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Plasma or LCD?
WeeBit asks: "I saw a news article on why you should buy Plasma instead of LCD TV's. It just sparked my interest. Flat panel TV's have the market now, and our analog TV's are on their way out. I am sure many will be thinking of purchasing their new flat panel within the next couple years. Have you given this any thought? Panasonic, has been pushing ads that sell the consumer on the plasma TV's over the LCD's. Is this a good argument, or is it just hype? Which do you prefer Plasma or LCD? Why?"
Panasonic are the best manufacturer of Plasma displays, bar just about none. Even those painfully expensive Bang & Olufsen plasmas are Panasonic panels with upgraded processing components and a nice box.
Meanwhile, their current range of LCDs aren't that great, and are generally considered to be, if anything, worse than their previous generation (they're cheaper to make, though). They're losing market share hand over fist to Sony right now.
Exactly how unbiased do you think a press release from them extolling the virtues of Plasma are going to be? Roughly as much as the one explaining why you should buy one of their Blu-Ray players, instead of Toshiba's HD-DVD, really.
Personally, I think both technologies have their place. Plasma really comes into its own at 50" and larger sizes, where LCD's finer dot-pitch is less of an issue, and you can't even get a decent-value plasma below 42" - the rare 37" ones are ludicrously overpriced in comparison to LCD. But Panasonic are definitely over-selling Plasma in their marketing.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The problem (at least here in the UK, I don't know the US that well) is that ever since LCD went huge there isn't such a thing as "high-end CRT" any more. Anything over about 24" is going to show geometry problems to some extent (dear GOD am I glad I don't have to worry about geometry or convergence now I've gone to LCD), and when you get to 32" 16/9 sets its a pretty serious issue.
Then there's the fact that the two of us nearly did ourselves serious injury taking my 32" CRT up the stairs. The 32" LCD that replaced it weighed 17kg. Including the packaging, which never made it up with the CRT, because that wouldn't have negotiated the corner.
For small sets, CRT is still unbeatable on value and image quality. But for the living room it's dead as a dead thing.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I had a plasma for 4 days.
On day 3 I watched an inning of baseball. Turned off the TV. Went to the store.
When I came back I could still see the score. (The red sox were winning). I was very angry.
The next morning the score was still there.
I returned the TV on day 4.
If the (currently vaporware) SED TV ever gets out it will make plasma and LCD obsolete.
The LEDs definitely have shorter time to full brightness, I hear they enable the sets to do a richer color gamut, and of course are much more longer lasting and less sensitive to power cycles. With LEDs DLPs ought be *the* sets to have if you have longevity in mind. LCD panels theoretically could break down more easily under heat, and I know damn well how easily LCD panels get dead pixels (every flat panel I've had developed at least one screwed up pixel within two years). The heat doesn't apply to flat-panel sets so much, but the dead pixels do. Plasma I hear has been criticized for losing quality over years, as well as burn-in. There have been improvements, but still... You're left with LCoS type systems, CRT, and DLP. DLP and LCoS may benefit equally from LED light instead of lamp. CRT projection has been very solid over the years, but subject to burn in.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Never, never, never base your purchase on this!
It is very common practice to modify screen settings to sell the preferred (ie larger profit) display.
If you have the time (and patience), you can sit there and tweak each individual display to see the 'best' picture each can achieve.