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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...."
But what is the question?
At that size, who needs 3 monitors to display peripheral vision? Reminds me of the 'Wall' that President Scroob was talking to in the bathroom from Spaceballs.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I hate to troll but...
I dont understand the drool factor of huge tv's...
if you want a biger screen you can buy it wiht enough money... there is no point in looking at these "wonders of technology" if your not going to buy them...
why dont we look at a movie theatere and talk about how cool it would be to spend $1M on a screen and stereo setup...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
that's some tree you've got, if you can fit a 42" screen under it!
... for anything I couldn't drive, sleep in, or have sex with.
Until then, there's no point drooling at something that is more stylish, but doesn't have the punch.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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.
Now that is something that I'd pay to see.
however it seems that some assembly is required
And that was about a year ago. It's kinda cool, and cost $28,000 for the monitors at the time.
But still, it isn't anything new, and not anything I can justify at home. Prices will have to really drop before I get one; especially with the job market as it is.
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
even on a saturday night they've been slashdotted.
Seriously though, unless the long promised merger of your pc with your entertainment center finally happens what use is there for a 42 inch monitor of any sort?
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
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 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!
Here's a mirror of the review, complete with images. Enjoy!
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
[Left Brain]
Great! Now we can watch 10 dozen channels of crap at 3 and an half feet tall.
[Right Brain]
Yeah but there are TWO Matrix's coming out! And then Return of the King!!
[Left]
It's a gazillion dollars!
[Brain]
AND Daredevil AND the Hulk.
[Left]
Yeah but the resolution could be better and we hatesses the MPAA!
[Right]
Look how SMALL Spider-Man is! LEAVE US ALONE!
It's going right in the middle of that wall.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
We here on /. are to pathetic to have anything to do on saturday night.
Seriously though, I would never trust any "merger of my pc and entertainment center" such as the "HP Media Center PC." Just throw a video capture card (the Haupauge PCI TV card works fine w/ v4l) into a Linux box. It is neither difficult nor complicated. It seems like my server does nothing but host some websites and show TV. I recommend mplayer in spite of it playing Stargate in French occasionally.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
For a (reletively) mere $2,000, you can get a good, bright projector capable HDTV-like quality at 1280x1024 That gives you a good 3'-25' screen for what, 1/10 the price of that plasma monster?
Repeal the DMCA!
Seriously, that site is pretty poorly designed, it dosn't display right on an 800px screen.
:p
The review is pretty bad too (well, the first two pages anyhow - lost interest waiting for the third page to load).
He describes the speakers as having "a tiny little 1-1/4" diameter woofer on the rear of the speakers which gives them a little bit of Bass" - which from the picture appears to be a port. I don't want to know what a 1.25 inch "woofer" would sound like
He also goes on for a full page about the speakers, mostly mentioning that an "audiophile" wouldn't use them. I know very few people who use the speakers in their television -- especially anyone with $10k to blow on the TV alone...
The article makes a lot of little technical errors, and complains about things like short speaker wires, mentions that "your first stop should be at the local electronics store to pick up a good set of shielded composite input cables if your DVD player supports this standard". Composite? I really do hope he meant Component...
Whats the point of a 42 inch plasma screen with such low resolution?
It's for television viewing. It is not really intended for use as a PC monitor, but would be really great for video editing applications IMO.
Why not just use a projector?
Have you seen a plasma display? Have you seen a projector? I'm guessing the answer to one of these is no... there's a serious difference. The Plasma displays are as accurate as an LCD (as far as pixel positioning) because, like LCD, the pixels are physically in place. At the same time, they have the brightness of a CRT.
Projection has much less accuracy; it's similar to CRT, except that it's much easier to be knocked out of alignment (and much harder to align). I know they've improved over the years, but I still don't like projection in any form...
