If you have cash to spare and want the best picture quality, dang right you should.
Q: "David - Do you recommend waiting for the new higher-end plasmas from Panasonic or pulling the trigger on one of Pioneer's Kuro plasmas? Money no object."
-- Mark, via e-mail.
A: Having just finished reviewing one of those higher-end Panasonic plasmas, the G10 series, I'd recommend that deep-pocketed videophiles grab a Pioneer Kuro while they're still available.
As we'll remind everyone for what's sure to not be the last time, Pioneer will stop making plasmas. That's significant for shoppers looking to buy a high-end TV for one big reason: Pioneer makes what are still, in my and many other experts' opinions, the best HDTVs on the market. The company's Elite Kuro series earned the only "10" I've ever awarded in Performance for a flat-panel TV, while the superb non-Elite PDP-5020FD series were nearly as good, minus some adjustments and color accuracy (and plus about two grand).
Pioneer's factory in Pomona, Calif., will continue to manufacture these Kuro displays through April before it closes, according to the company, but after that I expect them to disappear quickly from store shelves. Of course, as long as the company itself is still around, I expect it to stand behind any Kuros it sells.
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Goodbye, Kuro: We had a lot of great times--and even greater contrast ratios--together
(Credit: Pioneer)It's a rumor no more: Pioneer has confirmed that it's exiting the TV business.
The Japanese manufacturer announced that it will stop producing TVs by March 2010, and instead focus on its existing car electronics and home audio-video lines. The company expects to slash 10,000 jobs (6,000 full-time, 4,000 part-time) as a result.
To date, the company's Kuro line of HDTVs were widely regarded as the best-in-class plasma displays available--check out CNET's review of the Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-111FD, for example.
The Pioneer announcement comes just hours after Vizio announced that it would stop producing plasmas and focus solely on LCD panels instead. The departure of Pioneer and Vizio from the market leaves just three major manufacturers producing plasma TVs: Panasonic, LG, and Samsung.
Full details on the story are available at TWICE.
Erica Ogg's post "Report: Pioneer to exit TV business" made a point abundantly clear: TV buyers won't pay a premium price for a better display.
"The company is reportedly exiting the TV business rather than continuing to incur losses in that division," Ogg wrote. "This latest report comes a few months after Pioneer announced that it anticipated huge losses at the end of its fiscal year in March and plans to lay off 2,000 workers."
The market's demands for lower and lower prices eventually take high-quality manufacturers out of the game.
I'm not a video guy, but I do know that while Pioneer made some of the best displays, the market wasn't willing to pay for its quality. The race-to-the-bottom environment is certainly in full swing on the audio side. Sales of high-quality speakers continue to erode, thanks to booming sales of lower-quality home-theater-in-a-box systems and iPod speakers.
I'm sorry, but I want companies making the highest-quality products to prosper. But the way things are going, only the bottom-feeders will survive.
What do you think?
Man, it sure would be nice if we could do this comparison here at CNET.
Mitsubishi's LaserVue TV (not actual size).
(Credit: Mitsubishi)The first third-party side-by-side comparison we've seen between Mitsubishi's LaserVue rear-projection TV and Pioneer's Elite Kuro plasma appeared at TheTechlounge Friday, and according to its authors, the LaserVue more than held its own against what's widely regarded as the best TV on the market.
Author Cameron Baker and editor Kurtis Kronk sat down before a 60-inch Kuro and a 65-inch LaserVue at a San Antonio, Texas, HDTV retailer and watched a pair of Blu-ray movies: Ice Age: The Meltdown and Iron Man, along with Pioneer's Kuro test disc. They were unable to get their hands on a distribution amplifier for true side-by-side comparisons, apparently, so they based their observations on watching "the scenes back-to-back on each display a few times, juggling HDMI connections," and on still photos.
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Pioneer's Elite Kuro PRO-111FD
(Credit: CNET)For once, the headline is not an exaggeration. We just finished testing the 50-inch PRO-111FD, and like most professional publications who got there first, and most viewers who have seen this TV or its 60-inch brother in action, we came away very impressed by what we saw--so much that we felt compelled to award the first "10" we've ever given for picture quality.
The Elite Kuro may cost a mint, but if you have the cash to burn and the discerning eye to appreciate the differences, it's worth it. It produced the deepest black levels we've tested outside of OLED and the most-accurate color, and in most other important picture quality areas it performed admirably. That's the short story.
Read the full review of the Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-111FD.
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Pioneer's media navigator
(Credit: CNET)Pioneer has followed the current trend of TV media streaming, introducing an Ethernet jack on the back of its latest line of Kuro televisions, the PDP-6020FD and PDP-5020FD; the latter of which we gave high marks. The set is one of a few HDTVs on the market that are certified as DLNA clients, delivering an interoperability framework that promises to allow you to painlessly stream movies, music, and photos over your home network to your attached television, using Windows Media Player 11, TVersity, or some other media streaming software. If you're not interested in using your computer as a media-hub, it might be worthwhile to check out some of these products, which offer similar streaming functionality without the clunky PC tower. ... Read more
(Credit:
Pioneer)
We've received a heads-up from our Pioneer source on a recent Japanese launch of its videophile-grade 9G Kuro. This delivers five times better dynamic contrast than the U.S.-centric PDP-6010FD, promising even richer blacks than any existing Kuro plasma TVs on the market.
Furthermore, the KRP-600M's 100,000:1 rating puts it in the class of the recently announced Panasonic Viera TH-65PY850M. That said, the former is strictly a full-HD monitor, shipped without an onboard TV tuner and loudspeakers.
It also features multiple remote LEDs for enhanced infrared control in dark home theaters, as well as a sleek 41- to 64-millimeter profile for a 60-incher. According to our contact, the 9G Kuros should be reaching Asia by October. This sounds like eternity by today's standards, but possibly a worthy one considering the fact that these are the last bunch of Made-by-Pioneer plasma panels. Officially, that is.
(Source: Crave Asia)
Pioneer PDP-5020FD
(Credit: Pioneer)
Pioneer's long-awaited announcement regarding its 2008 Kuro-branded plasmas, the successors to our favorite TV of 2007, the PDP-5080HD, includes a total of six new models. The company is claiming that the 2008 HDTVs produce "five times deeper" black levels than the 2007s, and during a side-by-side demo that included both 2007 and 2008 models, the new display certainly appeared a bit darker in the blackest areas--although it couldn't muster the essentially absolute black we saw demonstrated at CES and during our review of Sony's OLED TV. We have recently reviewed the 50-inch model, and while it did impress us with its extremely deep black levels, find out why it still didn't make the cut for our editor's choice award this year. Here's a rundown of the company's new line. ... Read more
(Credit:
Pioneer)
Pioneer's HDTVs get high marks from Crave's resident TV expert David Katzmaier, so we're not sure why it would want to mess with such a good thing. But it seems that every electronics and computer maker must have a limited edition these days, so it must just be following the pack.
The most notable aspect of Pioneer's special offering, which is headed for the U.K. market, is the color of its frame: white. Other than that, the TV seems to have the same specs as its standard 50-inch plasma, with 1080p resolution and a lighting system called "Intelligent Brightness Control," according to Pocket-lint.
What's curious, though, is the name of this version of its successful "Kuro" line. Kuro means black in Japanese, which makes perfect sense because that's the ultimate goal for the best contrast. But because the new TV is white, it's called "Shiro Kuro"--which literally translates to "White Black." And when you're talking about state-of-the-art television, the last thing that comes to mind is a black-and-white TV.
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