LED-backlit LCD.
I have a DLP with an LED light engine, and I really like it other than the viewing angle issues.
Any reason why?
It is a technology I'm not currently considering as by all accounts the viewing angles are worse and uniformity/flashlighting is generally far worse. Good LEDs are few and far between and CCFL is far better value at present.
LCD has no burn-in issues as plasma does. LED backligthing is more even and black gets blacker. It also uses less power.
Where will it be used?
Will there be adequate light source control? (blinds on windows, any reflection issues, over head lights, etc.)
What are you mainly using the TV for? Sports, Movies, Sitcoms, Games
Dedicated theater setup with front and center seating or living room with chairs all around at many angles?
Plasma and LCD both have their pros and cons, but a lot depends on how and where it will be used.
I think as long as you go with a direct backlight LED display (especially one with local dimming), you shouldn't have a problem, and the Vizios I have seen, as well as some Samsungs, didn't have any of the problems you mentioned. I don't own one, however, so I don't get to stare at one everyday. That said, while I like AVS, they have a tendency to spread panic there a lot, and you get a lot of "me too" posters that overplay some problems. So much so, that I don't go there anymore unless I have a problem that I am trying to research. The best thing to do is go to a high-end A/V store and look for yourself. I wouldn't get too caught up in technology differences, just go to the store and pick the TV you like the best.
Won't be going in for the whole 3D tv thing, though. I think there is very little that needs to be 3-D on tv, if anything. Anybody think that is gonna take off or what?
When Internet porn is mostly 3D, TV will follow suit.
I can't see it being truly successful until they get rid of the glasses though. It's bad enough trying to find the remote without something else to look for.
Another here for LED backlit - Specifically Samsung 8000 series I think. The 240Ghz technology whatsisit (supposedly- according to the salesman who seemed pretty well informed - it is the thing that is responsible for my staring at it agog with wonder and awe. I think its to do with the motion issue) is absolutely GORGEOUS. Stunning, really. That is what I decided would be next TV, but thats a ways off still.
Won't be going in for the whole 3D tv thing, though. I think there is very little that needs to be 3-D on tv, if anything. Anybody think that is gonna take off or what?
Seems to me most of the benefits of increased frame rates are pure hype. Unless the source material is recorded at those rates. Motion prediction is simply unneeded except to create an illusion of better quality (when it is lucky enough to work.) And black frame insertion? How cynical is that?
Throw some heavy curtains over the windows, mount a HD projector, and rock out to a massive screen. Mine's 93" diagonal. You get some benefits besides the obvious:
+ Excellent scaler means anything you put on it looks fantastic. I've got an HTPC (serving up MAME, emulators, and rips), Wii, Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox hooked to it, and everything looks gorgeous.
+ No lag. No ghosting.
+ HD content looks ****ing nuts when it's covering your entire wall. Truly.
But...
- Requires infrequent maintenance. Keep those filters clean!
- Bulbs need replacement ~ every 3000 hours of use. That's a long time, but still...
- Ambient light degrades the picture, but not as much as you might imagine.
- Once you go projector, you never go back. Seriously; never.
Threads like this depress me. I have a Sharp 32" LCD that my wife forces us to keep in an Entertainment cabinet.
HATE entertainment cabinets, almost as much as I hate fireplaces with tvs mounted above them.
Beats my 32" CRT in an Entertainment cabinet. I'm a lackie when it comes to home audio/video.
EDIT: Ever had to move an extremely large CRT TV? Myself and 3 other guys injured ourselves (really) moving a single TV for a nice elderly man who was moving in our neighborhood. It was the biggest CRT I've ever seen, AT LEAST 42" - I didn't even know they existed that big. The freaking stand was barely movable with 2 guys.
You should marry my wife.
We do have a very nice fireplace. Got my cord stacked and ready to go for the winter. And a dog. And hot rum. And a copy of a 1000 page book (Pillars of the Earth). And a very nice wife (except for that entertainment cabinet thing).