The plasma displays aren't that new, I've seen these before; not the Samsung model, but Philips has had one for about a year now, and it runs about $7,000. I've seen them in stores (Circuit City specifically; drooled all over it in person), and the airport in Atlanta has several of them used for advertisements (Sony - so wasteful)... one store in our local mall has 7 of them in various places, playing MTV (what a waste of all those lovely expensive plasma pixels) along with several CRTs and a Bose sound system...
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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
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.
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.
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They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
What do you get if you multiply six by nine?
Dude, that's like $400 US! Sign me up.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
The database boys at my job have a pretty big (though not 42") display that they run DB monitor apps on. Since they're monitor apps, they're on continuously, and the display has them all burned in. From what I hear CRTs are largely burn-proof now, and LCDs always have been. Is this a problem with plasma displays?
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.
A piddly little 42" monitor is nothing compared to the power of the dude in the red suit and his elven magi.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
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
Where does this reviewer get the balls to call a 852x480 display High Definition? A simple line doubler could convert any standard 480i signal to run on this thing, no HDTV receiver (or downsampling) required. And last time I looked, my projection HDTV screen (50% bigger, at about 50% of the cost) has a VGA input as well... And it even came with free speakers!
> Seriously, why would anybody spend that much money on a display that can't handle HDTV?
Because I don't watch TV (at all) so I could care less about HDTV. I watch movies (mpeg2 = 720x480 MAX), and play games (PS2 = 512x448, and PC ~ 1024x768 res)
What's DLP stand for? And what DLP projectors would you recommend?
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.
I went into a Gateway store this weekend to check out their 42" plasma screen. They had a display model with a game of Madden 2003 demoing off of a PC. I asked the guy if I could switch it over to TV so I could see what it'd look like with a real feed going to it instead of a computer feed, and was told "No, we don't have any cable signals in the store." What's the point of selling a plasma screen, if you're not going to allow your potential customers to see how things will look for 90% of its use? I walked out the door.
Now I've seen the third page. What's with this: ...plasma displays are limited to displaying 16.7 million colours, so very subtle transitions tend to be more "stepped" in appearance under close inspection.
:p
Mind you he mentioned playing a DVD -- in other words, an MPEG video. Try this on *any* television and see how colors are limited. This is akin to using an MP3 file to test high-end speakers. Remember, guys, DVD is highly compressed, and in a high-action scene you can even see typical MPEG artifacts.
Anyway, show me a plasma display that looks like it's "stepping" when showing compressed MPEG video, and I'll show you some KLH studio monitors that sound "swishy" with a 128k MP3
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--- have you healed your church website?
"As for resolution, a 42" plasma is about 865x480 (WVGA), and cost between $4000 to $6000, "
No, the cost is $3000-$3300 - go to Costco (which someone trashes below) or www.gateway.com.
I liked the Daewoo (is that what is was?) at Costco...certainly superior to any projection set. Is it perfect? Nope. But physically its very nice, and like I said, its way better than the projection TV's.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
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.
is my server, with Xfree "zoomed in" to 640x480, the NTSC spec.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Sales people seem to be the only people in the world incapable of reading the body language that screams, "Get the hell away from me!"
That's prolly why they end up doing sales. They don't actually have to help you to get their commission. I may not want to help them, but a good customer in their eyes. I usually know exactly what I want and where to find it. Quick and easy for the salesdroid.
I've found that if you state exactly what you're looking for in precise language, they just tell you they don't carry it and then leave you in peace until you find it and the other stuff you're browsing for. It's important to be intimidating so have a good 2-3 minute spiel with no choices, just specs in it.
Actually it would be awful for video editing...
:)
I wasn't so much refering to professional use; I simply meant for playing around with video editing. I know if I had that kind of money to blow on a TV monitor, I'd also have a pretty bad-ass PC, and the two would inevitably end up connected
Perhaps I wouldn't "edit" video on such a screen, but it'd be a great test screen for visual effects, etc, to get the full experience you can't get in a window...
