Panny's new HD ready plasmas
Panasonic has unveiled the new PV500 series of Plasma TVs in preparation for the dawn of the High Definition TV era. Next year Sky begins transmission of its HDTV channels and to feast your eyes on the high quality images you’ll need ‘HD Ready’ hardware.
Panasonic’s range, like pretty much everyone elses now, will sport that all important ‘HD ready’ logo as the new sets have both HDMI sockets as well as being compatible with HDCP content protection systems. The plasmas, which are available in 37″, 42″ or 50″ screen sizes (TH-37PV500, TH-42PV500 and TH-50PV500) feature Panny’s VIERA design and include SD and PCMCIA card slots enabling, among other things, slideshows of digital photos. One neat touch is the option of being able to record footage in MPEG4 video format to an SD card for playback on the go via a portable device. All three plasmas also allow the viewer to show images from two sources simultaneously, thanks to the Multi Window feature. This includes Picture-and Picture, Picture-in-Picture, or Picture-out-Picture modes. The 500 series will become available in May this year, no details on prices yet.
