Lcd Vs Plasma

gadgetman

I am thinking about getting a hdtv . Some critics say lcd is better than plasmas.
I know Sharp is one of the best in lcd. line.
Plasmas the best are lg and jvc.
please give me some advice.

thehaens@cox.net

I think they both have their good points. I don't think one is better than the other, nowadays they both look really good. At a price point for size, the plasmas are better, meaning less expensive. In the past there was issues with plasma burn in, but that isn't really that much of an issue anymore with regular viewing. They both have a crazy half life that you will most likely never get to, 60K hours or so. I chose LCD in a second room as it was mainly used for gaming, and will not suffer from long term exposure to a possible burn in. I like plasma for live action, as LCD's tend to ghost a bit during football games etc. But I like LCD for light output.....I had a plasma years ago, and have replaced it with a 20" Sharp Aquos in my room. And I put a 26" Samsung LCD in my sons room...I am happy with the LCD, but if I were to put another TV for my main area it would be a Plasma as I can get a hell of a lot of plasma for the same price as a 36" LCD...

Scott

Advice.........take a look at both of them at your local AV store, they usually have the same feed on all their screens....

madmax

Before choosing an LCD make sure you watch the picture when in motion such as a camara panning. Some of the older or cheaper ones blur when panning. The best of the newer ones don't do this.
madmax

Holydoc

gadgetman wrote:

I am thinking about getting a hdtv . Some critics say lcd is better than plasmas.
I know Sharp is one of the best in lcd. line.
Plasmas the best are lg and jvc.
please give me some advice.

You did not say what size or what your main purpose for this TV will be. This will definitely make a difference in which system you should purchase.

I also do not agree with your "best" recommendations, but that part is all subjective. I highly suggest that you read some reviews and comments from typical owners at:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=40

http://www.hometheaterspot.com/htsthreads/postlist.php/Cat/0/Board/UBB65

There is a wealth of information at these spots.

PolkThug

Gadgetman, what specifically are you going to use the display for?

fireshoes

I like plasma better right now. Better blacks and angle of viewing. LCD's tend to look a little sharper though. They don't compete a whole head-to-head though. LCD's are mostly 32" and under (a few 37's and a couple 45/46's) and plasmas are mainly 42" and up (a 32 or 37 once in a while).

Meeks32

Dont forget plasmas suck down energy, if that matters to you at all.

Toxis

Plasma is still far superior in terms of picture quality. When LCD's get into the LED backlighting, then they'll start dominating plasma. Til then, they can't hold a candle to a Pioneer/LG/Samsung.

sdBigDuck

I don't know this to be a fact, but a very knowledgeable person told me that Plasmas have an average life expectancy of 5-7 years. Not so with LCD. I bought a plasma for a vacation house, since it gets very little use, even though the guy told me (a year ago) that LCD prices would catch up with plasma. I haven't seen that yet.
Burn in was also an issue - I was told that 15 minutes of a constant picture (for instance, cable radio) could cause burn in of the image.
Just what I was told...

sdBigDuck

One other thing - what is your altitude? It seems very few salespeople know that plasma has problems at high altitude (6000 ft +). My first plasma at the vacation house (in Big Bear, CA) buzzed horribly, but none of the tech support people could tell me why - they said a little buzzing was normal. I finally searched the net and found out about the altitude issues.
Zenith makes a high altitude model which works great...

lomic

sdBigDuck wrote:

I don't know this to be a fact, but a very knowledgeable person told me that Plasmas have an average life expectancy of 5-7 years. Not so with LCD. I bought a plasma for a vacation house, since it gets very little use, even though the guy told me (a year ago) that LCD prices would catch up with plasma. I haven't seen that yet.
Burn in was also an issue - I was told that 15 minutes of a constant picture (for instance, cable radio) could cause burn in of the image.
Just what I was told...

These things may have been true with Plasma a few years ago... currenty a Plasma should last around 20 years with regular viewing (predicted, they haven't been out that long obviously).

