Pioneer awarded Breakthrough Picture Quality
Popular Mechanics
has awarded Pioneer the Breakthrough Picture Quality honors for their 60-inch Elite plasma PRO-1540HD. The Breakthrough Awards recognize ten individuals and teams, including one winner of the Breakthrough Leadership Award, who are helping to improve lives and expand possibilities in the realms of science, technology, and exploration. The magazine also highlights ten consumer products that represent milestones in design and engineering. The plasma design was given an award for its "brighter, sharper, richer picture quality, coupled with the introduction of an exclusive home networking feature," Pioneer's set includes a home networking feature called Home Media Gallery that allows users to connect the Elite plasma TV to an existing home network via Ethernet or USB. Users can access their favorite movies, music and photo images stored on their networked PC or any other DLNA 1.0 compliant device for immediate viewing in on the set. The sad part is, as much as we'd love to have this expensive, feature-filled set in the Engadget HD lounge, we still can't comprehend why this particular set got an award for its picture when it's not even 1080p. Of course, it accepts 1080p inputs, but its native resolution is only 720. I mean, heck, we're GIVING AWAY a set with higher resolution than this one! Ah well Pioneer, perhaps next year!
