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?"

Comments

Philips...

[jsimon12]

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.

Re:Philips...

[HRbnjR]

Heh, funny you would say that.

I just made exactly this decision. I had the money saved and wanted a high end viewing solution to go with my high end audio solution.

What I think it boils down to is how it's going to be used.

When you start comparing resolutions vs $ etc. Size is a matter of perspective - how close are you to the screen. How close /can/ you be to the screen?

If it's going to be more than just you viewing the screen, then a large screen makes sense. But my primary usage was personal. I wanted something to play games and watch movies on. Other than what would end up being perhaps 1 movie night a month with a group for friends, 99% of the time it would be just me viewing.

Huge dollars for $ 1024x760 on a big screen, or less $ for 1600x1200 on a smaller one?

The other major consideration in a major purchase like this is HDCP. High Definition Copy Protection. If your prospective set doesn't have it, don't buy it, cuz there is a good chance you might not be able to view future HD content. (thanks MPAA)

I chose to spend my money on a 21" Viewsonic LCD and an Nvidia Ti4600 to drive it, leaving enough left over to upgrade that purchase much sooner than I could of with the big screen.

Re:No Problem

[Cecil]

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?

Different technology

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Light guns don't work

[MaxQuordlepleen]

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...

Re:Light guns don't work

[psyconaut]

Because light guns rely on the horizontal and vertical blanking that's inherently a CRT thing. :-)

Plasma and LCDs don't refresh that way, ispo facto: your light gun won't work.

-psy

Re:Light guns don't work

[MBCook]

To read about how the work (exactly), look here. As for the point, light guns shouldn't work (at least traditional ones). He's right that they depend on timing information. Interesting to see how House of the Dead III on the XBox gets around this, since the XBox can put out progressive scan. Anyway, it's the same reason (I think) that Timex Datalink watches only work with CRTs.

Of course, light guns are based on technology almost as old as arcade games are (70's at least) so maybe someone will come around and develop a new one soon that will work with LCDs. I think we can all agree that LCDs are going to become common: they use less electricity, less space, and are 'cooler' ;)

Re:No Problem

[mr3038]

Score: -1, Wrong

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.

Gateway Plasma is NOT HD

[tswinzig]

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?