Digital Cable Ready Plasma televisions from Pioneer offer pure visual sensation

Two new, digital cable-ready plasma televisions from Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. offer the purest image quality possible in a flat panel display, bringing true high definition television to discerning consumers. The 43” diagonal PDP-4345HD and 50” diagonal PDP-5045HD widescreen plasma televisions are the newest in Pioneer’s line of PureVision HDTVs.

A world leader in the development and manufacturing of plasma displays, Pioneer uses numerous proprietary technologies to create the purest image quality. Beginning with these televisions, Pioneer also utilized its expertise in the cable industry to create cable-ready televisions with a unique on-screen user interface known as Passport™.

The PDP-4345HD and PDP-5045HD offer the following Pioneer exclusive technologies:

Pure Drive: Anyone who ever played the “telephone” game knows that the more you pass information back and forth, the more likely it is to distort that information. Pure Drive keeps television signals as pure as possible by eliminating unnecessary conversions between the analog and digital realm. Any analog television signal (analog cable, VCR, etc.) is converted once to digital and then remains in the digital domain. A digital signal (digital cable, DVD, etc.) has no conversion at all. This maintains the purity of the signal going into the plasma display for the purest image quality on screen for the viewer.

Digital Cable Ready with Passport™: The cable and consumer electronics industries recently approved standards that make it possible for consumers to get digital cable television in their home without the need for a cable box. Instead, the cable technology, including the QAM tuner, is included in the television itself. When a consumer purchases a digital cable ready television, like the new Pioneer plasma TVs, they simply call their cable company to request a cable card that will activate their television and enable them to get their favorite cable channels. In the case of Pioneer’s televisions, the consumer also will have on-screen graphics that display television channel information. These on-screen graphics are based on Pioneer’s well-respected Passport on-screen electronic program guide.

Advanced PureCinema™: Movie lovers will appreciate Pioneer’s Advanced PureCinema, which makes television feel more like a movie theater. Pioneer was the first to introduce advanced film playback using 3:3 film-to-video-conversion by increasing the refresh rate to 72Hz in a plasma display. Previously televisions only offered 3:2 film-to-video-conversion at 60Hz resulting in on screen artifacts, such as uneven motion.

Advanced Continuous Emission II (ACE II): This technology is a cornerstone of the Pioneer plasmas enabling color and contrast that create larger-than-life images. It also enables the Pioneer plasma to display more than one billion colors on screen – 1,073,741,824 true colors to be exact. Grayscale is also improved with ACE II, which distinguishes 1024 grayscale steps for each of the pixel colors to help keep the blacks truly black and provide finer gradations within the dark areas. Compared to 256 grayscale steps found in many other televisions, Pioneer offers a tremendous advantage in making dimly lit scenes clear and watchable.

HDMI: The High Definition Multimedia Interface found on Pioneer’s plasmas not only provides simple one-cable connectivity, but it helps future-proof the investment in plasma with new, proven, technology. HDMI assures that the best video signal is sent from the source (DVD player, video game, etc.) to the television.