Panasonic Viera TC-P54Z1 – Thinnest and Luxury Plasma TV

Thumbs Up:

Accurate colors in the Custom-mode by manual adjustment; great black-level performance and perfect shadow details; handles 1080p/24 sources excellently without much flickers; wireless connection between the components and the TV works fine; very slim panel design; improved bright picture quality; solid color saturation; a lot of connectivity features – one computer-input and four HDMI slots; and VieraCast to access Internet services.

Thumbs Down:

Little video-processing problems; more power consumption than other HDTVs; limited picture controls; expensive; not much accuracy in secondary and primary colors in non-THX modes.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 is a member of Viera series.  It is 32.3 inches tall, 51.3 inches wide and 1 inch deep without the stand. The TV with stand is 35.2 inches tall, 56.3 inches wide and 15 inches deep. This plasma TV has a 54.1 inch widescreen display based on Plasma (PDP) technology that has 1920×1080 pixels resolution. The total pixels of the display are 2,073,600 and the display format is 1080p. Image aspect ratio is 16:9 and image contrast ratio is 40000:1.

The widescreen modes include Conventional 4:3, Normal, Zoom, Just and Full. The pixel pitch is 0.624mm. The additional features are Progressing scanning (line doubling), 3D-Y/C digital comb filter, Motion pattern noise reduction, VieraLink, VieraCast, Viera Image Viewer, Ultra-thin design, backlight life of 100,000 hours and Screen coating filter. The display menu is available in Spanish, English and French.

The analog video signals are S-Video and composite video. The digital TV tuners are ATSC and QAM, and the analog TV tuner is NTSC. There are four supported video interfaces: Composite, Component, S-Video and HDMI. The analog video input signal is NTSC. Input video formats include 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480p.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has 4×left/right channel speaker that are surround sound and detachable. The TV has BBE ViVA HD3D sound effect. The total output is 20 Watt and the audio controls are Treble, Bass and Balance.

The connectors in Panasonic TC-P54Z1 are 1×digital audio output (optical) (TOSLINK), 2×Component video input (RCA phono×3), 1×VGA input (15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15)), Audio line-in (RCA phono×2), 1×S-Video input (4 pin mini-DIN), 1×Audio line-in (Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm), 2×Composite video input (RCA phono), 1×HDMI output (19 pin HDMI Type A), 1×HDMI input (19 pin HDMI Type A), 3×HDMI input (19 pin HDMI Type A), 1×VGA HD-15.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 also has closed caption capability, HDCP compatibility, parental channel lock function, digital video playback and digital photo playback. The supported video formats are MPEG2 and AVCHD, and supported picture format is JPG. The HDTV supports the EPA Energy Star and UL6500/C-UL energy standards. The power consumption is 293 watts. The accessories supplied inside the package are reference material, stand, power adapter and remote control.

Razzle Dazzle:

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has black colored glossy plastic finish over silver metal-strips below and above the screen. In addition, the vertical bands are also glossy black combined with silver color to create an illusion of one wider – wide-screen TV panel. The P54Z1 has classy unique appearance that conveys the luxury in high price-range. Both the speakers and the stand are detachable.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 is just 1-inch deep and thinnest plasma TV available in the market after beating Samsung PNB860 series by 0.2 inch. The other major difference between the TC-P54Z1 and flat-panel TVs is color quality. The detachable speakers have the same silver color like the frame and contrast the black glossy vertical strip. Wireless receiver sits underneath left-side of TV panel. The stand also has the same silver color as per TV’s color theme and supports the thin TV panel, but doesn’t have swivel feature.

Inside Dope:

Panasonic TC-PV10 was our favorite in plasma TVs. Now, Panasonic come up with TC-P54Z1, which is the most expensive TV to date, by the company. The TC-P54Z1 is one inch deep is one-inch deep panel and has wireless capability which is the reason behind its high cost. The Z1 is a good combination of style, picture quality and features, which is enough to earn high scores. Panasonic deserves the credit for presenting a great plasma art in all its models, especially in the TC-P54Z1 and TC-PV10 series. The design and most of the features are same in TC-P54Z1 and TC-PV10 series.

The included wireless access tuner box has a size like standard Blu-ray player or DVD. Wireless transmitter looks like small antenna. Moreover, wireless receiver sits on the rear-side of the TV panel and glances out beneath its left-side. This receiver increases the TV depth by one-inch.

Remote control of Panasonic TC-P54Z1 communicates with tuner box through radio frequencies, but it does not use infra-red. It has extensive backlighting and glossy finish, unlike previous Panasonic models. The three new prominent buttons – VieraTools, VieraCast and VieraLink – sits above the cursor control. The style, shape, color and size of the buttons on remote control gives an impressive look. It cannot control other gadgets through infrared, but you can control some compatible devices via VieraLink, which are connected to Z1 TV.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has better menu design than its predecessors. It has similar yellow-on-blue color-system format and straightforward navigation. However, main menu has new icons. We would like to see onscreen explanation for the menu options. There is a new addition – Tools menu, which have all the settings including VieraCast and THX mode.

