Sharp now making (Pioneer) Elite Brand

It was a sad day for videophiles a couple of years ago when Pioneer announced that it was exiting the plasma display business. (The company had acquired the factory when NEC exited the business some years prior). Pioneer's Elite Kuro plasmas were just about universally acknowledged as "best of breed", and I have a 50" version of the final generation here as a flat panel reference. The rapid decline in plasma TV average selling prices is what did them in (at one time, their top model carried a US$20,000 price tag).   The final two Elite Kuro plasma models (50" at US$4,500 and 60" at US$6,000) were simply priced way too high compared to the three remaining plasma vendor's offerings (LG, Panasonic, Samsung).

Pioneer has resurrected the Elite TV brand (the company has continued to support the AVR and Blu-ray segments) by partnering with Sharp to produce a new line of Elite-branded flat panels. But this time they're LCD based, with LED local dimming backlighting.

In the race to make LED backlit sets slimmer than ever, the major flat panel TV makers have abandoned LED local dimming in favour of edge lighting. True LED local dimming backlighting is still the way to go, though, and the new Pioneer Elite sets (60" at US$5,999 and 70" at $8,499) feature full array LED local dimming backlighting, along with active shutter 3D glasses technology. They're also THX 2D and 3D certified. The 60" set features 600 local dimming zones, while the 70" set features 300 local dimming zones.

One notable feature of the new sets is their newly developed (and exclusive to the Elite sets) Intelligent Variable Contrast image processing. Just about every display these days has some sort of contrast enhancement function, but the function typically works in "sledgehammer" mode, shifting darker blacks darker and punching brighter scenes up across the whole screen. I've never found a contrast enhancement function that I liked until now, as the Pioneer IVC enhancement function takes advantage of the hundreds of local dimming backlighting zones and makes the peak white elements in the picture substantially brighter without affecting any other portion of the screen image (the function is disabled however in the THX picture mode). An HD clip of a carnival ride at night has the ride's many individual lightbulbs noticeably brighter than the rest of the image, which isn't affected at all.

The Elite LED LCD HDTVs feature the RGB+Y technology, like Sharp’s own Quattron, adding a yellow sub-pixel to the standard red/green/blue color palette to produce a much broader range of color and creates higher brightness using less power and more accurately depicts vivid yellows and vibrant golds.

RGB+Y technology makes possible Precision Color Plus, four sub-pixels composed of smaller dots, creating more than 8 million dots per screen for a much smoother, more appealing detailed image.

The Elite TVs also includes Intelligent Variable Contrast technology that works with all of the other Elite technologies to automatically control brightness and backlight to create depth of color, brilliance, detail and dark areas. You can also expect Full Array LED backlight with Local Dimming, and FluidMotion for 240Hz smooth motion.

The Elite HDTVs are 3D-capable and comes with two sets of active shutter 3-D glasses. They are THX, THX 3D Display and ISF certified.

The PRO-60X5FD and PRO-70X5FD both have built-in WiFi connectivity and supports video streaming services such as Netflix, VUDU and CinemaNow. The former is priced at $5999.99 and the latter at $8499,99.