In order to answer this question "What is the best 42" plasma 1080p television?", I went in search of opinions. I wanted the opinions of people who had already bought a 42" plasma 1080p television, and who were willing to talk about their experience with the set. Good as well bad. I looked at thier ratings and feel that I have an answer based on what I've found.

Firstly, let me say that if you are judging televisions by the displays in a store such as Best Buy or Circuit City, keep in mind that most of the display models were plugged in straight out of the box with no attention payed to optimizing the picture. That said, lets get to the facts.

The overall consensus of why the Panasonic Viera TH-42PZ85U 42" 1080p Plasma Television is the best:

• Better black levels
• Reliability - Panasonic is the industry leader in delivering a stable viewing experience
• The Anti-reflective coating - it appears that Panasonic has everyone beat, yes, even Samsung
• Image retention (IR) resistance - again Panasonic leads the way

This lovable piece of eye candy is delivered by Panisonic's image scaler. An image scaler handles different formats of picture signal and converts them for best viewing. Panasonic's rocks. The image quality on standard definition broadcasts (SDTV) is impressive to say the least. I've been watching SDTV programs on other models and most do a good job of handling the picture. But, when you need to look hard to see if the signal is an HD broadcast.....well that's saying something. Watching regular DVD format movies is a joy. Really. There is no need to go out and buy all your favorites again in blu-ray!

The HD Picture presentation, jaw droopingly stunning. Watching HDTV broadcasts on this set is amazing. Blu-ray movies, the experience just can't be compared to what you've seen before.

I found a few people who were having trouble with phosphor trails. This was showing up in the transition from black pixels to white or light colored pixels, during fast action such as a hockey game. I believe this could be eliminated by tweaking the picture controls. Found on customer review at Amazon. com

Image retention and burn-in are not the same thing. Image retention can be caused by a static image such as occur in video games and computer feeds. It can be easily remedied by switching to full screen mode and running the set for a little while to give each pixel a chance to be changed.

Burn-in would be an extreme example of image retention and is unfix-able.

Panasonic has built in many features to prevent either of these problems. They include auto-off, and pixel shifting if the picture remains unchanged for an extended period.

All in all, the best 42" plasma 1080p television has to be the Panasonic Viera TH-42PZ85U 42-Inch 1080p Plasma HDTV.