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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...."
You can forget projector tvs. they are only in the thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands of lumins brightness and it's expensive to get really high res ones.
you can forget crt hugescreens, because they take up a massive volume of space.
LED tvs are huge, but the res and brightness are low.
Big LCDs are pretty good, but not great - bad colour satruation and ghosting are common.
which leaves plasma and oled.
Since oled isn't ready for prime time, you should go see a plasma display someday. just don't touch it, as it gets very hot.
You mean you don't do this?
Just as some people drool over the latest CPU, or the newest video card, some of us drool over the latest in A/V technology. Whether that's a new set of speakers or a DVD player, or a bigger, better, fancier TV, it's all still drool-worthy. Maybe we can't afford it just now, but what does that matter? These kind of reviews give us the insight on whether or not what we're lusting after is really a good idea.
Personally, I'd rather just go down to the local Magnolia Hi-Fi and drool over the new sets in person. I've bought enough stuff there that a couple of the sales people know me already (heck, I always end up with the same guy), so it's quite easy to get personalized demonstrations. Even if all I end up buying is some cabling, the salespeople have still done their job -- I usually end up with something else to add to my wishlist.
A 42" screen that I can watch TV on at 640x480. That's only nineteen DPI.
Or, I could play doom on it at less than ten dots per inch!
I wonder what a Doom3 framerate would be at an acceptable resolution for this!? Would you need to pay more for the computer to use this than for the monitor? Does Windows have a "special edition"(seperate $300 license) for this type of display?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I disagree. I love my 46" 16:9 Mitsubishi. I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. Sure, I deal with the gray vertical bars in 4:3 (I can't make myself watch the stretched normal mode, and the TV only has the special "stretched" mode in 480i). IMHO, that's better than black bars, because at least you're getting some wear on the phospors. Also, the vertical bars change position on occasion on my TV, so they're never in the same place. I've had it for a year and a half, and have suffered no burn-in (or under-burn, as you'd get from having phosphors that are not as worn as the rest). I frequently play video games on it (XBox, mostly, with the HD A/V pack).
As for the PS2, you definitely need to get component cables for it. Otherwise, it's not going to look very good. However, most good TVs have line-doublers on 480i signals (which is what your PS2 will do), so it shouldn't look too bad. Then again, the Gamecube looked pretty terrible using the composite connector (took Nintendo a couple weeks to ship me the component cables). It looks somewhat better with the component cables and running games in 480p, but it's still no XBox. But that's more a limitation of the Gamecube than it is of the TV.
Finally, if you can get HD signals in your area (OTA, satellite, or even cable now), you'll really appreciate having that 16:9 set. And DVDs! It's great watching widescreen movies with little or no letterboxing (some are shot in a wier ratio than 16:9, so you'll still get some letterboxing, but it won't be nearly as bad as on a 4:3 set). The only problem I have now is when Blockbuster only gets Full-screen versions of DVDs (why in the hell would they ever do that?). If I don't pay close attention to the box, I'll get home, throw in the DVD, and then scream in horror as I realize I grabbed a full-screen DVD rather than a widescreen. A completely different rant that I won't get into here is why full-screen DVDs are even released anymore? What a waste.
I don't know. I've got a 24" 1920x1200 HDTV CRT running off of a Radeon VE (AGP) on my Windows 98 PC right now. (I know... I've got some really mixed up levels of technology here.) I think I'd be willing to lose something on either the resolution, brightness, refresh, or the price in trade for a 42" display. And, yes, a 24" HDTV monitor pretty much takes up my entire cornerpiece for my desks. It is HUGE.
I hate to nitpick, but NTSC pixels are not square. They are 1:1.33 rectangles. That would be 1.08mm x 1.4364mm pixels. Which leads me to wonder how distorted the computer game looked...
--sdem
Here's a winning combo for you: 42 inch TV combined with digital cable. Now not only can you have MORE of the same crap (500+ channels), you can get it BIGGER, too.
I think TV sizes are going the same way as cable channels; more is not necessarily better.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
I've never formally measured the frequency, but I'm one of those unlucky people to be really sensitive to the high pitched whine that most every television/monitor I've ever seen emits when turned on. It's even worse when a tube is about to go south, I almost can't stand it. Oddly enough, a lot of people I've talked to have no idea what I mean, they can't hear a thing. But ever since I was in grade school (at least), I've been able to tell if a TV is turned on even with my eyes closed and the volume muted.
I'll tell you, walking into an appliance store is a real challenge, with all the noise the wall of 200 TVs gives out. Now, I've never isolated a plasma screen by itself, but I usually can tell by how close I am to something just what it is that's making the noise - and plasma screens don't do it for me. This is one reason I'm anxiously awaiting the prices to drop - watching television is somewhat of a pain in the head for me.
I'm curious, do you know just how high a frequency a plasma display emits? And are you yourself sensitive to normal CRTs?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.