Review: Planar PD470 1080p LCD Display

Make a quick list of the top HDTV companies in the world and Planar won’t likely show up for most people. For many years Planar has been operating in the background of the display industry, making products for demanding commercial applications or limited residential distribution. Recently, however, Planar took a major step forward by buying Runco, one of the most significant companies in the high-end home theater market. The acquisition, which happened last spring, puts Planar on a much different field in the market and will probably make their products more accessible to a wider audience. With that news, it’s an appropriate time to take a look at what the best minds at Planar can produce for flat panel enthusiasts.

I selected the 47-inch PD470 LCD display for this review after having admired it at the company’s booth at the September CEDIA Expo. This LCD monitor (it doesn’t include a tuner or speakers) boasts a 1920 x 1080 panel, making it a full 1080p display. Planar rates the contrast at 15,000:1 and the response time at 6ms, which is respectable for a panel of this size.

The monitor revealed Planar’s industrial display background when I had to move it around in our test studio—this thing is built like a tank. While the front is complimented by an attractive glossy black picture-frame bezel 1.5-inches wide, the back of the TV looks like an armored car. I don’t think there’s an ounce of plastic on this monitor. Even so, at 58 pounds it’s considerably lighter than an equivalent plasma.

This monitor includes all the typical ins and outs like two sets of component inputs and two HDMI inputs. All are situated around a module in the back that makes reaching them particularly easy, though once hung on a wall, the mounting bracket may make adding additional cables difficult.

The remote is small and basic. Apparently, Planar expects its customers to use a universal remote for whole theater control.

Planar doesn’t make products that you can walk into Best Buy and pick up. These are designed for professional installation and available only at specialty audio/video dealers. With that in mind, this monitor includes a few features designed specifically for the high-end market. One is the inclusion of front and back IR receivers. The back IR receiver allows an installer to use an IR repeater system without the need for the IR cable to be stuck to the front of the TV. Also on the back is an RS-232 port that allows the TV to be controlled by a Crestron automation system.

While some of the build characteristics of this model owe themselves to the company’s industrial heritage, its picture quality is all home theater. Set to the ideal 65K color temperature, the Planar’s grayscale measured very well across the board. With a high definition signal supplied by a Samsung Blu-ray player, the 1080p picture was superb. Many LCD TVs can look a little soft and muted compared to plasma TVs, but this one had plenty of punch. I used the BD version of Spiderman 3 to evaluate the picture. Colors jumped from the screen while the blacks looked rich and deep—they weren’t perfect though. I’ve seen better black levels, but not frequently.

Some of the picture credit goes to the display’s use of good video processing components. Inside the Planar is a Cortez-plus LCD controller chip and a 10-bit Genesis Faroudja DCDi de-interlacer. The picture exhibited no edge artifacts or mosquito noise and details were sharp.

As a fairly new name on the home theater market, Planar has work ahead of it to gain recognition. This model lacks some of the bells and whistles of its more well-known competition such as additional HDMI ports, ATSC tuners, SD card slots and game modes, but it’s got the picture pedigree to make it stand out on your wall. yy