LCDs are currently too damn slow and you get frame tearing (perhaps this has changed recently)
Plasma isn't LCD, and from what (little) I know about it, it's a very different technology. As a result, I believe Plasma displays are very fast, though I've not personally used them enough to say for sure.
As for tearing, I don't understand how LCD is any different in this regard. Tearing is a result of the display refreshing while you're changing/updating video memory; eg, you're changing it as it's reading it.
Perhaps you mean LCD television displays, where (unlike normal TVs) there is some video memory in use, etc... but either way, it's easily solved by syncing the video updates with the VBI (called "vsync")...
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I got the hitachi cpsx5500. Its $5000for true SXGA (1365x1024). [note that the viewsonic mentioned above is only XGA 1024x768].
The hitachi is really great. Super bright and about 8 feet across. Its so much better than a plasma screen I am sad for people duped into buying them.
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.
I was just reading the 'cure' for a burned-in image on Apple's support area. The cure was to leave a white rectangle up (filling the screen) for the same length of time the image that is 'burned' onto the screen was displayed (which causes the burn)
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Heh, aggressive commission-hunters suck. Recently, I went to Fry's with four friends, and we shared the same shopping cart. I stopped a salesman just long enough to order up a SCSI drive, only to have him start scanning everything in our cart the moment I took my eyes off of him. By the time we got to the cash register, it became a bitch since the cashier was now demanding that everything was paid with a single check - after all, everything was now written up on the same ticket. In order for each of us to pay separately, we had to track down that specific salesman and have him manually remove ticket items.
Ooh, I was so pissed. Actually, I'm still pissed... enough to say who - his name was James [can't remember his last name].
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
This was really cool when he put it in in the mid 1990s, but now it's kind of dated.
Whoa. These things fail?
I don't remember his numbers, but it sounded to me that a non-trivial number of pixels would be gone within a few years; and the droid also mentioned that plasma pixels tend to fail a scan line at a time.
Can anybody shed some light on how/if/why plasma panel screens fail? I'd hate to plunk down some serious buckage just to have the thing start looking nasty in a couple years.
I don't want to be a pioneer here. You can tell the pioneers: they're the ones with the arrows in their backs.
Is this thing on? Hello?
Forty two inches is a big tv
That monitor would be some geek's wet dream
Big enough to make any nerd happy
This is starting to sound very obscene
But really, who needs a screen that's that big?
Such monitors are really overkill
and who affords that? Capitalist pig!
Dig, this whole trip makes me feel somewhat ill.
Still, it is quite impressive that such things
can be; it's a long way from cathode tubes.
Hell, I'm still using an old CRT
Yep, nothing here will rhyme except for boobs.
Conclude: If you think this post has no class;
If I ever meet you I'll kick your ass.
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
Personally, I've had my LCD projector (which doesn't quite have the blacks that DLP has, but the lumens for the price was quite nice) for almost a year now. I go into these electronic stores, look at these "big screen tv's" and wonder how anybody can watch movies on anything so small. LoTR on a 100" screen. Now that's home theater!
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
I don't really trust a review that: A: Doesn't talk about the longevity problems with plasma displays (they have circuitry built in to compensate for the wearing out display elements, but it only lasts so long, some folks say ~3 years, but I'd say that's pessimisting) B: Says the S-Video input had WORSE picture quality as compared to Composite. Sure, it could be a problem with this particular display model, but they didn't even comment on how *strange* that is. The whole thing is fishy.
Also, people have been subjected to years and years of pan & scan movies on broadcast TV, cable, HBO, etc. The movies fill their screen, and at the theatre the movies fill that screen too. When the DVD doesn't fit their screen (a 4:3 TV), they get confused and annoyed. Many don't realize that movies are wider than their sets.
Yes, but I thought the Gateways weren't HDTV compatible? If you're into to the realm of thousands of dollars for a TV, you might as well spend a little more to make sure that it will be forward-compatible...