HNIC
Next she woulda said, "Honey, let's go downstairs and watch some curling".
You should marry my wife.
Thanks but Im perfectly happy with my wife.
We have a new house that lacks a fireplace (as most houses had a fireplace consuming precious space in the basement), but with central air and a brand new furnace. And a dog. And any alcoholic beverage you can imagine. And many books, both digital and hard-copy. My wife is pro-big-tv-over-50"-in-dedicated-"cave" (aka anti-32"-in-entertainment-stand) too as she watches HNIC with me all winter, hence my search :P
We're Canadian, How else would we get our rocks off? HURRY HAAAAAAAAAAAARD!
If you live up in Canada, why do you bother with air conditioning? I'd definitely rather have a fireplace up there!
Endurance is key to winning.
3D isn't ready for prime time.
I haven't looked in a couple years, but AFAIK the typical "half life" (i.e. time before a display reaches half brightness) was around 100,000 (~30 years.)
Meanwhile, in the real world:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10462105-1.html
"According to our measurements, the models with 1,500 hours both reproduced black at 0.023 footlamberts; the 500-hour models measured 0.008."
They go on to establish that this is not just a measurable difference:
"In dark scenes from "The Dark Knight" on Blu-ray, the 500-hour V10 clearly displayed a darker shade of black than the 1,500-hour G10, leading to more-realistic reproduction of nighttime city-scapes in Chapters 2 and 8, for example, the rooftop parlay in Chapter 8, and the silhouette of Bruce Wayne as he enters the room in Chapter 18. The difference was also visible in letterbox bars, albeit less so, in numerous brighter scenes."
The new CNET test is a little bothersome though. If the new models are still doing this (Panny claims to have fixed the issue for new panels) then I would probably hesitate a little in buying a top of the line set from them.
After about 1,650 hours of on-time logged on our TC-P50G20 review sample, and 920 on our TC-P50VT25, we have measured no loss in black level, or "minimum luminance level" (MLL) as the kids from a certain forum like to say. At the average daily rate of 5.2 hours of on-time per TV, that works out to about 318 and 177 days, respectively.
The 1,650-hour mark is somewhat significant because it's higher than the both the 1000 and 1500 hour marks after which, with Panasonic's 2009 plasmas, we measured losses.
This issue has been fixed in the bulk of their sets as far as I (and cnet) know.
brilliant idea
I've got a 42" Panasonic plasma, and if I didn't just read about the black level changing over time I'd probably never have noticed it. I do know that when I first started using it I had to jack up the brightness on my PC and 360 because it was too dark. However, after a few months I turned on my PC's HDMI output for the tv and saw that it wasn't super dark anymore.
Still the best TV I've ever seen (use 120Hz Samsung/Sharp LCD's at work). Motion is pretty good (supposed to have all 1080 horizontal lines under motion), though I do get some ghosting from my 360.
I was just about to post "dumpster dive an old 42" CRT" when I noticed that MS Windows posted pretty much the same thing.
They get thrown out all the time. I saw a reasonably sized non-flat Trinitron today on the curb today not too far from my house, and I see other ones all the time.
I would buy a good LCD. Burn-in is just not something I wanna deal with, it's symptom of a technology that needs to be improved.
BUT.. actually I wouldn't buy a TV at all. Ever again. There's only ****e on TV. I can watch movies on my widescreen monitor.
a) 42" is too small.
b) I have never seen a 42" trinitron, the biggest I know of is the 40xbr800, which is still a wicked TV and it is doubtful that people are straight up junking these in droves (since anyone that bought one knows the substantial investment the forked to get one, and likely understands that there is still a market for these in working order).
c) You dont "dumpster dive" a trinitron over 32" unless you travel in packs, or want a hernia. I just got rid of a 32" that weighed at least 125lbs (32" FD trinition).
d) If you are referring to CRT RPTV, **** that. They are garbage, so they can rightfully stay there, should I happen across one in a dumpster.
The technology HAS improved, burn-in is non issue.
