built into this product.

I had few complaints about the P60W26P when I used it as a high-definition display—HD broadcasts were simply stunning. I watched HBO-HD, HD-Net on DirecTV, and some over-the-air HD on WETA-HD, the local PBS station. All of it was glorious, with startling detail, a rich color palette, and remarkable clarity. This was not the best HD I've ever seen; converting 1080i to 720p necessarily entails a small sacrifice in quality. I was able to check the Zenith's high-definition performance only with 1080i material. Still, the P60W26P's 1080i capabilities were impressive, and I would expect them to be even better with native 720p.

Conclusion
There are few 60-inch plasma displays on the market, and none, I think, costs as little as the Zenith P60W26P. For a video monitor of any type, $15,000 is still a lot of money. But the P60W26P is a good product, a clear improvement over its predecessor, and one you're certain to enjoy.