Maxent is the brand name for consumer video display devices sold by Regent USA. Regent is an American subsidiary of a larger Taiwanese company and sells a number of high-quality plasma and LCD displays to the US and Canadian flat panel TV market.

The Maxent MX-42-HPM20 plasma flat-panel-monitor is a 42 inch diagonal 16:9 aspect ratio plasma display suitable for HDTV and general NTSC viewing. It can also be used as a computer monitor for classrooms, trade shows and other applications where more than a few people need to see the screen at once. The unit is black with a champagne silver bezel and pedestal base.

The Maxent MX-42HPM20 is purely a monitor meaning it has no tuner; although it does have a pair of 5-watt speakers located at the bottom of the panel. It measures 42.25" x 31.375" x 3.75 " and weighs 84 pounds. An optional wall mount is available.

Features
The MX-42HPM20 sports such features as extensive video processing, variable aspect ratio, HDMI interface, picture presets, quick access menu, auto input detection, power save feature, and a sleep timer.

With a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and a native resolution of 1024 x 768, this display serves well as a large monitor or HDTV. A plethora of high-end processing features are provided including image-shift to prevent image burn-in, 3:2 cinema pull-down with automatic bad-edit correction, adaptive motion de-interlacing, edge smoothing algorithms, and intelligent image scaling. It also includes a two-stage black level extension that tends to deepen black levels without moving overall brightness and contrast settings.

Maxent MX-42HPM20 Plasma Monitor

Inputs and Outputs
The MX-42HPM20 has vertically situated connectors on the rear apron like most flat-panel displays designed with wall hanging in mind. While somewhat inconvenient and awkward to get at, this arrangement affords the best compromise to insure that Input/Output connections don't interfere with hanging the display on a wall.

Maxent MX-42HPM20 Connector Panel

Remote Control

Maxent MX-42HPM20 Remote Control

A sliding cover below the main panel reveals buttons to toggle closed-captioning, control aspect ratios, Standby mode, Quick-Access for fine adjustments, and direct selection of any input source. Unfortunately, all the labels beneath this sliding panel are red on a dark charcoal background and require ample light to read.

Menu Controls
Once you enter the menu, pressing the down button scrolls the list of possibilities, and the right navigation button selects a highlighted function. There is NO enter key. You merely select, make adjustments if necessary, and exit.

The Maxent MX-42HPM20 has three fundamental sets of controls:

Picture - allows access to all adjustments that impact image size and quality. It also includes 4 standard presets that are designed for use with specific types of material. For example, the Cinema preset is preconfigured for video with emphasis on proper color temperature; however, you can fine tune it to your personal preference. Likewise, the Vivid preset is intended for data, where image brightness is perhaps of greater importance than color temperature. Any changes you make are preserved.

Sound - allows control of bass, treble, right to left balance, surround enhancement which simulates a surround sound effect, on/off of the onboard speakers, and the ability to set the audio output jacks for either a fixed output or a variable using the remote's volume controls.

Advanced - provides access to a number of advanced features that you will activate according to your need. For example, you can establish a default video source, volume setting, or aspect ratio on power up or default to your last used settings. You can also set it up to not power up after a power failure. Other features of the MX-42-HPM20 includes 3 language choices (English, French, Spanish) for the On Screen Menu (OSM), timeout for the OSM, a sleep timer, ability to change the background color of the OSM (gray is default), and a power-save feature that will turn the display off if there is no RGB signal present from your computer and will turn itself back on when the RGB signal is present. This feature does not work on other inputs, and the monitor must remain in standby mode for it to work.

Another feature in the set-up menu is the 'full white' mode. This toggles the screen in and out of a mode, which turns all pixels on at their highest level, turning the screen white. This is useful for clearing the "burned-in" images or "electrically charged residual images" as the instruction book calls them. This is a nice feature and regular use prevents the muddying of the displayed image as sometimes happens with plasma displays.

The Multi-color mode is another screen "cleansing" feature. It cycles through several color screens, again, in an effort to thwart the dread "electrically charged residual images." Both of these are thoughtful housekeeping utilities and I cannot stress strongly enough the positive effect that they have over time.

Picture Set-Up
Setting up the picture on this set is a cinch. Using my "Digital Essentials" test DVD; I merely used the "pluge" test to set Brightness (black level) and Contrast (white level) after selecting the "User" defined picture mode in the picture set-up menu.

