LCD or Plasma?????

[Cosd]

LCD ...... the prices have come down now so they are virtually the same as plasmas .... main difference being at some stage a plasma will need a re-charge..... and costs a fortune so u might as well buy a new one.

u can get probs with LCD .... its whats called ' a dead pixel ' and u can see a different coloured dot on the screen when it happens.... not that common and my advice if ur buying new would be pay a little extra and extend the warranty so ur covered for when it gets out of its normal warranty.

 

 

It is a myth that plasma TV's can be recherged, they cannot, I don't know the reason why plasma TV's quote a lifespan but many still do. If you do the maths they will last just as long as a normal CRT tv. Many decent plasma's quote 50,000 hrs, if you divide this up into 8 hrs a day viewing (very high in my view, how many people watch TV for 8 hr's a day 7 days a week?) it will last you over 17 years!

 

Regarding 1080p, firstly you must take into consideration that unless you use Blu Ray or HD discs, there isn't much out there that actually broadcasts in 1080p, not even Sky HD. Secondly, if you put 2 identicle tv's side by side below 50" and put 1080p through one and 720p through the second, you will not see a physical difference; And 50" is the starting point, 60" + is where you will really see the benefits of 1080p. Note, a good quality 720p set will out perform a poor quality 1080p tv...fact!

 

Choosing between LCD and plasma is really down to the use, both have benefits and downfalls. For pure cinema or movie experience plasma wins hands down in clarity and colour, it's downfall is it doesn't like still images where screen burn (dead pixels) can occur. Many maufacturers have got around this using different methods such as continously moving the picture ever so slowly (not enough for you to see with the human eye) thus never allowing a still image to be transmitted on the screen. If you notice many of the Sky logos you get in the top corner of the screen, they are either translucent or they spin or flip every few seconds; Again this was devised to avoid screen burn. LCD should be your choice if you want to put a PC through the screen or if you are into gaming as these are the worst culprits for still images and screen burn. LCD's downfall though is that it doesn't handle fast moving images (football matches for example) as well as plasma, therefor you get a blur trail behind the players and football.

 

Both LCD and plasma do handle HD very well whether it's 720i/p or 1080i/p, but you should remeber that a lot of transmitions we watch are not high definition so you should look at the picture quality with all the inputs you will be using. It's no good buying a tv thats fantastic in HD then take it home and put a desktop aerial through it. Even some good quality sets are quite poor through native (RF) inputs.

 

I have both Plasma and LCD and for me Plasma wins hands down all day long. If you have the budget look at Pioneer as thes really are the muts n*ts.

[Harnser]

Dunganick and cosd ,

Thank you for two very informative posts on t.v/s , .I have recently bought a 42" panasonic plasma screen and am pleased that you both recommend panasonic .

A simple old pigeon shooter . Harnser .

[paul1966]

excellent informative post dunganick, nice to see you recommend the panny plasma. i have just got a 42pz81b and the bbc hd channel gives an outstanding picture. all of my family have lcd's mostly sony, whilst they give a very good picture i found them a little too sharp.

[dustyfox]

Another question what is this 20000/1 thing?

 

The Sont Bravia ones have 33000/1 so its got to be better.

 

thanks for the replies so far.

 

Df

[Cosd]

Dunganick and cosd ,

Thank you for two very informative posts on t.v/s , .I have recently bought a 42" panasonic plasma screen and am pleased that you both recommend panasonic .

A simple old pigeon shooter . Harnser .

 

 

You're welcome Harnser, you've helped me out enough in the past with shooting tips so this was the least I could do. I'm glad you are pleased with your purchase.

 

I personally have the Pioneer 50" which I love, but the Panasonic models rate very high in my opinion. I'm going to get myself another 32" soon and I'm thinking about the Panasonic myself )

[Cosd]

Another question what is this 20000/1 thing?

 

The Sont Bravia ones have 33000/1 so its got to be better.

 

thanks for the replies so far.

 

Df

 

 

These figures relate to the brighness of the screen (contrast ratio), the higher the better. Be careful with these figures from some of the cheaper manufacturers as they can be misleading, they can quote a high contrast ratio but what they don't tell you is that the figures are with the brightness and contrast turned up to the maximum and the colours turned right down; You can't watch the screen with these settings so it's a bit of a con. A bit like speaker ratings where manufaturers will quote say 100 watts max or 20 watts rms...... its the 20watts rms you should be looking at not the 'max' power.

