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Plasma TVs for Video Games?
moonboy asks: "As plasma televisions continue to come down in price (Gateway even has a 42" available for $2999) I'm considering purchasing one. Has anyone here had any experience with these and particularly playing games on them? I'm thinking about both console and PC games however, I'm concerned about refresh and resolution. How do they compare?"
I have played Quake III on an 8000 dollar Philips Plasma 60" (I think it was 60", might have been 56"). It rocked to no end, whether I would shell out the money for something like that though is another question entirely (personally my 21 inch Viewsonic is enough for games? Guess it was personal preferance though.
Uh. 1080i and progressive scan are mutually exclusive. The 'i' in 1080i stands for 'interlaced' which is the opposite of progressive scan.
720p is a progressive scan HDTV format with 720 lines. 1080i is an interlaced HDTV format with 1080 lines.
Which one is better is debatable, but knowing they are seperate makes your post nonsensical, and that's besides the fact that neither of these directly relate to the speed of the refresh rate, only the resolution of the picture.
What were you trying to say?
Random and weird software I've written.
I don't know of any TVs that support 1080p, which is what your describing. (Not that they don't exist.)
Usually 720p is the highest progressive scan available.
There's a fairly good description of progressive vs. interlaced at Panasonic, but it concentrates on 480p vs. 480i. (The basic idea is the same though.)
I'm looking for a HEPA media filter for my TV. I'm alergic to reality shows.
Plasma displays are completely different from LCD's. They change color quickly, even quicker than CRT's, so in this respect they might even be better.
I have heard a couple rumors that I've not been able to substantiate, and would appreciate feedback from someone with experience with these displays. One is that the display has a useful life of only a few years (my source was not able to say what happens then). The other is that they grow fuzzy after 2 - 3 years. Now I would consider (just consider!) planning for one of these, but for multi kilobucks I would expect it to live at least as long as my trinitron-based TV, not less. Thank you for your experiences!
We had a client's ~50-inch plasma display at work for a few months, (we were developing a custom advertising banner type application), and we brought in the Dreamcast and gave it a whirl.
To make a long story short, gaming on this particular model (a japanese make, possibly Mitsubishi, but I could be mistaken) was awesome, with one rather glaring exception.
We fired up The House of The Dead 2 and found that the light gun wouldn't work with the plasma unit. Not sure why, maybe somebody who understands the technology of these things better can comment on that...
They (Sony):
Seem to go fuzzy (text wise). This is bad for those strategy gamers out there.
Seem to be suffering from burn-in.
Are widescreen so you need a game that does widescreen resolutions.
Need higher resolutions to avoid seeing all those single pixels.
Are expensive - you could buy a bloody good 21 inch CRT.
Progressive or interlaced has nothing to do with refresh rate[1]. A display be could called progressive even if its refresh rate were 1 frame per second[2]. In the same way, an interlaced display could display 200 fields per second and therefore be able to display 100 frames per second but it would still be interlaced. That's because term "interlaced" means that every other line is refreshed at once (all the odd lines or all the even lines), usually from the top to bottom and then the other lines are refreshed in the same way. Interlaced does not mean that only pixels that don't change are refreshed. With slow enough phosphor interlaced displays look good with static images but they are inferior to progressive displays when there's any movement. In addition, slow phosphor decreases image quality during movement (like extra motion blur effect without an option to toggle it off).
If specs of plasma or LCD display say that it supports progressive inputs it doesn't mean that it can display the full progressive stream but simply that it can display some kind of image. For example, many new LCD projectors allow progressive VGA signals with 90kHz horizontal sync and 85Hz vertical sync. You can be pretty sure that LCD display isn't able to refresh its pixels at that rate but the spec is only saying that it can sync to the input data. If the display cannot keep up with the data some intermediate pixel values will be skipped and the end result can be pretty close to slow phosphor effects - in the best case.
That being said, plasma displays should be plenty fast for progressive HDTV signals but that's only because HDTV image really isn't that high quality. Any 19" CRT monitor can display much higher resolutions with higher refresh rates than HDTV setup. Don't expect to be able to get high quality image from PC. I suggest previewing the cheapest plasma displays before buying, though. They might have used low quality components to reduce price.
[1] Except that with low quality components it's easier to do a viewable interlaced display than a progressive display.
[2] For example, a slide projector is progressive display.
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I was amazed when I heard Gateway was coming out with a $3000 plasma HDTV. Then I found out why it's so cheap... it's not HDTV. You'll notice no where on their site do they refer to it as an HDTV or capable of DISPLAYING at that high resolution. You'll see stuff like, "capable of accepting 1080I and 720p HDTV signals," or "16:9 Wide Aspect Ratio," or "compatible signals include computer display resolutions up to 1280 X 1024 and HDTV signals including 720p and 1080i."
However, notice the native resolution of the TV is only DVD quality (approximately 480 horizontal lines). That's twice as good as regular TV, but for $3000 I'll either fork out more for a real plasma HDTV, or a little less for a good rear-projection HDTV.
I wonder how many people out there will buy one of these Gateway TV's assuming they are HD, just because they're plasma, 16:9 screens?
"And like that
Most high end plasmas move their virtual screen around on their physical screen. This is a really slow process (ie. 1-2 minutes cycle time) and it only moves a few pixels up and down, so it is unnoticable. This is because they also realized that burn-in is an issue and they need to do something. I have personally watched a Sony 50+ inch at Good Guys for several minutes but it was unnoticable, unless I put my fingertip at the edge of the picture.
However, it might not protect against burn-in in case of more static screens, like video games or public ad displays.
Peter
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
He has the right idea. For the same $, you get a DTS projector. Effectivly arbitrary screen size (your 'pad' doesn't need a 40' projection), multi input, etc etc.
He even had the two tier couch thing going on for movie nights.
I saw him type on an 80x24 screen (at 8' x 5'), play nethack, the origional Zelda, and Gran Turismo. Anything you wanted.
About the only 'downside' is that you must have a decent receiver for your audio (and realistically, some of your video) switching, since your projector won't have any sound capability.
When the time comes for me to upgrade my 36", that's the route I'll go.
Zapman
My room mate played in the Halo National Championships this summer, he didn't say what kind of plasma TV's they were using, but just that some things in the game were too dark on them. Apparently the winning strategy in the final game involved hiding in shadows because you were nearly invisible in the extra-dark shadows on the plasma TV.
All circuits busy.