Replacing last year's PZ800s, the Panasonic TX-P65V10B is second only to the flagship Z1 screens in its TV range, and have been touted by some as the natural successors to Pioneer's Kuro sets.

While the Panasonic TX-P46Z1 majors on fancy design, the TX-P65V10 offer the same display tech but with a rather more bread-and-butter design. There's no Wireless HD either, but screen sizes go up to this Greenpeace-baiting 65in version.

As the largest set in the V10 range, the TX-P65V10B has much to live up to, but a cursory look at its spec indicates that all the stops have indeed been pulled out. It's bleeding-edge both in terms of display and functions, and if you have to worry about the price, then you're probably missing the point.

One glass design

The massive NeoPDP plasma panel is surrounded by a black bezel and topped by a silver control bar. The 'one sheet of glass' design does indeed make it impressive, but this is not an overly designed set; you would need to have a very large room or a sliding panel arrangement of some kind to be able to ignore this sizeable slab when it's switched off.

The pedestal foot is a huge rectangle in brushed aluminium with a plasticised coating, and the back of the set is a sheet of aluminium which contributes to its considerable 53kg weight.

Panasonic tx-p65v10b glamour

There has been no attempt to make this set as slim as the Z1, though it's still quite svelte at around two inches thick; the part which protrudes furthest from the back is the connector for the Freesat plug. Otherwise, a familiar selection of connections is situated on the rear.

A side-mounted SD card slot supports JPEG still images, AVI or DivX files up to 720 x 576 resolution, and AVCHD files. It'll be useful to owners of one of Panasonic's SD card-toting cameras or camcorders, though I'm not sure it's a substitute for the convenience of a USB socket.

The panel is, of course, Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, and claims an 'Infinite Black' contrast ratio of over 2,000,000:1 in Dynamic mode, and a more down-to-earth 40,000:1 in native mode. Multimedia functions include access to websites through Viera Cast, still-image display using the Viera Image Viewer, and networking using the DLNA standard.

HD on tap

The TX-650V10B has three tuners: analogue, digital and Freesat HD – Panasonic is still championing the upstart sat platform, but it remains to be seen what happens to the platform when rival Freeview HD launches in the coming months. Auto-tuning of Freesat, analogue and digital channels is blindingly fast and efficient.

Panasonic tx-p65v10b front

The OSD uses large, clear text and unfussy icons, while the Picture menu offers a selection of viewing modes. Each of either Normal, Cinema, Games and Dynamic mode uses its own preset levels for brightness, contrast and colour, and there's also a THX setting for movie-viewing, which calibrates the picture to THX-taste.

You also get the standard contrast, colour, brightness and sharpness tweaks and a choice of Cool, Normal and Warm colour temp presets. However, for a prestige set such as this, picture tuning parameters just don't go far enough. There is no substitute for manual adjustment of individual RGB levels, despite the fact that the smaller Z1 has them.

Other features include an Eco Mode, which reduces screen brightness and saves power, when you're viewing in a dimly-lit room, and a Multi Window function for picture-in-picture and split screen functions.