Jonathan Takiff: Economy forces TV price cuts

THE GIZMO: Panasonic TC-P55VT30 raises the bar and lowers the price of premium grade TV.

RECESSION SPENDING: TV sets are like fruit. You'll pay a lot to nab the fresh-picked first of the season. But when cartons pile up in the warehouse because consumers are watching their wallets, even top-tier set makers start cutting prices to move the merch.

LIVING LARGE: The Panasonic TC-P55VT30 review unit I've been living with for three months is a perfect case in point. It's the nicest looking TV the brand has ever made, with a smooth, border-to-border glass face plate and an ultraslim profile of just 1 1/4 inches. Better yet, the VT30 is the best-performing and most feature laden 55-inch Panasonic plasma.

It's one of the top TVs out there. Period.

With plasma you get the blackest blacks and most vivid colors in all of TV-dom, with a superfast pixel refresh rate that keeps the busiest sports action and 3-D content sharp. And with plasma, you get none of the uneven backlighting issues that plague equally slim, LED edge-lit LCD TVs.

MARKET MOVERS: Now the big picture gets better. At the beginning of summer, the $2,799.95 suggested price for this premium model - less widely distributed than Panasonic's value-oriented ST30 series and closer spec'd, midline GT30 models - was holding pretty firm. In August, Panasonic and other companies in the Plasma Coalition (Samsung, LG) let on they were going to make significant price moves on all plasma sets to grab market share from the LCD TV camp.

At Amazon's online shopping site, the TC-P55VT30 price dropped first to $2,599, then $2,299 and, a couple weeks later, $2,149. When I returned from vacation in mid-August, the tab was down to $1,999.

Yesterday the asking price was $1897.96, 32 percent off list price! Now I'm giving serious thought to buying one.

THE "VALUE" PROPOSITION: Start with THX certification, which means the picture settings have been "tweaked" to rigorous, movie-theater-viewing standards, a process you'd otherwise pay a custom installer $300 to do. THX and Panasonic delivered a picture-perfect presentation (in my darkened family room) of the sparkling new Blu-ray editions of "Citizen Kane" (greatest black and white movie ever?) and "Breakfast at Tiffany's." Viewing 3-D content on this set, which requires shutter glasses that inherently darken the picture, the THX 3-D settings needed a four-"click" boost of contrast and brightness.

This brought out all the shadowy detail and special effects in Paramount's "Thor" and Disney's "Tron: Legacy 3D," two excellent showcases for the new stereoscopic tech. The same minor adjustment also raised the depth-defying thrills and chills for family-friendly 3-D treats like the high flyin' "Rio," otherworldly "Cirque Du Soleil: Journey of Man in 3D" and life aquatic "Imax Deep Sea 3D."

INTERNET TV APPS: They're plentiful and varied in this set, including a bunch of movie, TV and music streaming sites (paid and free), plus news, sports (MLB, MBA, Fox) and weather apps, and social networking opportunities you'd expect (such as Facebook and Twitter) and some you wouldn't. The latter includes Skype video chatting (with an optional $99 camera) and an interactive health and fitness program that works with Withings body-monitoring accessories.

NOT QUITE AS GREAT: All the connectors, including four HDMI and an SD card slot (for viewing digital stills and movies), are accessible from the side of the set. That makes cables easy to change but harder to hide.

Speakers fire downward in 2011 Panasonic plasmas. That improves matters if you're plopping the set on a table, but it diminishes the sound presentation with wall mounting, when you'd probably want to use better external speakers, anyway.

Even with a feature-matched/interacting Panasonic Blu-ray player (DMP-BDT210), I found that the TV set wouldn't recognize a 3-D disc (and switch to 3-D operating mode) if I'd first turned on the player, then switched on my (in-line) Onkyo audio-video receiver and the TV. So turn the player on last!

LED-illuminated LCD TVs do operate on less power, even with the improved Energy Star-rated specifications Panasonic brags about with 2011 plasma models. If you're a heavy viewer - say, six hours a day - it might cost $30 a year more to run a plasma TV than an LCD set. I think the trade-off in performance is worth it.