Digital Trends

Pioneer PDP-5070HD November 14th, 2006 | by Ian Bell

Features and Design

The PDP-5070HD is a very nice plasma to look at it. The case features a piano black finish that looks great in any setting. A lot of companies are using silver, which might look good at first, but we have always felt that a black finish helps to enrich the colors on-screen giving them a more vibrant look. Pioneer ships a speaker bar that attaches to the bottom of the PDP-5070HD should you decide you want to use the TVs speakers instead of your own home theater speaker system. Having a speaker bar on the bottom is both good and bad. It’s good because it means that the TV’s width is minimized allowing for an easier installation in a home entertainment cabinet, or in areas of limited space; and at just 48.2 inches wide, this is a very size efficient TV. The downside to having the speakers on the bottom is that you often lose the feeling of a good 2-channel stereo sound because the speakers do not have any distance between them. As for the TV stand that comes with the PDP-5070HD, it matches the same finish as the TV and is really nothing special.

One of the first things you should notice with the new 7th generation Pioneer plasma TV’s is that the media box is missing with everything being integrated into the plasma itself. We tend to have mixed feelings on this for a couple reasons. First of all, if you are like us and prefer to mount a plasma or LCD TV on the wall, you will want to minimize just how many cables are going to the TV. A media box is nice because you can plug your receiver and components into the media box, and then just run the single cable to the TV. This is great for those that install their TV themselves making the job easier and more affordable (since you do not need to purchase extra long cables or switch boxes), although we have heard installers swing both ways here. If you do not plan to mount this TV on the wall, instead opting for a TV stand or cabinet, having the connections integrated into the TV is nice because it gives you more shelf space in your TV stand for other home theater components.

Image Courtesy of Pioneer

As for connections, the PDP-5070HD has everything covered. There are two tuners, one ATSC and one NTSC, each with their own coaxial connection which is nice (the Philips 42PF9831D we reviewed recently has two tuners that share a single coax connection), 2 HDMI inputs, 1 analog VGA input, 2 component video inputs, 4 RCA inputs, 2 S-Video inputs and a single USB input which lets you connect a thumb drive or camera directly to the TV for picture viewing. The PDP-5070HD also features a Cablecard slot if that floats-your-boat. Pioneer was nice and opted to include a 3rd party TV guide to use when you are using the Cablecard connection.

Back of Pioneer PDP-5070HD

The left side has Component video, S-Video and RCA inputs in addition to a USB port

The right side has menu and channel/volume controls

The Pioneer PDP-5070HD has a native resolution of 1,365 x 768 which is pretty good, but oddly is one pixel short of other 50-inch sets on the market (and which is the standard). We asked Pioneer is this was simply a printing mistake, and it is not. What does this mean to you? Nothing really, it’s not a big deal at all and even most videophiles will not notice the difference. Our Pioneer contact also told us that the PDP-5070HD is capable of accepting incoming 1080p signals (through the HDMI connection), but that it will down convert it to 1080i or 720p since the PDP-5070HD does not have a true 1080P panel.