Panasonic TH-46PZ81

At long last, Sky has a satellite broadcasting rival. And even better, that rival, Freesat, is available without subscription to anyone with a suitable receiver and satellite dish.

Even better still, Panasonic’s TH-46PZ81 ships with a Freesat decoder built in, removing the need for the clutter and cable spaghetti of a separate receiver box.

The 46in TH-46PZ81 sits in the middle of Panasonic’s currently exclusive Freesat range of plasma TVs, and remarkably carries Freeview and analogue tuners alongside the Freesat one.

What's the point?

You might think the Freeview tuner a pretty pointless addition to the Freesat one, but in fact there are currently a number of channels you can get on Freeview that aren’t available on Freesat. So having both tuners is the only way to guarantee you the full subs-free digital broadcasting monty.

As you’d hope/expect, the 46PZ81’s Freesat tuner can receive the service’s HD channels, BBC HD and ITV HD. In fact, it sports a full HD 1920x1080 pixel count so that it can show these HD broadcasts as accurately as possible.

The 46PZ81 also does a neat job of organising all the extensive Freesat and Freeview channel information into tidy onscreen electronic programme guides, and carries plenty of picture processing technology to help those digital broadcasts look as good as possible.

Processing highlights include 100Hz, Panasonic’s V-Real Pro system, and Intelligent Frame Creation, which interpolates extra frames of image data so that motion appears more fluid and accurate.

Impressive pictures

Happily all of these image processors really do work together quite beautifully to ensure that the 46PZ81 produces some extremely impressive pictures from its cutting edge tuners.

Freesat HD broadcasts look particularly fine, of course, with loads of rich colours, sharpness and precious little video noise. But the 46PZ81 also upmixes standard definition sources to its 1920x1080 resolution unusually well, and partners all the good picture work with some expressive, clean audio.

Put all this together, and the 46PZ81 is not only a mighty fine TV in its own right, but also just the sort of premium partner the Freesat service really needs right now.