Pioneer has finally shown its new 60-inch plasma TV. The screen comes as the company delays its financial results for the second time.
In an effort to survive in the plasma TV market Pioneer has finally released a 60-inch 7th generation plasma TV for the European market. The Japanese company, which is shortly to release its delayed financial results needs to keep ahead of the pack in the plasma market as it has no LCD TV offering.
 Click to enlarge |
The company that makes some of the best plasma TVs in the market is looking to survive at the quality end of the plasma market as companies like Panasonic take share at both the top end and bottom end of this segment. Not due in Australia untill at least September, the new Pioneer 60-inch PDP-607XD plasma has the same glamorous, high gloss, ultra-minimalist finish as the smaller sets in the 07 range.
The 607XD doesn’t ship with speakers. Pioneer clearly anticipates that anyone buying a screen of such magnitude and cost will be running it alongside a separate home cinema audio system.
Connectivity with the display is very good. Two HDMIs and a set of component video jacks satisfy high definition needs, and these are accompanied by a dedicated D-Sub PC port, a digital tuner input, the usual Scarts/S-Video/composite video options, and a couple more esoteric offerings in the form of a subwoofer line out for adding your own powered bass speaker, plus a digital audio output for squirting out multi-channel soundtracks received via the HDMIs. Ironically the 607XD’s HDMIs don’t support the more common 1080p/50/60Hz formats.
One other slight disappointment is the fact that the screen’s resolution is a 1365×768 affair rather than the full HD that we might have hoped for at such a screen size. Then again, had Pioneer put a full HD, 1,920 x 1,080 pixel count into the 607XD, you can rest assured that you wouldn’t be looking at a price under $12,000.
And then there’s the RS232 control port. Often we don’t bother mentioning these as they’re seldom of much interest to anyone other than a custom installer. But in the 607XD’s case the RS232 can also be used by an engineer from the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) to precisely calibrate the TV’s settings to best suit a rooms characteristics.
In the past Pioneer Australia’s marketing practises have been to sting early adopters and then, when they have purchased, lower the price a few months later. For example, its 50-inch plasma screen was launched last year at $15,000 then 3 months later it dropped the price to sub $10,000. Maybe this time you should wait for the price drop.
