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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?
... 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 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.
just don't touch it, as it gets very hot.
tell me about it. I was dared to lick a store display one. I did and it burnt.
b.
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.
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.
[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!
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!
is limited to 800x600. it's hardly good for any serious computer use. this article's title is very misleading.
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.
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'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.
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.