Various sources have said burn-in on the current generation of Plasmas is about the same as CRT. This means don't leave a static image on the screen for a days and you should be fine. Also switch up your viewing material between 16:9 and 4:3.

sdBigDuck

The biggest offender is listening to digital cable radio for extended periods of time. If you only want the music, and havw it going through a receiver, switch off the TV

ublguy

When you say LCD, are you talking rear projection LCD? Doesn't seem like it, but if you are, I just picked up a Sony LCD (rear projection) 42", and love it. We did like the plasma picture better, but couldn't justify the extra cost.

fireshoes

sdBigDuck wrote:

I don't know this to be a fact, but a very knowledgeable person told me that Plasmas have an average life expectancy of 5-7 years.

Samsung lists their half-life as 60,000 hours (27 years @ 6 hours per day).

Holydoc

Meeks32 wrote:

Dont forget plasmas suck down energy, if that matters to you at all.

The new generation plasmas use as much energy as a 100watt lightbulb. Their energy efficiency has improved drastically. With all of us running big receivers, amps, powered subwoofers, DVDs, etc., the energy to run a plasma set is negligible.

Toxis

fireshoes wrote:

Samsung lists their half-life as 60,000 hours (27 years @ 6 hours per day).

as does the new LG models.

to get even a regular 30k half life plasma to the point of replacement in 7 years, you'd have to watch the tv 12 hours a day, every single day. That's some pretty serious TV'ing...

goingganzo

love my sharp 27 lcd it is great.it is the aquos and it looks as good as it looks.

schwarcw

I saw a lecture by one of Sony's product engineers on this subject. Pretty interesting and objective. If anyone wants a copy of his PowerPoint presentation, PM me your email address. I'll send it from work tomorrow. I don't have the file here at home.

Toxis

Sony's bias. They are completely out of the Plasma market due to them now owning their own LCD manufacturing plant. Of course they're gonna "prove" that LCD is superior.

Fallen Kell

I would take a look at some of the Panasonic plasmas too just to compare (specifically the TH-42PX500U and similar class products). They tend to have good color values and black levels.

As for LCD vs Plasma, well that depends on the application you are using the display for. Overall, I would say plasmas will give a better TV/Movie viewing experience, but LCD's will be much better for use with a computer (HTPC) or gaming systems. Mainly burn-in is the reason for this chose in gaming (it isn't as bad as it use to be on the first few generations of plasmas, so do not use this as the main reason for LCD, but keep it in mind as a contributing factor). The use of a HTPC or other computer to connect to the display is also something to think about. The high quality LCD's will really shine in this capacity, especially the 1080p resolution models, which can be fully utilized from a computer. But there are drawbacks. Black levels tend to be the main problem with LCD's now. The last few generations have started to remove the problems with motion blur due to refresh/color transition times, but some still clearly have visible artifacts that can be attributed to this.

If you can wait and hold off buying, there are several new technologies that are comming out both this year and early next year. Thin CRT's are one from both Samsung and LG.Philips (do a google search), should be available in the comming months. SED/FED displays should also make an appearance in mid 2006.

jmierzur

If you are in no hurry to purchase a HDTV, I would not recommend either a Plasma or LCD or DLP set.

Several weeks ago, I attended a liquidation sale hosted by a local retailer. At the show, all the standard HD monitor technologies were represented by the product lines they carried. In addition, there was a Sony 70” SXRD monitor (LCOS) on display. The monitor only received passing by glances from everyone so I had a good opportunity to closely examine the monitor.

They were playing a PBS HD broadcast at this time. It was like looking out picture window would be a good summary of the LCOS technology. The colors were vivid and realistic and the black level was excellent. For the sale price of $14,000, it should be.

I talked to the Sony rep (for the local market, Canada) about the new LCOS technology. In short, he said that there will be some new LCOS based sets coming out in the near future that will be 50” and 60” in size.

My recommendation would be to wait until you have the opportunity to view the new LCOS sets.


PS

I was going to post a link to the 70" set. It appears that the new sets the Sony rep was talking about have been released. Here is a link to the the new sets.

edit: spelling errors

kberg

jmierzur wrote:

My recommendation would be to wait until you have the opportunity to view the new LCOS sets.

The 56" JVC LCOS set I have right now is awesome, if you CAN'T wait! :cool:

okiepolkie

I'll take the 50" version of the Sony. I'll just wait until it gets closer to my price range. The US version, which is $4000, is not available yet.

jmierzur

kberg wrote:

The 56" JVC LCOS set I have right now is awesome, if you CAN'T wait! :cool:

Actually, at this time I would wait to get a LCOS monitor that has a native resolution of 1080p.