The most expensive Panasonic plasma TV, the TC-P54Z1 has wireless connection between TV panel and source components. External tuner’s box contains Ethernet, AV, HDMI and other ports for the TV. It communicates with the TV display via wireless transmitter. The TV has a similar receiver that pipes the signals to TV’s HDMI and then to speakers and screen. There is a requirement of line-of-sight between the receiver and transmitter.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has some identical features of V10 series. The screen refresh rate is 96Hz and allows maintaining the film’s cadence from 1080p/24fps source, especially from Blu-ray player. For non-1080p/24fps sources, the refresh rate is 60Hz. There is another 48Hz setting that can flicker the screen. Like all plasma models of Panasonic, the spec sheet of the TC-P54Z1 mentions a 600Hz sub-field drive to display a bit improvement in the motion-resolution, but this effect is not visible.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has THX Display-Certification. You can select THX picture-mode to improve the shadow detail, color accuracy and various other picture settings. This THX mode will provide the best default setting without any manual adjustment. The THX-mode is similar to “one-step calibration”, but it is not so effective as compared to Pro adjust and Custom settings.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has a Digital Cinema Color to show wide color space as compared to that of other traditional HDTVs. The VieraCast is a Panasonic interactive TV feature that was introduced for the first time in TH-PZ850U in 2008. VieraCast offers the access to local weather, headlines and stocks from Bloomberg, photos stored on your Picasa account and YouTube videos. It also connects to Internet through Ethernet port, which is located at the backside of TV. The company has not included wireless capability and also does not sell any wireless dongle for the TC-P54Z1. However, the wireless adapters or bridges from third party will work for the TV as per Panasonic.

Panasonic has included VieraCast with which you can view Amazon Video on Demand and access high-definition content through it. It also integrates the TV service and pay-per-view service in the TV. VieraCast provides large catalog to supplement the satellite PPV or supplant the cable offerings. We appreciate that Panasonic’s VieraCast allows previewing the content before purchase, unlike other implementations of the Amazon VOD. VieraCast disables various aspect-ratio settings and THX picture-mode, which is its only one drawback. However, all other picture modes are available and completely adjustable. Panasonic Viera TC-P54Z1 offers the capability for connectivity with compatible network cameras to enable complete TV system for the household monitoring.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has few picture adjustments as compared to other HDTV models. However, it has advanced adjustments including the menu for Pro Setting.  We liked five-global picture modes with Studio Ref., THX and Standard mode. The other sixth Custom mode is independent-per-unit. The Game mode of Panasonic is a picture mode basically, but does not extinguish the video-processing like that of other HDTV models. Studio Ref. mode delivers image quality of one studio monitor and it is not available on other HDTVs.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has five presets of color-temperature and out of which, the Warm2 is close to D65 standard. Pro Setting menu is available only in Custom mode and has white-balance function to set grayscale, but this control is not complete like other HDTVs. Pro Setting menu also has gamma control function with other settings to improve the picture quality on TV.

In each picture mode, the adjustments are available with a C.A.T.S. function. This function senses an ambient light and then adjusts picture quality accordingly. There is one toggle for Color management that makes color-decoding worse and one trio of Off/On settings that affects video noise. There is also a setting for controlling the 2:3 pull down that affects both high-definition and standard-def sources.

There is a selection of five aspect ratio options for high-def sources that includes Zoom mode to adjust the vertical and horizontal position. If you choose HD Size 2 option in Advanced Menu, Full mode matches the pixels of 1080p and 1080i sources. In THX mode, HD Size 2 option is named as THX. We recommend you to use this setting when you see any interference around the extreme-edges.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has options to avoid the temporary retention of image. An orbiter pixel slowly shifts picture around the display and allows it to happen in user-defined periods or automatically. You can select dark or bright gray bars across any 4:3 program. You can also sweep white bar alongside the black screen and clear it after sometime. We liked that screen-saver to come up after leaving the VieraCast menu in idle and inactive state for few minutes.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has NEO PDP panel that consumes more power. There is an ECO menu that only turns off the automatic functions and does not offer power-saving specific mode. The TC-P54Z1 cannot freeze picture on temporary basis and lacks in the area of picture-in-picture. It accepts SD cards into the expansion slot located on left side that allows to playback the digital photos on the screen.

Panasonic TC-P54Z1 has four HDMI input ports: three at the backside of tuner box and one underneath the flip-down cover at the front of the box. The other connections on back-panel are an RF input for antenna or cable, AV input with S-Video and component video, RS-232 remote port, digital audio output, Ethernet port and two component video inputs. Moreover, the front panel of the box has VGA style computer input, SD card and second AV input with composite and S video.

The transmitter, receiver and tuner box of Panasonic TC-P54Z1 consumes more power, so this TV is not so energy efficient as Panasonic 54-inch S1. The annual power consumption cost of the TC-P54Z1 is $59.40 for default picture setting and $69.55 for calibrated picture settings. This power-consumption cost is much more that that of Panasonic TC-P54S1 and Samsung PN50B650.

Nitty Gritty:

Panasonic’s flag-ship model, TC-P54Z1 falls beyond the price range of most buyers. It is the thinnest model available in the market and the only plasma TV to provide wireless communication to its components.

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