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Forty-two Inch Plasma Monitor
An anonymous reader writes "PCstats has a review of what should have been under my Christmas tree - a 42" plasma display from Samsung Since Santa couldn't have possibly brought this monster down the chimney, we'll just have to be satisfied with the review. They even hooked it up to a computer and played games on it...."
That may be due to the odd aspect ratio of the resolution on your 17" monitor. Try running 1280x960 and see how much of a difference the proper 4:3 aspect ratio makes.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
I saw a 42" plasma at Costco... I think it might've been the daewoo.
The contrast ratio was absolute garbage - instead of crisp blacks and whites there was muddy whites and grey blacks. Not good. Played with all of the menu settings, didn't do much good.
I wasn't too impressed. I've seen other plasmas that are quite nice, but in the end, I'd rather spend the same amount of cashola on a decent ceiling-mount DLP projector.
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I had a 50 inch plasma television for a while but I had to return it. Whenever I watched it for more than a half hour I got a brutal migraine. I found out that plasma displays actually emit very high frequency soundwaves which can cause strain on some people.
If you have a cat or dog, it will normally leave the room if you turn on the plasma display, because they are even more sensitive to high frequency sound waves than we are. I would not recommend anyone buy these devices without testing it for a long period of time to make sure you are not suseptable to strain from watching it.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
Tvi is only 320x240 (or close to that). HDTV is 640x480.
No, you are wrong. Resolution on a normal NTSC TV is 720x525, but there's a bit less because the edges of the screen are cut off. HDTV is 1920x1080, although some manufacturers cut this down to 1440x1080, or even lower.
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Samsung, OTOH, fuking rocks!
The $3500 daewoo was not a projection TV. It was a plasma!
You seem to overestimate the cost and underestimate the brightness of front projection.
You also completely omitted DLP - Display Light Processing by Texas Instruments, which now gets contrast ratios that rival CRTs. They are available in front and rear projections.
As for resolution, a 42" plasma is about 865x480 (WVGA), and cost between $4000 to $6000, whereas a projector of comparable resolution can be had for $1500. A 50" plasma runs about $10000-$13000 and those resolve about 1280x720, which is WXGA. One can get several WXGA video projectors costing from $3000 to over $10000.
You don't seem to think that the available projection brightness rating is a lot but it is pretty good and has been improving for quite some time. I think 1000 lumens it would be about as much brightness as said 42" plasma sets put out, and you can adjust the projected image size. The difference is that because projectors rely on reflected rather than emitted light to show an image on a screen, emitted light makes a difference in how the screen looks. Reflected light systems wash out a little easier because the base screen is white rather than black.
is limited to 800x600. it's hardly good for any serious computer use. this article's title is very misleading.
At my work we carry Zenith Plasma screens. They have two types of Plasma Monitors. EDTV and HDTV the 40 inch plasma is a normal 4:3aspect ratio and then the 42",50" and 60" are 16:9. The problem is the 40" and 42" are Extended definition or EDTV and not High definition like the 50" and 60". The viewing angle on plasmas is 160 degrees and greater.I feel you can watch a plasma screen just as comfortable at 3 feet away as you can 20. The days of being in a dark room and 30 feet back are over. The complaint of the 16:9 not looking good with the stations broadcast now is just a minor problem because once it all goes High Definition your all ready to go. The Plasma have excellent picture color and the feeling of watching them is the colors are more true and a richer color. The video gets more of a 3D depth to the screen. You can land a 40" for around $4500 or a 50" for $8999.The next issue is the Plasma Tv is a Monitor only and I repeat a monitor only. The problem with this is no speakers so you have to buy a surround sound package to complement the tv. The second major issue is that these are not cable ready no tuner built into this monitor. You have to have like a vcr to watch cable tv. Sataellite right now on directv has 2 HD channels 199 is an all HDTV everything is shot in HD. Channel 509 is a HBO High Def. channel but this have been converted up to HD not actually shot in HD. The next matter is DVD's aren't not High Definition so the DVD quality your getting with your plasma is no where near the quality it is capable of. Yet progressive can dvd players make dvd's look much nicer than the old interlaced ones. Make sure you buy a progrssive scan dvd player. Yes, on the down low they are working on High Defintition DVD players that will have from what I understand about 4-5 lasers on the to pick more information to get the high quality.Back to the Directv there are also a couple pay per view channels in HD. The one big set back was the new sataellite that was getting put up that cost them around 75 million dollars to build blew up in the process. So the bandwidth to broadcast HD will be set back longer than expected. We are looking for HD and Widescreen to be out by 2006-2007.Don't worry they also have a HD receiver out so you can convert your signal to HD for older tv's and for your HD tv's that don't have the integrated HD tuner. This run about $400-700 I hope this gives some information I know on Plasma and some other HD items.