Maybe next year at the liquidation sale I will update my 60" LCD to the 60" LCOS.

kberg

jmierzur wrote:

Actually, at this time I would wait to get a LCOS monitor that has a native resolution of 1080p.

Maybe next year at the liquidation sale I will update my 60" LCD to the 60" LCOS.

When I was researching the JVC, I had two sales guys from two different places say that my current DVD's might actually look a little worse on a native 1080p display than on the one I have now at 720p. Whether or not this is the case couldn't be confirmed at the time, however.

Fallen Kell

kberg wrote:

When I was researching the JVC, I had two sales guys from two different places say that my current DVD's might actually look a little worse on a native 1080p display than on the one I have now at 720p. Whether or not this is the case couldn't be confirmed at the time, however.

They are blowing a little smoke (not a lot, but a little). Yes, they "may" look worse on a 1080p display, but that all depends on your upscaler that you have. They may look even worse on a 720p display as well, since again, it all depends on the upscaler that is being used. Neither 720p or 1080p is a whole number multiple of a 480p signal (in other words, a 960p is a whole number multiple, but we don't have 960p as a display). This means that pixels will not line up exactly when they are scaled to 1080p or scaled to 720p. The scaler has to do linear interpolation and color corrections to figure out what to do with every pixel that does not directly scale to another pixel on the higher resolution display. So, a good scaler will do a good job, but a bad scaler will make it look ugly.

Again, you will have the same problem on 720p and 1080p displays when going from a 480p signal. The real reason to get a 1080p display if you are in the market now is because both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD will be 1080p NATIVE resolution. What this means then is that your 720p displays will then have to rescale the image down to a 720p image, which then still relies on the scaler to give a good picture (not as hard as up-scaling but still needs a good scaler).

PolkThug

I can't wait to see a triple chip DLP in person (no color wheel).

Toxis

PT, Accent Sound will eventually get the $20k Sim2 three chip DLP projector. The guy I talked to (matt) said it'll be a couple months but it will be there. I'm already getting "rigid."

LuSh

A number of factors determine what is best for a potential customer. Room size, natural light, viewing distance, source, viewing angle, pc hookup. These are all valid questions. What amazes me is the utter rumors being spread about either product, never in my years of retail, and hobby have I seen so much confushion about either product. I really don't feel like writing an essay, if anybody is in the market feel free to private message me.

I live in Canada and have nothing to gain from this, only to make sure fellow members hear the truth from a neutral source. There are many conflicting reports because the industry is bitterly divided amongst which is the best. Ever notice some high end dealers only carry plasma, while others only carry LCD? Ever notice some companys only make LCD and others only make plasma. There is a rift, almost as divided as VHS/BETA...only this isn't a format war its a hardware war, which makes it all that much more laughable.

gregure

Personally, I hate LCD tv's. They are too bright, and have terrible blacks. In a dark film, they are very murky. Case in point, at work the other day, BLADE RUNNER came on one of the HD channels. All of the Plasmas looked beautiful-colorful, textured, detailed and bright. The LCD's looked washed out, dim and murky. LCD looks great for bright images like HD football games, but terrible for darker scenes in films. I only recommend LCD when someone needs a smaller tv or will be watching it in a bright room almost always in the daytime. Otherwise, plasma is the better choice.
Plasmas are a lot less prone to burn in than they were originally, and manufacturers are taking great steps to reduce it even further. Most of the independent studies that have been conducted are showing that the 60,000 hours rating is accurate. We can finally start expecting quality plasmas to last as long as a good tube set, if not longer. And by last, I mean fade to half brightness, as that is what the 60,000 hour rating indicates.
I would take a Fujitsu or Pioneer Elite plasma over any other television on the market, if price was no object. Otherwise, I would probably go DLP if cost were an issue (I'm really happy with my Sony tube for now).
As far as I've noticed, I actually like the 1080P DLP sets better for everything, including DVD playback and standard def. At first the reps told us lower grade sources would look terrible, but I actually think they still look better on lesser sources, and the black levels are better on the 1080P sets, plus the difference for HD is really noticable. Haven't seen the new Sony SXRD sets yet, but they will be out sometime in October. I'm awaiting those anxiously, although I feel pretty confident in saying that I would still much prefer plasma to any rear projection tv.