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| The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U supports most modern video formats, up to 1080p. It also support photo playback, but we found the delay in loading photos made this feature frustrating to use. |
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Formats (10.5)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480p formats. This is typical of modern HD televisions, there are still a few out there that don't support 1080p and 1080i, but they are becoming fewer and fewer. The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U also supports xvYCC color, which offers a wider range of color for content that supports it. There is also support for 3:2 pulldown and 24p, which is used for content that is produced to look like film.
Photo Playback (3.5)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U supports playback of photos on an SD card loaded into its slot. Putting a card in will immediately launch the photo playback interface, which consists of a set of thumbnails taking up the right side of the screen and information about the currently selected photo and instructions on the left side of the screen. You navigate through the thumbnails using the D-pad on the remote, pressing the center select buttons will give you a full screen version of the selected photo. You can also play a slide show by hitting the R button on the remote, in the options you can control how long the transition between slides is, from 1 second to 120, but that's it.
 We don't expect a lot from photo playback features on a TV, and the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U certainly didn't do anything to change these expectations. It did have one significant problem, however, which was the slow load time of photos. Using 12 megapixel photos it took the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U almost ten seconds to open one of the photos. In fact even when in slideshow mode it took the TV almost this long to make the transition, even when we set the transition time to a lower number like five seconds. This will make viewing photos on the Panasonic TH-46PZ80U a frustrating experience for many. So much so that we decided to deduct a point from the TV's score in this section.
Video Playback (0.0)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not support direct playback of any video formats like Mpeg-4, QuickTime or Windows Media Video.
Streaming Playback (0.0)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not support streaming playback of video over the internet from services like Youtube, Netflix or Hulu.
DVR (0.0)
The Panasonic TH-46PZ80U does not have DVR capabilities built in.
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