Runco PL-42cx Plasma Monitor

January 2001

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The VHD does a lot of interesting things for the monitor. In scaling the incoming video signals to the native resolution of the display, it adds user-adjustable luma (for dark to light transitions) and chroma enhancement (for color transitions) to sharpen edges, 3:2 pulldown correction to smooth out artifacts and aspect ratio control to get any size picture to fit within the 16:9 aspect of the monitor. Two remotes are supplied, one for the monitor and one for the controller, but when the two units are connected, one remote will control both units seamlessly.

Once both units were connected we hooked up a Sencore VP300 to run our assortment of test patterns. Setting the black level (brightness) with a PLUGE pattern gave me a surprise. I hadn't experienced such good blacks and contrast on a plasma before. Color bars proved equally striking, being bright, powerful and accurate.

With plasma displays the focus can't be adjusted, so if it's off there's no way to fix it. This Runco was sharp all the way across, something that few CRT displays can claim.

Next I went to a DVD player, switching it to its interlaced (480i) mode so I could judge how well the VHD controller handled the video processing (as I said earlier, progressive scan signals are passed through the controller untouched). Ignoring the pleas from the rest of the staff here, I set chapter 26 of Starship Troopers, the brain-sucking scene, to repeat mode on the DVD player so I could carefully assess the picture quality. Most noticeable was the incredibly crisp, three-dimensional picture. The excellent contrast gave the image great depth and realism. Night scenes showed lots of detail while extra-atmospheric battles demonstrated the darkness of space broken up by bright flashes of fireballs with no hesitation. At one point in the movie, when Denise Richard's boyfriend is about to get his brain sucked out by a great bug, you want to wipe the oily bug spit off the screen.

The Runco VHD controller did an excellent job of eliminating artifacts and making the switch from film frame rate to video frame rate. For the sake of argument I switched the DVD player to progressive mode and set the VHD to component pass-through to see which did a better job of de-interlacing the picture. Clearly the VHD won out. There were more artifacts and the picture lacked a bit of edge provided by the controller.

Some plasma monitors E-Gear's reviewed in the past have had a little trouble with black and white material, adding odd colors where colors aren't meant to be. The PL-42cx does none of that. In honor of Halloween, which was a week away as I wrote this, I placed Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in the DVD player and ran the shower murder scene over and over, looking for something that wasn't right. I couldn't find anything. The aspect ratio of the non-anamorphic disc didn't fit perfectly into the 16:9 screen, so I used the VHD's aspect control to re-adjust the picture, which it did very effectively.

Another thing worth noting was the excellent off-access viewing the PL-42cx provided. There was no drop-off in image when moving from side to side or up and down, so owners can mount the panel higher than typical for TVs and be assured that everyone in the room will see the picture properly.

This display is also capable of displaying high-definition material, though it is scaled down to the enhanced-definition resolution of the panel. I've seen other plasmas with higher resolution that didn't look as good as this one, and I've seen them side by side. Runco proves that image quality is about pictures and not necessarily about pixels.

Despite some very complex tricks going on under the hood of these two products, using the display and VHD was remarkably intuitive. Most owners will probably use the supplied remotes for the initial set up, then toss them in a drawer in place of a high-end learning remote or control system.

A short time ago there weren't a lot of plasma monitors I would recommend, but this Runco is unquestionably a home theater-quality display. All who came into my office while I was evaluating the PL-42cx exclaimed that they had the perfect place for the plasma in their homes. A plasma monitor is one of those pieces of technology which makes people drool with envy. Just don't let them drool on the remote.