Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-141FD Plasma HD Monitor:
Page 2 The programmable (and learning) multi-component remote is a good one. It includes backlighting and selection buttons for each input. Some of the buttons are a little small, but I had no other complaints.

Putting It Together
The Pioneer will not zoom a standard-definition 4:3 image to fill the screen without geometric distortion if that material enters the set at 1080i (or 1080p)—as it might be if your cable or satellite box upconverts it. Some material of this sort is widescreen and letterboxed within a 4:3 area, such as Battlestar Galactica broadcasts on the SD Sci-Fi channel. Without zooming, the Pioneer displays this material in the center of the screen with black bars on all sides—left, right, top, and bottom. The solution is to pass such programming to the set in its native 480i, which the Pioneer will zoom properly. You can set most cable or satellite boxes to do this.

The Pioneer would not maintain an HDMI link to my cable box (Scientific Atlanta 8300HDC). It had no problem with any other HDMI source. The problem may be limited to this particular cable box design, although I was unable to try others. This same box has worked with other Pioneer sets but not with the PRO-141FD. I had to use component for my cable connection—which still produced a superb image.

The Pioneer’s upconversion of standard-definition 480i sources to the panel’s native 1080p resolution was average at best. It locked on to 3:2 pulldown (film-sourced material) on two of my three tests for this capability, but it consistently broke lock on the most challenging test. It showed visible artifacts on 2:2 (video-sourced material) tests and had severe jaggies on a mixed video-over-film scroll. While I saw occasional artifacts on some real-world 480i sources, they were frequent only when clearly present in the source itself. (The History International SD channel, a personal favorite, is particularly prone to jaggies on fast pans—on this and other sets.)

The set’s high-definition processing (1080i to 1080p) was better. It continued to have problems with 2:2 pulldown and scrolling text on my standard tests, but I didn’t see any distracting artifacts on a wide range of cable 1080i HD programming, both video- and film-based.

These concerns aside, the Pioneer not only performed well with standard-definition programming, it constantly floored me with its stunning high-definition performance—even from cable. After the extended holiday/Super Bowl hiatus from new shows, fresh episodes of such favorites as Lost, House, Heroes, and Fringe, not to mention the Super Bowl itself, leapt off the screen.

The Pioneer was even better with the best Blu-ray Discs. Its most striking quality, which it hinted at with the finest cable stations, is a remarkable illusion of depth. This wasn’t the gimmicky depth you see in 3-D movies or the dreary televised 3-D experiments. (Even on the Pioneer, the 3-D trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens that aired during the Super Bowl looked grim.) Instead, this had a believable depth that you could watch all day without getting a headache. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on Blu-ray had it. So did Baraka; its jaw-dropping images compensated for its sleep-inducing pace.

That depth comes from a combination of factors: spot-on color, exceptional resolution, and a comfortable (but not excessive) brightness level. But the most important contribution is Pioneer’s industry-leading black levels. Yes, local-dimming LCDs are starting to make inroads, but for overall performance on dark scenes, nothing can beat a Pioneer Kuro. And make no mistake: The better the blacks, the better the subjective image depth, even on bright scenes. The deeper the blacks, the firmer the foundation for all material, from the darkest to the brightest.

Some people (particularly competitors) have argued that Pioneer’s near-black levels are too dark and obscure shadow detail. I don’t agree. If you raise the properly calibrated black level on a Pioneer, it will sometimes reveal a few details that you couldn’t see otherwise, but you can also argue that you aren’t supposed to see them. When it was properly adjusted, this set never lost important, dark-scene visual information.

This set can produce stunning images—the sort of images that keep you glued to the screen far into the night, seeing your favorite program material in a way you never have before. The only question that remains is whether the Pioneer PRO-141FD is genuinely superior to its more audio-ed and tuner-ed stable mate, the PRO-151FD. Without a side-by-side comparison, it’s impossible to say. But some of the features here, particularly the wider choice of playback gammas, have let me optimize the picture of individual sources in a way that no other set in my experience has equaled.

Conclusion
The Pioneer Kuros may soon be gone, but videophiles—Kuro owners or not—will not forget them. Hopefully Pioneer will license the Kuro secret sauce to another company to live again in another guise. But whether that happens directly or not, other manufacturers who genuinely seek to provide consumers with the best performance will take a very close look at what Pioneer has accomplished in its last, and sadly final, generation of sets. Their challenge will be to bring their own sets’ performance up to where Pioneer left off—and beyond. Hopefully the competition to be not only the cheapest, but the best, will drive that effort.

Whatever happens in that regard, we all owe a debt to every member of the Pioneer team who was involved in engineering and building the Kuro plasmas. They significantly advanced the state of the art in modern flat-panel displays. They all have much to be proud of.