Pioneer make a great plasma and the new replacement is just as good and better.

The price, but they do say you get what you pay for.

Very good Plasma, picture very good, Loads of connections and due to having this plasma i have gone back to the shop and updated it with the newer plasma that came out.

Similar Products Used:

Panasonic. Sony . NEC & Others

High brightness and contrast

Price and screen size versus projector offerings.

Took one of these home from my business where we resell them as part of our (non-entertainment) systems. I was impressed with the direct view image contrast and brightness as opposed to the projectors I have tried. The Pioneer 16x9 stretched pixel (common to all 16x9 gas plasma displays) works best with compatible source material. Anamorphic wide-screen movies will still be letterboxed. I found it annoying to watch normal off-air 4x3 programs distorted to 16x9. The other two alternatives are to zoom+clip or present gray-boxed (to avoid burn-in). Overall, an excellent visual quality display even if a tad small when compared with what one can get via front projector system at 50% of the price.

Similar Products Used:

CTX cheapie and Infocus 700 series Projectors

Awesome Picture clarity, D-Sub 15 Computer input

price

You can save a lot by shopping around. In about 20 minutes, I was able to shave $9,000 from the retail price.
Checkout http://www.lgdsuperstore.com/gigabuyz/pdp505hd.html

Need PAL or SECAM? check out the evil twin: PDP-502MX typically it's priced about the same, weighs a bit less (probably due to the fact that the protective display is acrylic instead of glass on the PDP-505HD). However the 502MX has a refresh of 85Hz (75Hz for the 505HD), supports UXGA (1600x1200), Precise color temp adjustment, built-in amp and speakers (like you would need those in your Home Theater setup...)

In my situation, I needed the higher res for the D-Sub for playing high-res computer based games and just plain web surfing... =]

Basic Features: XGA resolution - 16:9 (1280 x 768), 4:3 (1024x768) Automatic conversion of any source to 768 progressive display 16.77 million colors 0.858 x 0.808 pixel pitch (mm) Viewing angle of 160 degrees x 160 degrees 5 cinema modes Adjustable color temperature Remote control Encased cell structure PureCinema 2:3 pull down film detection

Terminals:

Auto select RGB input/component video input, with BNC connectors D-Sub 15 computer input Dedicated component input S-Video/composite NTSC input

Optional Accessories:

Wall bracket HDTV tuner Table Top Stand (sold serperately!)

XGA Resolution:

eXtended graphics array was introduced by IBM in 1990 and supports 1024x768 resolution for 4:3 and 1280x768 for 16:9.

Small size, computer display ability, and ease of setup and use.

Price

Plasma TVs are really the future and Pioneer has the best one out today. I would definitely recommend this TV to those that could afford it.

Here's the etown review.

Pioneer PDP-505HD 50-inch 16:9 high-definition plasma monitor.
Gary Merson

August 1, 2000 -- Plasma TVs are the coolest display devices; and despite their high prices, sales continue to escalate. No other displays currently offer all the advantages of what those based on plasma technology provide, including bright high-definition pictures, totally uniform brightness, plug-and-play setup and a wide viewing angle. Pioneer's PDP-505HD, a 50-inch (diagonal)16:9 HDTV-capable plasma monitor, can be hung on the wall and is less than four inches deep. With a list price of $20,000, this bad
boy isn't cheap, but it's among the best-performing plasma panels I've tested to date.

Features:

50-inch 16:9 high-definition plasma monitor (no built-in
tuner)1280 x 768 native resolution compatible with 480i, 480p, 720p and 1080i signals 3D-Y/C digital comb filter
five aspect ratios (for 480i and 480p input signals)
color temperature control inverse 3:2 pull-down for film-based 480i and 480p sources individual user settings for each input.
Pioneer has paid special attention to the PDP-505HD's line
multiplier. The inverse 3:2 pull-down feature greatly reduces motion artifacts with film-based sources.

