Marantz 61-Inch Plasma Monitor
April 2002
The Picture Dreams are Made Of
By Grant Clauser
Unless you're a professional basketball player, a pop singer, a major CEO or a Hollywood star then you probably have little chance of owning a gorgeous 61-inch Marantz plasma display monitor like the one that showed up at E-Gear's offices. But you can dream.
There's a lot to dream about on this baby. At about $30,000 or $491.80 an inch the PD6120D is the ultimate in high-tech home entertainment. It's also as big as these things get, at least for now. Smaller, 42-inch plasma monitors have caught on with up-market consumers (who says we're in a recession?) who want to enjoy a big screen without having to live with a TV cabinet the size of a piano. And of course there's the appeal of flaunting your expensive tastes to the neighbors.
The new bigger class of plasma, which this Marantz is among, offer a lot more pixels than those that came before, 1365 x 768 to be exact, thus making them true high definition displays. Unless you want to hang a projector and big screen in your home, this is THE way to see high def.
One of the benefits of plasma is that you can have a big TV in a fairly light package, though this 61-inch behemoth is not something you can carry under your arm. Its slim 4.7-inch depth still gives it that classic appeal of a wall mirror or painting.
As I've said in previous articles about plasma monitors, the technology behind them has improved dramatically over the last year alone. Big screens like this Marantz are testaments to how good plasmas have gotten. It's no easy thing to get all those pixels working together so well that you can comfortably sit back and lose yourself in the illusion.
When I first powered it up and connected it to a progressive scan DVD player, the colors were slightly off. The picture had a little green cast to it and was overly bright. Getting into the picture controls and correcting the image via test patterns eliminated a lot of the problems but the monitor really begged for a full grayscale calibration. I set the mode to theater and the color temperature to PRO which gets you access to the advanced controls. The gain and bias controls for correcting grayscale were easily accessible and allowed me to get the unit to run at a pretty consistent 6500K color temperature. The monitor's DC restoration, the ability to hold black levels, was very good. Once calibrated it held a steady color temperature across the gray spectrum.
By Grant Clauser
Unless you're a professional basketball player, a pop singer, a major CEO or a Hollywood star then you probably have little chance of owning a gorgeous 61-inch Marantz plasma display monitor like the one that showed up at E-Gear's offices. But you can dream.
There's a lot to dream about on this baby. At about $30,000 or $491.80 an inch the PD6120D is the ultimate in high-tech home entertainment. It's also as big as these things get, at least for now. Smaller, 42-inch plasma monitors have caught on with up-market consumers (who says we're in a recession?) who want to enjoy a big screen without having to live with a TV cabinet the size of a piano. And of course there's the appeal of flaunting your expensive tastes to the neighbors.
The new bigger class of plasma, which this Marantz is among, offer a lot more pixels than those that came before, 1365 x 768 to be exact, thus making them true high definition displays. Unless you want to hang a projector and big screen in your home, this is THE way to see high def.
One of the benefits of plasma is that you can have a big TV in a fairly light package, though this 61-inch behemoth is not something you can carry under your arm. Its slim 4.7-inch depth still gives it that classic appeal of a wall mirror or painting.
As I've said in previous articles about plasma monitors, the technology behind them has improved dramatically over the last year alone. Big screens like this Marantz are testaments to how good plasmas have gotten. It's no easy thing to get all those pixels working together so well that you can comfortably sit back and lose yourself in the illusion.
When I first powered it up and connected it to a progressive scan DVD player, the colors were slightly off. The picture had a little green cast to it and was overly bright. Getting into the picture controls and correcting the image via test patterns eliminated a lot of the problems but the monitor really begged for a full grayscale calibration. I set the mode to theater and the color temperature to PRO which gets you access to the advanced controls. The gain and bias controls for correcting grayscale were easily accessible and allowed me to get the unit to run at a pretty consistent 6500K color temperature. The monitor's DC restoration, the ability to hold black levels, was very good. Once calibrated it held a steady color temperature across the gray spectrum.
