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Are Plasma TVs the Next BetaMax?
Lev13than writes "An article in the Toronto Star questions whether the battle between LCD and Plasma is the next VHS vs. Beta: "LCD is now in plasma country, and this means war — a war some say plasma can't hope to win". Rationale for LCD's victory include plasma's burn-in vs. LCD's ruggedness, improved images and falling prices. While the Beta analogy isn't particularly helpful (since both technologies play the same content), the article does raise interesting points."
Then my CRT must be a wax cylinder :(
Strangely enough, it doesn't suffer from uneven fade or blurring and has survived years with the kids knocking against it and still looks damn good.
I must really be behind the times if I want to pay more money for something with less quality and features...
liqbase
An article in the Toronto Star [CC] questions whether the battle between LCD and Plasma is the next VHS vs. Beta
VHS vs. Beta was a battle in which a consumer who made the wrong choice was left with hardware that increasingly ceased to be useful, because it wasn't supported. Choosing a plasma or an LCD screen isn't remotely comparable because both will continue to function regardless of who "wins". This is a silly article.
I've seen many Plasma TVs, and even LCD ones, in many electronic stores and the picture quality of all of them is absolutely shocking compared to an ordinary CRT. Colour, in particular, is a problem.
Yes, they're slightly cool looking, they save space and they're lighter, but I've seen more than one person shake their head sceptically when they've seen the picture quality and then looked at those 'HD Ready' logos slapped all over them. Quite frankly, I think both of them are Betamax, but I think a Betamax versus VHS comparison is wrong. They're both crap.
There's a big difference here - if you bought a BetaMax deck, you couldn't get new movies, but if you get a Plasma, you'll be able to use it through its whole lifespan. The availability of plasma displays in the future shouldn't affect your purchasing decision now.
I've always thought of Plasma as the ISDN of TV technology -- it's an 'in-between' solution that is less than ideal and expensive, but provides a level of capability that early adopters and the rich are willing to pay for. Eventually it will pass from the scene, but for a limited number of people for a limited amount of time, it will do the job.
Most of that information is dated (screen sizes especially since 65" LCD's can be found from several companies).
And a lot more is PR crap/scare-monger to try and sway the consumers to their line of products. As stated Sony doesn't make plasmas anymore, so of course they will be advocating LCDs since that is ALL they make!
There are "good" plasmas and "poor" plasmas, just like there are "good" LCDs and "poor" LCDs. Giving pure PR crap like this trying to compair your top of the line LCDs against mid to poor quality plasmas is as I said, pure crap. Hell, even Sony plasmas (you know the ones that Sony hasn't made for 18 months which are now at least 2 generations of technology old), Sony THEMSELVES rated them for 60,000+ hours! So how the hell are they now spouting this crap of 40,000 hours when compairing their brand new LCD's against "supposedly" brand new plasmas? Yes, that is correct, they shopped around for their numbers probably finding the cheapest plasma in existance and compaired its technical features against a name branded LCD.
Again, most of this article is about trying to get consumers to purchase their own products. You don't see Panasonic, Philips, or Pioneer putting this kind of crap out there because all three of them produce both LCDs AND plasmas. They will give you more straight up answers as to which one to use for your situation. Not this kind of PR sh--- err --- stuff that Sony is spitting out because they ONLY have LCDs and need to try and drive as many people as they can to purchase them otherwise Sony is left out of the market...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The plasma makers say it doesn't happen any more, but they still warn against watching too much 4:3 unstretched content, and those channel bugs still end up burned in to the display. As LCD goes up in size and quality and down in price, it will push plasma out of the running. Sure, the LCD backlight will fade, but it won't burn in and it doesn't matter what you display (thus no reason to watch distorted content).
DLP, LCD projection and CRT (projection or direct) aren't really competing for the same niche because they aren't thin panels. CRT also has the 4:3 burn-in issue.
That article wasn't very informative or insightful. I'd give it a 2 if it were a comment on /., and that's only on the strength of mentioning the 40,000 hour plasma lifespan vs. 60,000 for LCD.
What I'd really want to know is, specifically, what's the verdict with respect to plasma burn-in? Sony says it's problematic. (And if that's true, why were they selling plasma screens for so long?) Panasonic says, "You get what you pay for." Is that supposed to mean burn-in's not a problem on high-end sets?
With respect to LCDs, okay, so ghosting's less of a problem. Can we be more specific? Just how much has the response time improved? And what about contrast ratio? Viewing angle? Sunlight? Jaggies?
Regarding both formats, what happens at end-of-life? Do they just get dimmer and dimmer? Is there some kind of hard failure in the mechanism that renders the set completely inoperable after a certain amount of time? (E.g.I had a desktop LCD monitor which started to balk at coming out of powersaver mode, until one day, it just refused to come back on at all.) Are product lifespans going up, and to what extent? Either lifespan is fairly impressive, we're talking about 4.5 to 7 years of continuous round the clock usage, and probably twice that given typical usage patterns.
And other than a brief mention in the sidebar, there's nothing about future display technologies that might eclipse both plasma and LCD.
Point being, this article might be helpful to a lay person who reads the Star, but it isn't really suited for a tech audience. Why is it on Slashdot?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Several LCD panels I have programmed claimed 2.5 years of interruptible function w/o degradation of quality. Since the panels were insanely cheap I presume that better panels live even longer.
Presuming one watches TV on average 6 hours a day - with 2.5 years guaranty - that would make 10 years of lifetime. 10 years later I'm sure it would be possible to replace cheaply the panel with new one - just like it is happening now with CRTs.
CRTs are also prone to degradation - just like plasma and LCD. It's just the quality of CRT sucks (HD LCD/Plasma really provide better viewing experience) so nobody watches them too much. (After coming to IT, I barely can look at CRT TV at all: 50Hz just hurt my eyes too much.)
P.S. And with new developments like LED (light emitting diodes) back light - that would move the problem even further.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I exactly the opposite: I don't buy until things clear up.
I would love to buy, even if it was expensive, a nice solution for viewing movies from my computer, but there seems to be no clear choice right now. Until then, I'll stick to my (ultra high definition, if compared to any TV) 19"CRT monitor, which is not bad since I view from a close distance, on a comfortable coach.
Which other system would allow me to play 1920 pixels wide movies, like this? http://orange.blender.org/download
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