The composite video inputs offered the best overall picture which is to be expected, followed by the RCA video connection and S-Video in a distant last place.
This statement worries me, here's why (excerpt from a cnet article):
Composite video
Although the composite-video system was developed for color-TV signals, it doesn't give you a very sharp picture. Composite video was created as a backward-compatible solution for television's transition from black and white to color. It was a fairly clever solution to the problem of how to continue to send the same black-and-white picture to all the old sets and layer color information on top--a composite of those two picture components. The black-and-white sets ignored the color component, while the newer sets separated out the color information and displayed it with the black-and-white picture. This made for a smooth TV transition in the 1950s with low-resolution color TVs. Today, though, sophisticated high-resolution displays show all of the compression artifacts and cross-color (or moiré) blurring that comes with a composite video connection. It's simply impossible to perfectly separate the color and picture information of a composite-video signal. So, if your TV picture isn't sharp enough or the colors blur together, the likely culprit is a composite output signal.
S-Video
S-Video, which was introduced in the 1980s, solved some of the problems that came with composite video. It provides better color separation and a much cleaner signal. S-Video does so by keeping separate the color and picture parts of a composite-video signal. You'll find S-Video ports on most TVs for sale today, but not many people are really taking advantage of them yet. Why is that? Well, take a look at Direct Broadcast Satellite, for example. It starts broadcasting in the composite-video domain, and even though it is a component-video format, the artifacts associated with composite video still show up in the picture.
Component video
Component video improves the picture quality even more by not only separating the color from the black-and-white portions of the picture but by further splitting the color information into two color-difference signals. When the picture signal is split up in this way, you get an unfiltered, uninterrupted image, with better resolution and greatly improved color saturation. And this is why component video is the predominant method of hookup from HDTV set-top decoders to HDTVs.
What most people don't understand is how utterly horrible Plasma televisions are from a technological standpoint.
First. there is the insane problem with burn-in with plasma displays. Plasmas burn in faster than any other display technology. In fact, there is much discussion on the problems that static logos (displayed in the corners of most televisions stations) cause with plasmas. For the same reason, it is absolutely impossible to use a plasma as a computer monitor unless you really want your desktop image, start bar, etc. burned onto the display. Nor is gaming all that favorable considering that most games have at least some static imaging that will cause burn-in if used for any period of time.
Cost is another factor that is horrible with plasmas. Unless you want to spend multiple tens of thousands of dollars, you are not going to find a plasma with HDTV resolutions. Most of these low-end plasmas max out at 800ish pixels width. Seriously, why would anybody spend that much money on a display that can't handle HDTV?
And anybody that has actually compared display technologies knows that plasmas are known for having horrible blacks. You will never find a plasma that can display black as anything other than a shade of grey. That is not acceptable.
The only thing plasma has going for it is 'drool appeal' and thickness.
For a lot less money you can get a DLP projector that:
a) Is much cheaper.
b) Has much higher resolutions, up to HDTV resolution.
c) Is thinner. (Can your plasma roll up?)
d) Doesn't suffer from burn-in.
e) Has much better contrast.
Why would anybody buy a plasma if they actually did ANY research at all into projection systems? And don't tell me replacing projector bulbs is the reason. The money you save buying a projector over a plasma will pay for many decades of bulbs.