The aspect ratio control affords something for everyone. Full is for anamorphic DVDs. The Zoom mode has three different settings: one for viewing 4:3 images without distortion; one for 1.78 letterboxed (non-anamorphic) material; and one designed to fill the screen with 2:35 letterboxed material, cutting off part of the information on the sides. Finally, Natural Wide provides an undistorted center and progressively stretched sides, for viewing
4:3 signals full-screen without losing picture information.

Features Rating: 88

Connectivity:

four sets of video inputs
Input 1: S-video or composite video
Input 2: Y, Pb, Pr (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i)
Input 3: 5-BNC RGBS; RGBHV; or Y, Pb, Pr (480i,
480p, 720p, 1080i)
Input 4: 15-pin "D" connector, either RGBHV or Y, Pb, Pr
(480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i)

The connectivity options here are more than adequate. I used the four inputs to hook up two HDTV (high-definition TV) set-top boxes, a progressive-scan DVD player and a VCR. In addition, you can connect a computer and use the Pioneer as a big computer monitor. It supports XGA (1024 x 768) and WXGA (1280 x 768) computer rates, as well as 720p HDTV. It's internal scaler downconverts 1080i to 768p and upconverts 720p to 768p, the native resolution of the panel.

Especially nice is that every input has its own memory. This allows you to optimize all your sources without requiring that you change the picture settings whenever you switch sources. I wish all the TVs I review had this one simple capability.

Connectivity Rating: 95

Look & Feel: With nothing but a thin silver bezel surrounding the screen, it just doesn't get much better than this in the looks department. It's a breeze to connect cables to the rear panel,which houses the quiet and unobtrusive internal fans. The on-screen menus are logical and easy to navigate; and thanks to the individual settings for each input, I was able to calibrate all of my devices for optimum performance. Just set it and forget it. The
remote control is simple and easy to use. I wish all TV remotes provided direct input access, as this one does. It's awesome!

Look & Feel Rating: 97

Performance: All plasma screens are digital fixed display devices. What this means is that any input signal must be converted to the display's native resolution. It's been my experience with these products that you'll get a better picture the closer the source's scan rate is to the monitor's native resolution, as the PDP-505HD bore out.

Regular analog 4:3 signals looked all right, albeit a little soft. This was probably due to the combination of feeding the Pioneer the lowest-quality signal available and the amount of upconversion the internal scaler had to perform. The picture is acceptable, but nothing I would write home about. Movin' on up to DVD (480i), the image got much better because of the format's higher resolution. Take another step to 480p DVD and ... WOW! The picture looked great. Images were bright and clean, with no visible noise.

HDTV sources (720p and 1080i) looked spectacular, with sharp, clean images. In this regard the PDP-505HD looks as good as the best 7-inch high-def rear-projection TVs (RPTVs). Blacks are not jet-black, but dark. I found that turning up the room lighting a bit helped a great deal to improve the perception of black. No plasma monitor I have seen thus far has been capable of producing a true
SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) red. They tend to yield an orangey-red, as does this Pioneer.

Plasma sets do not have the same phosphors as direct-view
picture tubes. Because calibration results would be inaccurate, I had to dispense with my normal color temperature readings and adjustments. Hence, no calibration data is supplied.

The 3D-Y/C digital comb filter is excellent; I could detect no dot crawl. The color decoder does push red, but the HD matrices were just fine. I must admit that, even with its imperfections, I was extremely smitten with the pictures produced by the PDP-505HD, as well as with how the flat panel looked in my evaluation room.

Performance Rating: 90

Value: I think that plasma displays are the future of big-screen TV. Anyone looking at a high-definition picture on one of these beauties is going to be in awe. I use more display devices at my test facility in a few months than most people own in a lifetime.
And this was the first one I had that I did not want to give back. Granted, at a cool 20 Gs it's too steep for most people -- and that includes yours truly.

Although it's hard to call this 50-inch set a good value, I must say the PDP-505HD is the first plasma monitor that comes close to being the ideal display device. The good news is that this technology is getting better and cheaper every year. For those that can afford it today, the PDP-505HD is one hell of a monitor.

Value Rating: 70

Overall Rating: 88