The TH-42H10A is mid range when compared with other Panasonic plasmas but the quality is far beyond your usual mid-range television. It is a 1080p panel, capable of 24p, and has 600Hz subfield technology implemented. The 600Hz subfield provides a similar motion control to what you would see in an LCD television but here it is far more subtle. When testing the panel with various films and live television, the motion was excellent with little to no judder.
We tested 1080p content with Blu-ray films and 1080p gaming. At this resolution the panel shines with pure blacks and accurate colours. The factory default settings need to be tweaked though as they are a little too high in sharpness and the contrast was set a little low. In addition to the manual settings there are also the standard display modes but mostly it is best to avoid them as they don't look all that good. The ‘Dynamic' setting looks horrid with most content but when viewing animation films, it actually makes it look much better than the user defined mode. Apart from this, it is best to leave the panel on your own settings.
There are also many picture settings like DNR and contrast enhancement but we tend to have all these turned off. As with most panels, the best result usually comes when very little processing of the source is performed and, as such, the image tended to look better with extra features like these turned off.
