Slashdot Mirror
Plasma TVs vs. LCD Projectors for Your Home Entertainment?
Kent Brewster asks: "We're working on making the presence of a TV set in our living room as unobtrusive as possible. The two main flat-or-invisible screen choices seem to be plasma and LCD projection. Gateway has a $3000 42-inch plasma screen, but I see ominous comments on Usenet about how that one's not really an HDTV and therefore to be avoided. Projector Xpress has a page of Sony projectors that are at or around that $3000 mark, and the street price for a home system that's HDTV-compatible seems to be working its way down to $1000. I would love to hear from anyone who's actually owned one of the Gateway models and might be willing to discuss pros and cons; same goes for anyone who's watching TV on a video projector. How's your bulb life, and what do they cost? Is the thing hot and noisy? Was it hard to set up? Have you integrated it with your home theater? Are you using a screen, or just shooting it onto the wall? If I do this, am I going to feel like an idiot a couple of years from now when LED bulbs replace everything?"
Something important to consider is the noise generated by the fan in a projector. There may be some quiet ones out there, but most projectors I encounted, regardless of DLP/LCD/etc., are too loud. (How loud is too loud? I expect a $2-5000 TV to be at least not much worse than a $200 TV...)
Do you notice the conversion from DVD's 720x480 to your PC monitor's 1600x1200? No? Then you won't notice this either. The scaler in these things is probably at least as good as a basic PC video card, which is good enough for most semi-AV-enthusiastic people. Hardcore fanatics will, of course, never be satisfied until they're using a $20000 scaler/deinterlacer with their $45000 projector on $100/sqft screen material with a $250000 speaker/amp system.
A solution to the problem with music today
I work for a midsize company that does displays in R&D. My advice is to wait. There are huge issues with Plasma that make it a ripoff. Projectors are better, but only good for dedicated home theater. It is like this, Plasma is photo-emissive. It depletes itself constantly, but not on a linear scale. The first thousand hours are key. That means, you turn on your TV from outta the box, turn on a test screen, leave for a few hours, and the screen is damaged forever. The damage can be localized too. Watching a TV station that uses a bug will burn in the bug after a while. The full color gamat is not being used, so the depletion is not equal and the image suffers. This holds true for all emission displays. If you hook up your plasma to a computer that has a fixed image, say a start menu or a dock, or a SCO logo burning as a backround, it will burn in. It is only possible to remove by reverse driving the image, and that requires 1337ness and an understanding of colors. As for LCD projectors, they choke with the lights on. They are good for home video, and do great there, but are not normal TV's. My advice is to wait. The gen 6 LCD plants will be here soon. With them will come 42 AMLCDs that will be fast enough and bright enough for this use. They should also be much cheaper, possibly low end models for under $1500. There are a few good ones that exist now, but are more expensive due to reduced capacity. You can get a beautful 42 inch AMLCD for about $10,000 now, but that price will drop very quick very soon.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
Of course, few people would leave their TV on 24/7 (except businesses and such), but I wonder if the picture degrades as the plasma is used up. After a year or two, do you then need a recharge to get as good of a picture as when you bought the TV?
We currently have about 10 Panasonic plasma displays at work. Not on 24/7, but on for a good 10 hours a day. The biggest problem: burn-in. Most of them display flash animations through Internet Explorer, and by and large they look great. However, within only a few months there is considerable burn-in on each display. Whenever the webserver is offline or otherwise unavailable, the white background error message can badly burn in. There is a feature they call white wash that can clean most of it up, but I am not too sure how much of the lifespan that removes. I'm guessing that the cost of recharging one of these things is probably close to the cost of a brand new unit. As far as lifespan goes, I guess I can let you know in 2 years... I personally haven't noticed any significant degradation in image quality, but the displays are located in such a place as to make an honest judgement impossible. However, it has only been about 5 months.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
Super-high-res projector capable of 3000+ lumens - $20k+ most likely.
"OK" projector, maybe 720p-capable, 1200 lumens - $5-6k, maybe less.
Curtains: $100 or less.
So I can either spent $15000 overcoming lights in the room, or I can spend $100 and install some fucking curtains.
Real tough decision there.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?