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The TV Thread: More for Less
Posts
That's not true to the same extent anymore. There is some change in the characteristics over the first 1000 hours or so, but the black levels are still better than all but the best LEDs. I think the rated "useful life" of a modern plasma is something like 50,000 hours (some of the earliest models were more like 10,000...which is still 7-12 years in typical environments).
LEDs age over time as well, but the curve is longer.
It's not a particular concern either way unless you want to keep the TV for like 40 years, so it generally breaks down like this:
LED Pros:
Brighter
Thinner
Lower Power
LED Cons:
Higher black levels (reduced detail in dark scenes)
Viewing angles are (slightly) limited
Plasma Pros:
Lower black levels
No viewing angle dependence
Better motion resolution (but honestly indistinguishable from good LEDs in actual programming)
$/in ratio is better. (I just got a 60" Panasonic for $1250...most 60" LEDs would cost several hundred more, and one of equal quality would probably cost $1000 more)
Plasma Cons:
Cannot reach the same max brightness (looks bad in a Best Buy/Costco showroom, but plenty bright in the home unless you have a large window with lots of sunlight opposite the TV)
High power consumption
Some people prefer the color profiles from one technology or another, but this is highly dependent on manufacturer, model, and personal preference. Almost all TVs are close enough once you take it out of the "Vivid" mode used for store display and set the color temperature to one of the "Warm" settings. The only way to really dial in color is to get a professional (not from Best Buy) calibration, though.
I'm not sure how much of a consideration this is, but when an LCD develops a crack a good portion of the screen may still output video, while if a plasma cracks it''s gone.
Yeah that's one I forgot. Plasmas generally have perfect uniformity, while edge-lit LEDs will have spots on the screen that are brighter than others. I wouldn't ever watch a screen with a crack in it, so I edited that part out
The general consensus among the HT community is that plasma has better image quality (except for 1 specific LED model that costs more than $5000).
The bottom line, though, is that both will give you an excellent picture once properly calibrated. And you shouldn't really fret too much over the differences for the most part.
$700 is much easier to sell than $1400 to my wife.
Even at that higher rate though a plasma would get you a 20 year expected life....
Diablo 3 Profile
I'm sorry I meant power usage. Will my electric bill skyrocket from plasma use?
(Also my DLP bulb lasted roughly 10,000 hours before the thing died yesterday.
Yeah. It draws more power, but it isn't substantial.
Recently, I've been finding myself interested in joining you all in THE FUTURE and replacing my CRT tv with a HDTV. Would this particular TV serve me well you think? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889262140
I mean, to me, it... looks okay? I think? I'm not sure! Even reading this thread I find myself nervous!
But really that TV seems to have gotten a lot of good reviews I'm sure it'll do just fine.
Also, Yeah, I love my Wega to pieces <3 . Though movers never like it that much (heh.) It's just that I recently got a xbox360 and would like some hdtv goodness as well. Well. I'll keep the wega around I suppose. Leave it hooked up to my PS2 and move it to the living room or somethin'.
That TV will be fine.
I never finish anyth
Oh snap this is the best news ever. I will look into it thank you Decius!
e: It seems I may already have the updated firmware. Shoot.
I have very sensitive hearing so I thought it would be a huge issue. If nothing's happening on the TV I can definitely hear it, but so far I cannot hear it over whatever's playing.
The picture is so fantastic that I have a hard time even thinking about returning it.
Yeah, some sets are worse than others. I would have mentioned it, but it always slips my mind because my hearing is shit, so I rarely even hear it on the worst of sets.
But yeah, that plasma picture quality is a beautiful thing, isn't it?
Oh it absolutely is. My DLP was only 1080i so I'm even getting an upgrade in picture quality on top of going from DLP to Plasma.
The cabinet in our entertainment center is exactly 50” wide, so it looks like we’re in the 46”-52” screen range. That also fits with our viewing distance, which is 10’ away to the center sofa and 7’-8’ to the side seating. No depth restrictions, since our entertainment center is 24” deep. I don’t think too much natural light in the room is an issue – plenty of windows in the room, but they have plantation shutters that really keep the light out and they’re only on the 2 walls that are not in front of or behind the TV. Viewing angles may be an issue, since we have seating that’s I’m guessing a 45 degree angle from the screen center. Lots of gaming and TV show watching, not too much movie watching.
1. Coming from an 8 year old 1080i CRT, is any TV bought now going to be a substantial upgrade no matter what tech (LCD, LED, plasma) I get, or might I actually be let down by non-CRT brightness/contrast/black levels?
2. I think it’ll be tough to spend more than $1000 on a new TV. Does that take me out of the market of good LEDs?
3. Is all 3D tech still active, not passive? I have absolutely no interest in 3D for games and movies, but if it’s difficult to get a TV without 3D nowadays, I guess I need to research that tech as well.
4. Should I stick to the big brands (Samsung, Toshiba, Sony) or are some of the new ones (Visio, LG) worth looking at?
A 50" 4:3 entertainment center will probably not hold a 50" 16:9 widescreen tv.
