Panasonic Viera TC-P50VT25

Panasonic Viera TC-P50VT25 Courtesy Panasonic

In a fight, your home theater could now take on any cineplex, thanks to this 3-D TV. While other TV makers entered the third dimension with upgraded LCDs, Panasonic was the first company to work with ultrafast plasma. And it turns out that plasma is what it takes to make at-home 3-D beautiful.

Panasonic’s set produces a crisp high-def 3-D (or a regular ol’ 2-D) image even when there’s a lot of movement, as in a chase scene or soccer game, because every dot on the 50-inch screen refreshes 120 times a second—for clean pixels every time, with no “ghosts” left over, as happens with even the fastest LCDs—providing 60 independent images per eye. Only plasma can completely refresh that quickly. Glasses with LCD-screen lenses flicker in time with the left and right images on the TV, so each eye sees only the frames meant for it. Analysts predict that eventually most sets sold will be 3-D-ready. This one has set the benchmark.