Since excessive white drive does not cause the distortion on flat panels that it does on CRT-based displays, all you have to do is set the black and blacker-than-black levels using the appropriate test patterns and advance the white level (contrast) until the white starts to bleed outside of the box and then back it off.

Color level is set with the NTSC color bar pattern by viewing through the supplied (with the DVD) blue filter and adjusting color level and hue until the bars look as indicated in the DVD's instructions. That's it. Once set, I found that the adjustments do not move, nor does the black-level "float."

One thing that I found was that the feature called "Black-level Extension" is very useful. Most programming that we get these days over cable or satellite is heavily compressed MPEG-2. Heavy video compression tends to make dark backgrounds appear blotchy rather than solid.

You can notice this easily while watching a "space opera" such as "Star Trek The Next Generation", or "Star Wars". With the "Black-level Extension" control off, the space backgrounds seem blotchy with pixilated squares of blue and purple clearly visible. Select "low" for the "Black-level Extension" and they immediately turn darkest black. This control does not seem to affect any other settings and pluge levels and white levels seem unaffected by the use of this feature.

Performance
Plasma HDTVs have come a long way very quickly. Just a few short years ago, plasmas had mediocre contrast ratios, image burn-in problems and muddy colors. Add to that incredible high costs and it's a wonder that the technology has survived.

But survive it did and now plasma HDTVs are becoming more and more affordable while the picture just gets better and better.

Many HDTV advocates are quick to point out that plasma screens simply are not capable of producing a High-Definition picture. They rightly point out that a plasma screen with a fairly low pixel count, such as the Maxent, simply cannot resolve the 1080 X 1920 HDTV picture. They are right as far as it goes, but I must say that in the final analysis, the absolute pixel count is simply not that important.

This set, the Maxent MX-42-HPM20, with its astonishing 10,000:1 contrast ratio and vivid colors makes a picture that is so lifelike and sharp without color fringing or convergence errors, that most find it simply breathtaking.

When displaying an HDTV picture or even a progressive scan DVD, the realism is palpable. This writer spends a lot of time (money permitting) in Italy. Watching Rudy Maxa's PBS "Smart Travels" program on Rome is just like being there. You feel that you could almost reach through and touch the Coliseum!

My reference TV is a true HD rear projection display using 8.5-inch CRT projectors. It is capable of full 1080 X 1920 performance, yet the colors, the contrast, the image-popping realism that you would expect from a CRT just aren't as impressive as this plasma display.

The greens and reds are simply very subdued by comparison and I find that the CRTs render green very monochromatically while the plasma display renders many shades of green and they are all very realistic.

If I were to levy any criticism against the MX-42-HPM20, it would be that it simply does not give the user the aspect ratio control and options that I would like to see. You can select standard NTSC format of 4:3, the stretched ATSC 16:9, or the so-called "Panorama" mode which stretches a standard TV 4:3 picture to fit the entire 16:9 screen by scaling the picture as you move it closer to the edge of the screen. Frankly, I have always found this mode unacceptable. I find that zooming the 4:3 picture to fit the 16:9 screen works much better, and the top and bottom cutoff caused by this, is in most cases, not even noticeable. The MX-42-HPM20 does not provide for any zooming of the picture.

If your source is an HDTV or progressive DVD through either the Component or the HDMI input, the only aspect ratio sources open to you are 4:3 or widescreen 16:9.

If you have a letterboxed, non-anamorphic DVD movie, the TV gives you no option but to watch it with everything stretched out or watch a small horizontal band of picture in the middle of a 16:9 screen. The sight of this postage-stamp sized picture in the center of a 42" screen with huge areas of black surrounding it looks less than satisfying. Some DVD players themselves can re-format the picture to eliminate this problem, but many cannot and it's a feature rarely touted in the DVD player advertising, and buying a high-end player is no guarantee that you will get the level of aspect ratio control that you want.

Conclusion
The Maxent MX-42HPM20 is somewhat of a bargain at the moment with its suggested U.S. retail-selling price of $1799. It is the latest generation of wall mountable flat screen plasma displays and offers extremely high performance.

When properly set-up, the Maxent will present a top-notch picture with no discernable artifacts. The Black Enhancement control minimizes a lot of the problems with shadows and black backgrounds that modern MPEG-2 compressed video can exhibit. The unit is well made with a steel cabinet rather than plastic, and it is easy to setup and use.