1. I bought, a couple of months ago, a Panasonic VT30 plasma -- a set with arguably the best black level among any TV currently made. It still is noticeably worse than a CRT in that regard. If you're a black level fanatic, you'll pretty much have to accept that any modern TV is going to be worse for black levels except maybe a Sharp Elite or one of the soon-to-be-released OLED TVs (in both cases, way the fuck more than $1000). The bright side is that modern TVs are better than CRTs in about a million other ways ranging from pragmatic (weight, size, energy consumption) to image quality (color accuracy, screen uniformity, geometry (none of those awful distortions you'd get when the electron gun was not quite calibrated right!), ...).
2. I would definitely avoid LEDs at this price range. You might be able to get a mid/high range Samsung 46" LED, but I think if you bargain hunt you will definitely be able to do better with plasma as long as its limitations do not bother you.
3. LG does passive 3D, as far as I know everyone else still does active. If you don't care about 3D, just ignore it. Pretty much every high-end set and most mid-range sets support 3D, so avoiding it will just amount to shooting yourself in the foot.
4. I would recommend sticking to the big brands, yes, though I would put LG as a sort-of-big-brand LED producer, and I would not consider Toshiba a big brand for either technology. I would not go with Sony unless you decide to splurge for an absolute top-of-the-line LED TV, as Samsung tends to do better for anything less than that. For Plasma, I wouldn't even consider anything other than Panasonic and Samsung, and frankly I'd be rather hesitant about Samsung (but this is only hearsay -- I have not personally owned a Samsung plasma).
Could anyone speak to their experiences with buying bulbs? Are there any sites that sell quality OEM parts? Do I need to suck it up, and buy the manufacturer's part?
3DS: Span_Wolf - 4854-6434-9883/WiiU:Span_Wolf
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Span_Wolf/
Does this meet your needs?
3DS: Span_Wolf - 4854-6434-9883/WiiU:Span_Wolf
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Span_Wolf/
Thanks for the response. I posted those questions last week but didn’t really continue my research or follow up in here since A) I’ve been too busy drooling over my new iPad, B) work has been crazy busy, and C) our TV worked fine as long as we kept it on 100% of the time. Well, I accidentally turned it off on Sunday, and now it will not turn on at all. So yeah, really need to figure out what I want to do now.
Went to Best Buy last night and talked to a guy there. I didn’t get too much from him that I hadn’t heard in this thread or on other sites, but he reiterated that the issue with LEDs is fast motions (especially at 120 Hz, which seems to be the only option at our $1000 price point) and that the issue with plasmas is the brightness and whether or not our room will be too bright for the plasma. In the showroom, the LEDs certainly seemed like the right brightness , while the plasmas looked dim, but I know my living room won’t be like that. Does anyone know how CRTs fall on the LED>LCD>Plasma brightness scale? If CRTs are/were dimmer than plasma, then no worries – even a plasma will seem brighter to us. If a new plasma is dimmer than our last CRT HDTV, then that would be an adjustment that we may/may not want to deal with. I didn’t notice any real motion blur on the LEDs I saw, but I’d assume it would be more apparent in video games. I just have no ideas how truly important these issues are (LED and motion, plasma and brightness) – do only videophiles notice/get bothered by the motion blur, are all normally lit rooms fine for plasma, etc. (Our room is approximately 20’x25’, with 4 120W floods in the ceiling 9’ up, and windows on both the left and right walls (if looking at TV) but with plantation shutters that pretty much completely block out outside lighting.)
TVs that I liked at Best Buy were the Samsung UN46D6000 (46” LED, 120Hz, 1080p, $900) and the Panasonic TC-P50UT50 (50” plasma, 600Hz, 1080p, 3D, $1000). Any comments on those or suggestions for others?
He also said that while Panasonics are the best plasmas, they're also the most expensive, and that LG has stepped up as a really good option as well. The TV that looked the most appealing there was the LG 50PV450 for $888 (a quick search has that same one at Sears for $699). No bells and whistles (no smart TV, no 3D), but a really nice looking screen. Amazon claims that that model has been updated in 2012 to the 50PA6500 for $50 more. The user reviews on the 450 are really good on various sites, but it seems like the 50PA6500 is too recent, as there aren't many reviews on that one at all. A Tiger Direct close by claims to have the 6500 in stock... I'll head over there and check it out.
I think it was in the old TV thread, however, and I'm not in the mood to go back and look for it.
For your cinefile, you'll be able to dial in a neutral picture with good black levels for less bucks on plasma, so for less money you can get a large panel to display the film "as intended by the filmaker". Although I'm a PQ junkie in a lot of ways, I'm not a cinefile, so that doesn't really matter to me. Getting it for half the price of a nice LED screen that can produce similar black levels does.
I like LG plasmas cause they're cheap and usually do the job well enough, though I've found on some of their models the default colors are overly saturated. I probably wouldn't bother correcting unless it started getting on my nerves, but I'm less sensitive to over-saturation. I watch a fair amount of animation where if the colors are a bit off it's not necessarily as noticeable as when a person is too pink or orange in a live action production.
If you're a film junkie then first an foremost you want a display that will do a straight multiple of 24P: any 120 hz LCD/LED or most any plasma should do this. I've been living with 2:3 or 3:2 pulldown on standard set so long that I'm not even sure I'd notice if it was set for 24P playback or not. Then you want to look at black levels.
I'm not sure how they setup the playback at your specialty store, but you shouldn't be getting significant smearing/ghosting on any decent 120hz LCD/LED even on sports playback, and I'm a bit suspicious of store setups.