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Plasma or LCD?

Posted by Cliff on from the apples-or-oranges dept.

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?"

10 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. LCD by mgabrys_sf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Screen burn. I play console games. New plasmas attempt to mask the dammage by doing an entire screen burn - which reduces brightness. That isn't a fix.

    1. Re:LCD by datafr0g · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nice troll. Saying that plasmas are more fragile than LCD's is like saying that automobiles are more fragile than happy meal toys. If you mean that automobiles are more complex, then you're right. If you mean that automobiles are made from cheap plastic and happy meal toys are made from tempered steel, then you're wrong.

      Sorry dude, but you are full of crap. TVs, regardless of the tech they use, all have the same purpose - to display a video stream! Therefore, the comparison is legitimate. Automobiles and happy meal toys however, do not have this common use and a comparison would be redundant.

      Given that you're an idiot, please let me explain.
      You see, automobiles are primarily used as a form of transportation. Happy Meal Toys on the other hand, are intended to entertain children while they eat fatty foods. As you can see, both of these things have a different purpose so it would be rather difficult to compare them.

      For example, it is pointless to compare:
      Futurama to the Challenger Space Shuttle
      Saving Private Ryan to an iMac
      Tomato soup to the Latin language
      Fish to skyscrapers

      But we can easily compare:
      LCDs to Plasmas
      BMWs to Toyotas
      PS3s to XBox 360s
      Your brain to a wet sponge

      --
      "Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
    2. Re:LCD by mgabrys_sf · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes. Static images like score and gameplay gauges tend to burn into plasma very fast. The latest available fixes attempt to erase these burns by turning on every pixel very bright and for a long time to burn-in the whole of the screen (they call this "wear your new plasma's phosphors evenly" which is bullshit - they're basically burning down the remaining screen to match the burn). This of course lessens the life of the screen and reduces overall brightness. Basically it's a fix that breaks the whole of the screen. Unless brightness isn't important to you of course (or the lifespan of your screen), don't bother. It's the edsel of the 21st century in screen tech.

      http://www.plasmasaver.com/

    3. Re:LCD by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Informative
      Nah, projector.

      Absolutely agree. No box display can give you even a fraction of the quality a well-planned projection installation can. You go from getting a "that's nice" reaction to your media system to dropped jaws.

      There are basically two types of projection systems. One is based on high-temperature, high density LCD panels. The other is based on Texas Instrument's DLP (Digital Light Processing) technology, which places many tiny mirrors on a chip and actually moves them to modulate brightness. Because the mirror can deflect the light entirely off screen, this results in deep, deep blacks. LCDs produce blacks by becoming as opaque as they can, but light still leaks through. Lately, compensating technology in the form of stopping down the lens to aid in darkening the overall projection range in relatively dim scenes has appeared, but this isn't really the same as a system that can actually go from very bright to deep black. Still, LCD projectors look very good, it's just that DLP looks astonishing.

      And of course, you'll pay more for DLP — with the better picture, they do charge a premium and no one really has too much to say about it.

      Prices seem to be settling at about $3000 for a 1080p system in the coming year; they've been about $5000 during $2006 and $10000 during 2005 for 1920 x 1080, though progressive scan is really just now appearing; 1080i was the top a couple years back.

      You can shoot for 720p and really save a huge amount of money, and you still get a fabulous picture. The key here is to find the single largest surface you can dedicate to the projection system and then design around that. My sweetheart and I were looking for a place to remake, so we were looking at old stores, businesses, and so on. We found an 1940's church, and behind the pulpit was a blank wall space that was very close to 16:9 above the chair-rail; to make a long story short, we bought the church, made a home out of it, and we ended up with a display surface that is quite large. Not all projectors will focus on a large surface, so watch out for the spec that tells you how many inches they'll service, in focus. When you see 200 or 300 inches, you know you're good to go.

      If you can't dedicate a wall, then a drop-down screen is just a couple of hundred bucks and you can easily get them in that price range up to 100 inches with remotes that command them to drop down.