Since I was just looking at them last week... ;-)
Scroll down to the bottom for the Plasma Buying Guide
You can compare plasma screen resolutions
Note: NO plasmas have a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 (HDTV) yet. Currently they apply a bilinear filter when showing non-native resolutions.
And check the most popular (Panasonic) choices.
As well as prices and description of said popular models.
The cool part, is if you save $175 for 2 years ($4200), you can afford the 42" Panasonic! ($3900 + $169 shipping, from DTVCity - which are reported to be good vendor.
Cheers
that ntsc res your giving us is interlaced my friend. I'm not sure if both the horizontal and vertical pixel/lines are but at least one is. So it's more like half that res. You can BARELY view something at 800X600 on a very good ntsc tv from your comp with the highest quality settings.
:) which effectively cuts the res in half again but still better.
Anything higher is an impossibility.
The last time i checked the 1920X1080 res is also interlaced. That is why they call it 1080i
But it's definately not the 320X240 and 640X480 (for hd) that the other poster mentioned. Also ther is another non-interlaced hdtv standard. I forget the exact res but its something like 1280X720.
Hmmm... Pie...
Before I launch into a wildly enthusiastic discussion of DLP, I just want to point out one amusing problem with Plasma TVs. They wont work over 6200 feet of elevation, which is where much of the soutwest US lives. I live at 7000 feet. bummer.
I have a Plus 800x600 DLP projector I use as my movie projector. I got it as a refurb unit for $1000. I normally project a 10 foot wide screen.
I've tried a couple of these things out so let me give you some tips.
First, if you are buying one to watch DVD movies then first DO NOT BUY an XGA or and SXGA model, instead buy the cheaper 800x600 model. Why? because it will look much better. the reason is simple, 800x600 is nearly perfectly matched to the resolution of a dvd. if you get a higher resolution projector, the machine will be forced to interpolate pixels, and this not only looks icky, by when things move in the picture the edges tear with the interlaced interpolation (some expensive interpolators do a slightly better job but they all suck compared to not interpolating). The nice part is it costs lesss for lower resoultion
second, the second most important spec is the contrast ration. get anything below 500:1 and you are wasting your money. You wont really notice the differenence until you see it side by side with a better projector. But what happens is you cant see any texture in dark clothing, hair or bright skies. I have an 800+ and I like it very much. Note because the manufacturer's lie about this spec consider all machines within 20% of the same number to be the same contrast.
third, the next most important spec is noise. Unless you have a way of locking this thing away from you, it's really distracting. get a quite one. For reason's I'm not too certain about it appears the DLP projectors run quieter than the LCD ones. I suspect this is because the DLP chip does not absorb light and thus runs cooler inherently.
fourth, While color saturation of LCDs is marginally better than DLPs, the contrast ratio way out ranks this. One thing you can do to get the best possible color saturation on a DLP is to look for one with a pure three-color wheel rather than a 3-color-plus-white wheel. Sometimes to squeeze more lumens out of these the manufacturers add a white-phase to the primary colors. this reduces the color saturation.
fifth, nearly ALL (not quite all) DLP projectors are made by a single company then re-branded in different cases with different feature sets or color wheels. PLUS is the name of this manufacturer. So dont be too picky about which manufacturer you buy from.
Lumens. THe more the merrier as long as you aren't sacrificing any of the above considerations. I'd say 800 was the minimum number and 1600 is very nice. you can of course make the screen smaller, and only project at nighttime or in a darkened room. Some people use special screens. these can almost double the effective brightness over a white wall. But white walls are actually nicer to work with than screens. screens tend to curl at the edges, cant adjust well to different aspect ratios and can ripple in the breeze (which produces a nice mind bending effect by the way), plus if they aren't fixed mounted they are a hassle.
Source: computers with RGB out put are MASSIVELY better than a DVD player. Dont even think about s-video output. (really, sont even think about it). THe downside with computer projectors is 1) the dvd software/hardware is much less forgiving of scratched dvds and 2) sometimes its hard to get good 5.1 dolby sound out put.