 

You should be able to rely on Sony figures!! Remember, the best test is using your eyes and not just the techy spec!

[Harnser]

You're welcome Harnser, you've helped me out enough in the past with shooting tips so this was the least I could do. I'm glad you are pleased with your purchase.

 

I personally have the Pioneer 50" which I love, but the Panasonic models rate very high in my opinion. I'm going to get myself another 32" soon and I'm thinking about the Panasonic myself )

 

You see we learn from each other , wonderful .

Harnser .

[dunganick]

You may well find one is measuring Contrast Ratio, whilst the other is measuring Dynamic Contrast Ratio. The difference being the latter uses a technique of turning off or on the backlight to get deeper blacks (so will give a higher figure)

 

Dont pay too much attention to contrast ratio, its mainly just a figure to try and convince you to buy one set over another. If you look at Panasonic and Samsung LCD's they are largely speaking quite low contrast ratios. And these two manufactures know what they are doing.

[Mungler]

Great thread this.

 

It's all the stuff I could have spent a large amount of time to find out about, but now understand from a quick 5 min read.

[dustyfox]

Great thread this.

 

It's all the stuff I could have spent a large amount of time to find out about, but now understand from a quick 5 min read.

 

I agree I didnt know too much about LCD and Plasma tv's before this thread. Now I know what I need to know.

 

Thanks people. Still stuck on what tv to buy, Im staying away from Phillips as people say.

 

 

Df

[jayward]

2 Words regarding lcd motion blur ...

go look at currys at an lcd tv displaying anything that moves fast foot ball motor racing etc etc

my opinion get a plasma i have 2 one for gaming yehh i know they dont advise it screen burn etc etc but thats bull also mine has not suffered one bit , i had a lcd but i could not get used to the blurr its horrible a little less noticeable in high end tvs but still there this is worce in hd try watching footy in hd on lcd it makes my eyes hurt !!!

you know how Charlie Chaplin films look they flicker right thats what a lcd looks like to me

>

One of the image quality issues of LC TV is the motion blur. In this paper, the LCD motion blur is modeled using a frequency domain analysis, where the motion of an object causes temporal component in the spatial/temporal spectrum. The combination of display temporal low-pass filtering and eye tracking causes the perception of motion blur. One way to reduce motion blur is to use backlight flashing, where the shorter "on" duration reduces the display temporal aperture function, thus improves the temporal transfer function of the display. The backlight flashing was implemented on a LCD with a backlight system consisting of an array of light emitting diodes (LED). The LED can be flashed on for a short duration after LCD reaches the target level. The effect of motion blur reduction was evaluated both objectively and subjectively. In the objective experiment, the retina image is derived from a sequence of captured images using a high speed camera. The subjective study compares the motion blur to an edge with a simulated edge blur. The comparison of objective and subjective experiments shows a good agreement. Both objective measurement and subjective experiment shows clear improvement in motion blur reduction with synchronized backlight flashing.

 

and also

LCD Motion Blur Reduction

 

LCD motion blur in LCD display technology is primarily due to LCD pixels remaining lit between frames (referred to as sample-and-hold) unlike the rise and fall of pixel lighting with other display technologies eg. plasma. Another possible cause is a response time which is insufficient for the speed required by the frame rate of the display.

 

LCD manufacturers have moved to combat motion blur through faster response times and doubling of the refresh rate to 120Hz. Faster frame rates (refresh rate) smooths out motion improving the image sequence the eye perceives. To produce the faster refresh rates the video processor interpolates a frame between each existing frame. The faster frame rate makes motion appear smoother to the viewer. Bravia XBR5 models have Sony’s version of the technology, Motionflow, while Mitsubishi has Smooth120Hz, Toshiba - ClearFrame, LG – TruMotion Drive and JVC call it Clear Motion Drive II.

 

Philips have followed a different approach to reducing motion blur relying on the fact that reducing the time an LCD is backlit to reducing motion blur due to eye tracking. Philips’ ClearLCD strobes the backlight in order to reduce the sample time in turn minimizing the retinal blurring due to sample-and-hold. Following a similar tack, Samsung have take advantage of LED backlighting in their 81 series with LED Motion Plus.

 

my eyes pick this up greatly some pepole dont see it as bad but its worth checking if you can see it on the screen you buy

one more bit of advise dont just buy whats getting good reviews go and see it with your own eyes