      There are downsides. The bulbs for the projector last a few thousand hours, and they dim over time. While life is advertised as 5000 hours or so, you'll probably be thinking about replacing them at closer to about half of that. And they are relatively expensive; typically several hundred dollars. On the other hand, if you put a dime in a jar for every hour you watch, you'll have "bulb money" all ready to go when the time comes. A dime an hour for the best home theater experience I can possibly have isn't too much for me; I don't use it to watch broadcast television more than a couple hours a month. We watch lots of movies and we spend a fair amount of time gaming in hi-def.

      Here is a shot of my system with my sweetheart at the lower left for scale. You can see how close the wall space is to 16:9... we totally lucked out.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    4. Re:LCD by Technomonics · · Score: 5, Informative
      Further advancements in DLP now replace the single bulb approach with multiple bright LED's. With this new approach, there is no "rainbow effect" and the resulting resolution is now higher than the 1080i standard.

      Here is a blurb about a new model by Samsung: "Samsung must realize those DLP bulbs don't last long enough and cost too much because the new 56-inch HL-S5679W DLP set uses LED lighting. Hey, Samsung, while you're under the hood, why not kill that color wheel too? Oh wait, they did that too with red, green and blue LEDs, which is killer because there's no gold at the end of that rainbow effect. The new tweaks give the HL-S5679W a sweet seven-second startup time and 20,000 hours of little lamp lives. There's no wobulation in this 1080p set, it's full 1920 x 1080 in a progressive format with dual 1080p inputs. Samsung states these will handle 1080p signals, so if it's the real deal, these should be paired up PlayStation 3's, no? Watch for it in April around $4,200."

      So, it would seem the new DLP LED would be perfect to prevent burn-in while providing a incredible picture and resolution. -kevin

  2. Neither by TERdON · · Score: 5, Funny

    My old CRT TV from 1983 won't be replaced until it fails!

    --
    I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
  3. I'm cynical by blake182 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I presume that there is some amount of "we spent all this damn money making all this capacity to manufacture plasma, so we better recover that investment as much as we can". My assumption is that between plasma and LCD, LCD is going to win. If you believe that and you manufacture both, push plasma as much as possible to cut your losses, and LCD will take care of itself.

  4. Panasonic say: Buy Our TVs Film At 11. by iainl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?"
    1. Re:Panasonic say: Buy Our TVs Film At 11. by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 5, Informative

      Disclaimer: I work for Bang & Olufsen.

      Much of the added price is the name and the nice box, which is more expensive than you might think, being that "everything is what it seems to be", ie. the metal-looking bits really are metal all the way through (mostly aluminum, seeing as they have their own very highly regarded aluminum works), the build quality is very sturdy and well-built and so on.

      But the internal components are also B&O-spec and developed in house with high-grade components, and the internal testing of both assembled components and finished products is very rigorous.

      The image calibration and automatic adjustments ("Adaptive Black", contrast adjustments according to ambient light, image filtering and smoothing of analog inputs on LCDs and plasmas etc.) are very nicely done as well. You really don't notice the adjustments working until you really look for it, since it's so smoothly and non-intrusively implemented. Bang & Olufsen have long been known for having some of the very best and most consistent image quality.

      Also, the integration between products of various kinds is second to none. The Beo4 remote controls every single Bang & Olufsen product from the last 25 years or so, and everything including lighting and curtains can be controlled using a single remote.

      So yes, you pay for the name. Bang & Olufsen being a premium "scandinavian lifestyle" type brand, it's pretty much implied that a premium will be charged. But you also pay for the quality and the integration. You admittedly won't really enjoy the integration until you have lots of Bang & Olufsen stuff, but it is possible to control products from other manufacturers, via an IR receiver and IR blaster.

      Bang & Olufsen is like Apple, in a way. They have the same "It just works" mentality, and lots of people really like that, especially after having tried it themselves. More tech-savvy people may scoff at their products for being to simple and too expensive, but they are not the target market. The target market is people with enough money to spend and no interest in tweaking.

      --
      Eat the rich.
  5. Google is your friend by subreality · · Score: 5, Informative

    I was going to write up a quick bit about this, but then I realized that someone probably already has. Sure enough, second hit for "Plasma vs lcd": http://www.flattvpeople.com/tutorials/lcd-vs-plasm a.asp

    They've already covered what I was going to say, and more.

    Bottom line: Neither is superior in all ways. Pick the things that matter to you.