The main downside to DLP projectors over a TV is the lifetime ot the bulb. typcial bulb lifetimes are 1000 or 2000 hours, though you can figure maybe only half of that time will be at full power illumination. bulbs cost 250 - 500 depending on the model. that's plenty of time if all you watch is dvd's but if you want to waste hours and hours on TV shows then that's not a lot. On the other hand the DLP was a lot less cost than the plasma screen, so maybe you should not worry so much.
the good news is that probably by the time your first bulb burns out philips will probably have come out with 10,000 hour bulbs for your model (a few are out now).
So for my money, skip the plasma screen and go with a white wall and a DLP.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's only interlaced in the horizontal. There's a whole of misinformation on this thread so here's the factual rundown.
NTSC offers 525 scanlines per frame and it is horizontally interlaced into two fields. There are 20 overscan lines per field so there are only 485 visible lines per frame. The horizontal resolution for NTSC is 720. Digital formats store 720x480 pixels per frame and the player produces interlaced fields for your TV.
However it is still a resolution of 720x480, despite being interlaced. Your comment that it is "only half" that resolution is not correct. The interlacing affects the framerate, not the resolution.
What resolution your TV actually displays is an entirely different matter. I have read that some (cheaper) TVs only show ~320 distinct scanlines. It's a similar problem to dot pitch on monitors.
The display resolution of standard Television is NOT 640x480. It is (approximately - I've forgotten exact numbers) 500 'lines' of data.
However, plasma display screens are (in my humble opinion) NOT meant for standard television at all. HDTV perhaps, but definitely not standard broadcast signals.
These screens have been used for high definition displays at conferences and such before. Mostly because they provide awesome resolution with very good viewability (usually around the 160 degree range).
Now, these screens are finding consumer-level uses in home theater and video games. What you want is a source that actually has the resolution the plasma screen can display. These sources come from devices such as a modern progressive scan DVD player and Xbox, GameCube, and to a lesser extent PS2 (it only supports 480i/p to my knowledge).
Signals that support these resolutions are encoded in a format called "Component" (or YPrPb). A lot of people know about "RCA" and "S-Video". Component looks exactly like RCA (except it's color coded differently and it encodes high definition signals). Most good plasmas also come with a VGA connector for exactly that - XGA/UXGA/SVGA/VGA/etc.
Computers are a also a good use for these screens, but I haven't seen them used for standard computer desktops at all yet.
If you're putting together a home theater, you definitely want a plasma screen (see http://plasmatvbuyingguide.com for reviews 'n stuff).
The parent post doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
"Reminds me of the 'Wall' that President Scroob was talking to in the bathroom from Spaceballs."
Actually it was Skroob. I'm not correcting you because I'm an over zealous Spaceballs fan, but because you reminded me of something I heard once. Skroob is 'Brooks' spelled backwards. As in Mel Brooks...
I love DVD's with commentary tracks. heh.
Actually, NTSC is analog and does not actually have pixels. If a pixelized source is converted to NTSC you might get 720x525 interlaced.
It is not fair to say that is the resolution; an analog signal can carry more information than a converted digital one.
One HUGE downside to plasmas is they're just like old monitors -- they BURN IN BADLY. Go take a trip to Hartfield airport sometime in the delta terminal where they have several plasma displays in use for only a year or two, and they have hooorrrriiibbllleee discoloration where the persistant images were. They're no good for PC use.
In addition, that display is an LCD so you can forget ever seeing black again--especially in this case due to high brightness. In addition to greyish "black" you can be pretty sure to be able to see pixel structure due to LCD technology. True, you cannot get true black from plasma display either. For maximum image quality I'd use UXGA (or better) DLP projector in a black painted room. That should provide you with true black and truely sharp image.
Remember that most projectors have bulb life of 2000 hours or less. And watch out those bulb expences--some do cost well over $500 a piece.
If a room with walls and the ceiling painted black sounds exaggerating, just think for a second what we're trying to do here: we're trying to make white panel (silver screen or something similar) to look truly black. If any part of the image has any light, the light will be reflected back from any non-black surface in the viewing room, namely walls, which makes the full screen to wash out. Trust me, I do own a CRT projector in a small room that has white walls and I'm not allowed to paint those darker. Black curtains help a little, though.
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