-- "Is this death or is this Ohio?"
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.
as in Television or NTSC(640x480) for nerds like us. I was not talking about the max that the screen could handle.
/.ed, I had to use the pythagorean therom rather than porportioning width and height. If you "knew what you were talking about", you would've caught that.
With the site
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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.
Thanks for the corrections. These standards are always more complicated than they should be!
DLP = Digital light processing. A technology invented, or at least commercialized, by Texas Instruments, I believe. See www.dlp.com or something.
Oh, and I really don't think the PS2 uses a 512-pixel wide resolution. Some games might, but it's certainly not the only resolution handled by the PS2, and I'd actually be surprised if it's the default, or even the most common.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Last time I checked, this VGA connection to my monitor wasn't digital either. Yet, I'm pretty sure that it has pixels. And what are those tiny little colored dots on the TV screen, anyway?
--sdem
It's the electron beam sweeping across the screen to make the picture. LCDs, Plasma screens etc. don't have that, so they don't make that sound:
NTSC: 525 scanlines * 60 Hertz / 2 (interlacted) = 15,75kHz
PAL: 576 scanlines * 50 Hertz / 2 (interlaced) = 14,4kHz
Of course here I have one widescreen TV (not HDTV though) that's silent for some reason and one 100Hz PAL TV (= 28,8kHz) so I don't really have a problem with it, though I can hear that high frequencies usually...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The tearing I was refering to wasn't the usual partial frame stuff (so maybe I used the wrong term)
it was the the inability of the display to update an entire frame if too many of the pixels had to change.
I wasn't even aware of this problem. Is this a power consumption issue (changing too many pixels would draw too much current in that instant)? Or an issue that is easily solved by adding a bit more memory/processing to the LCD?
My only LCD experience is my laptop, which has a crappy Trident chip in it. The chip is slow enough that its own problems would mask out any that the display itself caused.
In either case, I guess that would still be called tearing, or at least would have the same perceived effect. I guess it's entirely possible that the Plasma display has this issue (though for $10k I'd hope not)...
Any opions on Plasma vs. Single Chip DLP with Color Wheel?
You lost me on this one. DLP? Color Wheel?
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
"The image quality is just luscious, and if you can forget about the nearly ten thousand dollar (CDN) price tag for a moment, there is virtually no downside to this display."
So, I guess that's around US$6000-7000? How does that compare to Gateway's $3000 42" Plasma screen? It might be better, but is it twice as good? I checked one out briefly at the local cow store and it looked comparable to the plasmas I've been drooling over for years at the local high-end AV place.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Those are the resolutions that I use on my own equipment.
That said; I would love a cave system in addition to a write-on-screen for my iBook and a backpack refridgerator to brink caffeine on the go....
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
> Oh, and I really don't think the PS2 uses a 512-pixel wide resolution. Some games might, but it's certainly not the only resolution handled by the PS2, and I'd actually be surprised if it's the default, or even the most common
One of the popular PS2 games actually uses 512 resolution. I forget which one: Metal Gear Solid, GT3, or ICO. I'll boot them up on the Dev TOOL and see if I can find anything out. I believe the most popular is an interlaced 640x224 for a 640x448 res. (PS2 can't do a true 480 res.)
There is no 'default' resolution on the PS2. You just set the registers directly (or just use one of the Sony sceGs*() calls. I can't give the exact func name, NDA and all.) Since you only have 4 megs of VRAM total for framebuffer(s), z-buffer, and textures, you're resolution is limited. Width has to be a multiple of 16, and other restrictions don't help.
Cheers
> Lots of good advice on front projectors, but I take issue with this one. Higher resolution is in general better. The problem of not matching dvd resolution is not an issue if you have an htpc, which it sounds like you do.
No, it's a problem with the bilinear filtering in plasmas, that ironically make the lower resolution better for watching movies.
See Resolution Explained