Evening gents. Apologies for the late reply: partially, it's taken me this long to plough through all the content in this thread.
Right, first things first, and this going to frustrate a lot of you, but bear with me. Panasonic's official line is that they can neither confirm or deny that the PX70 sets support 1080p/24. I know Clare (and others) have already posted that info, but given the length of this thread, I thought it worth reiterating. Why has the company taken this stance? I honestly have no idea. However, conversations we've had with product managers at the company - who we can't, at the moment, persuade to go on the record, much as we're trying - suggest that it's a case of corporate caution, rather than a huge mistake on our part.
Now let's talk practicalities. All this talk of PS3 has somewhat muddied the waters, so let's be more explicit. We've tried PX-series plasmas connected to the following: Pioneer BDP-LX70 and LX70A, Sony BDP-S1E, Sony BDP-S300, Toshiba HD-XE1 (after the latest firmware, of course) and Toshiba HD-EP35. In all cases, when the source kit in question was set to output at 1080p/24fps, the display device displayed the image correctly. And by correctly, I mean at the correct cadence, with none of the distressing judder that so afflicts a real-time conversion of 24fps into 30fps content. With the Pioneer and Sony kit, we were able to get visual confirmation, too: each disc player puts up an onscreen message when you change output resolution or frame-rate, and each instance, with each source, the Panasonics tested clearly indicated a 1080p/24fps message on their screens.
Is that definitive? Probably not, at least not for some. However, attempting precisely the same process with several other screens, including, for example, Samsung's LE32R87 LCD, results in a blank screen, followed by an 'unsupported' message. The Panasonics, as stated, simply get on with the job of showing the picture.
Now it's feasible that they're accepting a native 24fps signal and performing a real-time conversion to a supported frame rate, such as 30fps, of course it is. I just consider it incredibly unlikely. The computational power required to do that job effectively is, I believe, way beyond the capability of a comparatively affordable plasma display. Witness the poor, judder-laden results we've seen from early Blu-ray and HD DVD players, before they could be purchased with native 24fps output support.
Finally - at least for now - let me put forward one other point of interest. As several of the team have pointed out, we were showing Blu-ray content via a PS3 on our high-def gallery at our recent show. This involved one example of said Sony, set to output at 1080p/24, using commercially available Blu-ray discs (either Spiderman 3 or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, depending on the day). This was then connected into a multiway Gefen HDMI distributor, courtesy of those fine fellows at TMG. This fed six screens: Panasonic's TX-26LXD70, TX-32LXD700, TH-37PX70 and TH-42PX70, plus two Pioneers, the PDP-428XD and PDP-LX508D. Of course, where appropriate, those screens were scaling the content to suit their needs: only the LX508D was able to display the signal dot-for-dot. Now first, you'd imagine one key issue would be that if all six screens were receiving the same video feed, but only two of the four offered support for the content, the other four TVs would show a blank screen, just like the Samsung mentioned above, wouldn't you? Not so. So the alternative possibility is the notion that the Panasonics are all performing a real-time video conversion to a frame rate they can understand.
But this is the thing. During the course of those three days of demos, over 1500 people came into our demo room. All of them had been given ample opportunity to look at the screens during the course of the day: they had no choice, because they were positioned right alongside the queue. And I made a big point of explaining to each and every visitor during my presentation that each TV was receiving 1080p/24 content, partially to highlight that so-called Full HD resolution isn't necessarily the key deciding factor in image quality. Yet not one of them said, at any time, "Fine, but I noticed those Panasonics were juddering like crazy".
Again, folks, I'm trying to be completely open-minded here, but I've been working on this magazine for 13 years, and have attended dozens of shows in my time, so I ought to know our audience. So believe me when I say that the Great British Hi-Fi Show Goer is neither shy about coming forward or reticent about pointing out a problem. If someone had seen judder and been bothered by it, even if it was just one person in 1500, they'd have said. But no-one did.
I'm only pointing all that out because it strikes me that in some quarters there's a perception that somehow we're simply not noticing the judder on screen: that it's there, but we can't see it. Now none of you know me to trust me, so I can't say something like 'believe me' and have any credibility - but still, for what it's worth, I can't see it. And I've seen more flatscreens (and CRTs, and projectors, and whatever) than most people I know. And that's not to say that I can't see other issues with the PX70 series TVs in terms of image quality: they're not perfect, because no TV is (although the PDP-LX508D gets closer than most in my humble opinion). But the salient point, and the one that I hope will satisfy at least some of you, is this: we've tried all of the PX sets, with lots of different sources and many discs, and to our experienced eyes, they're fine. Until someone at Panasonic is prepared to back us up, that's just about the only useful light I can shed on the matter, but I hope it's of some comfort to some of you.