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While we appreciated the addition of a pair of power-saver modes, which somewhat limit peak light output and therefore energy consumption, a more-important feature is the same kind of store/home choice found on Panasonic and Samsung panels. When we first plugged in, the TV it asked us whether we were in the store or at home, and when we chose "home" the TV was automatically set in the Standard picture mode, which is designed to meet the new Energy Star guidelines coming later this year. According to our tests, Standard did indeed consume less power (about 100 watts less) than we tested on last year's default mode, although compared with the ultra-dim Standard mode on the Panasonic TH-50PZ800U, the Pioneer is a moderate energy hog. See the Juice Box for details.

Pioneer added its Home Media Gallery to the TV this year, which lets it interface with a USB thumbdrive or your home network via an Ethernet port to view photos, or play music and video files on the TV. Pioneer's implementation doesn't include as a media-rich experience like Samsung's LN46A750, which has built-in Shockwave tutorials, weather reports, and other more advance features, but it still offers a decent DLNA option with a wide array of supported file format. Other features include picture-in-picture with a side-by-side option, and a variety of options to combat potential burn-in, including a pixel orbiter, a scrolling white bar to wipe out retained images, and a mode that "simultaneously optimizes the related settings to alleviate image retention."

An excellent selection of six aspect ratio modes is available for high-definition sources and five for standard definition, along with an Auto feature that attempts to set the correct aspect ratio for you. As we'd expect, there's also a dot-by-dot mode that scales 1080i and 1080p sources perfectly without any overscan. If you're interested in using this mode, which we highly recommend, be sure to disable the "Auto Size" option in the Setup>Option menu, or else the TV will default to Auto (which doesn't seem to like dot-by-dot much) every time you turn it on.

The company's recommended picture mode is Optimum, which automatically adjusts the picture according to room lighting and content. Other adjustments include a Smooth mode that introduces dejudder processing and an Advanced mode that switches the TV to a 72Hz refresh rate designed to work with 1080p/24 sources. See the Performance section for more details.

The PDP-5020FD offers seven total picture presets; five of which can be adjusted using the available basic picture controls and apply to every input, while one of the five is labeled Standard and it's independent per input. We found Movie mode to deliver the most-accurate color temperature (the rest were much bluer), but since it's not independent per input, you can't use tweak Movie for various components.

Pioneer has positioned the non-Elite models in its lineup to appeal to the average person, according to the company, and so has stripped out a number of picture controls that were available last year. The PDP-5020FD lacks color temperature presets, a noise reduction control, a gamma control, and numerous other more-esoteric settings that the 2007 models included. If you want a bunch of picture adjustments on your 2008 Kuro, you'll have to pony up for the Elite version (more info).

Features
For such an expensive HDTV, the Pioneer PDP-5020FD certainly doesn't have as many extras as most competing high-definition sets. However, it does have a 1080p native resolution--although, even at this screen size it's difficult to tell the difference between 1080p and lesser resolutions.

Pioneer KURO 50 "Black Plasma HDTV - PDP5020FD / 1920 x 1080p Full HD Resolution / New Home Media Gallery Home Network Connectivity / Four Independent HDMI v1.3 Inputs / Anti-Reflective Filter / Cell Structure With Crystal Emissive Layer / ASIC Video Processing And Scaling / Detachable Bottom Speaker / Room Light Sensor / ATSC / NTSC Tuner With Clear QAM / 1080p 24/60Hz Signal Via HDMI / Black Finish

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