MajorFubar said:
If you're desparate to see what the picture looks like, can't you find a dealer which stocks it?
The main man Nick at Home Cinema Centre gave me a quick guided tour of the Panasonic 65VT50 today. My first impression was that it was big, but not as big as I remember its predecessor (the 65VT30) seemed to be about eight months ago in the very same demonstration room! Since then of course I've bought my 64" Samsung, which I do look at every few days (though I spend most of my time in the kitchen) so I'm now used to seeing a quite a large set. The second impression was that the picture quality on Blu-Ray was very, very good, though I personally would have it a touch brighter than the professionally calibrated movie darkroom setting. But the black level was at least as good (without seeing them side by side it's hard to be categorical) as that of my Pioneer LX50590, and may well indeed be better than mine, with which I am entirely comfortable!
Now I just need to find someone who stocks one - the bigger the better, but right now any one will do! - of the ST50 series, to try to mentally compare it with the 65VT50 - always a dodgy exercise in different shops and conditions, and the more time that elapses before I can do so the dodgier the comparison will be. For the time being I can't seem to find a Panasonic ST50 series plasma actually in a shop!
As a rough and ready check of the black level of the 65VT50, I looked at a paused frame of Inception at elapsed time 1 hour, 28 minutes and 18 seconds, to see if the right shoulder of the very dark garment of the silver-haired woman was differentiated from the black jacket of the man sitting immediately behind her. I also looked at the Director's Cut of Blade Runner, at the numerically palindromic elapsed time of 21 minutes and 12 seconds; how clearly does the back of Harrison Ford's head stand out against the background as he grills Sean Young (lucky man!).