What is the difference between a "TV" and a "monitor"? Today's televisions are hooked up to much more varied sources than traditional cable/sat/ota television broadcasts.
it's possible the ghosting is from phosphor lag (the VT series are supposed to have super fast phosphors. The appearance of motion blur is generally not on CRT/plasma UNLESS it is inherent in the source.
It's not generally recommended that you crank everything up on a plasma, even though burn-in is virtually a non-issue now, I have never heard of anyone needing to do this (unless they are in a super bright room, a place where plasmas admittedly do not "shine" - they arent as bad as some would have you believe though).
You're right, I sorta exaggerated, but even 30-something inch CRTs are common out there. And I should've said "curb shop". The aforementioned Trinitron was around 30-inch. And I don't know how you'd haul it home. Pick-up truck?
The nice thing about dumpster diving for 42" CRTs: no diving involved. Just lift the lids; nothing else will fit. Then when you find it, you just push the dumpster home.
how do you get the dumpster up a flight of stairs?
So is the plasma burn-in from constant picture still a problem, or they recover after a while (just a temporary memory)?
You're right, I sorta exaggerated, but even 30-something inch CRTs are common out there. And I should've said "curb shop". The aforementioned Trinitron was around 30-inch. And I don't know how you'd haul it home. Pick-up truck?
A note on power usage that alot of people don't know:
The energy ratings (at least in Australia) are based on the maximum possible power draw. While LCDs and LEDs sit fairly close to that maximum, plasma fluctuates alot, so the ratings look worse than they really are.
EDIT: ****! Didn't read the whole thread, and it comes back to bite me in the arse!
You made the right choice I think.
Thanks, instantkamera, for the plasma insights. That just confirms what I thought - the plasma technology has progressed a lot, and the image residue is reversible. Although I'd really like to see some estimates of wear time (let's say the time needed for a full bright pixel to reduce intensity down to 80%) and IR recovery time. Talking about Panasonic, they seem to be the only player left.
I'll chime in without reading the thread.
I recently went for LED BACK-lit (not edge) local-dimming LCD (47LH90). After months I decided this was the best technology.
As much as I like plasma in theory:
- Burn-in IS still an issue. I know the difference between it and IR, and no matter how many times people say it won't happen, cases still pop up. Go read at AVSforum. It isn't as bad as most make it out to be, but watch a lot of 2.35:1 content and you may start to see the effects. I didn't want to have to worry about how I used my TV.
- Plasma manufacturers. Panasonic is the only one I could consider. Their (then-current, probably still current, G10/20, V25) line of displays has a serious problem that I could not look past: faked black levels. Their displays are blackest (like, good plasma black) only for the first couple hundred hours. Then the display gets brighter and brighter, as planned, so it will not kill itself like any other display would. This is a programmed feature, not a mistake, and it sells TVs. After the honeymoon period, you have worse blacks than a locally-dimmed LCD (which are pretty damned black). Oh, and all the good black levels only happen when the screen is 100% black... There are YouTube videos of a single white pixel raising the black level of the entire screen. Again, check out AVSforum.
Even if you don't play games, I'd suggest looking at input lag too. All the post-processing going on lately in most TVs means a ~100ms lag between video and audio. The Panasonic plasmas are the best at avoiding this, too bad they had their other big flaw. I finally found the 47LH90 which had very low lag (and at a very low price, it is an older model, but still better than any edge-lit LCD, and cheaper than any 2010 local-dimming).
If I could have secured a Kuro display for around $1500 I would have chose that instead, it is the way plasma should be. But the current market forced me to go with what I consider an inferior technology... but hey, LC-LED-LCD is pretty nice too, my TV uses about the same amount of power as my LCD monitor.
EDIT so, you already got a TV. Don't read this then, but I'll leave it in case anyone else is following.
Should have read the thread.
Good luck on your Panasonic as well. The VT25 did seem in a league above the G20 (which was in the price range I was looking at) and I hear the issues there are not nearly what they are in the lower sets. The VT25 does actually seem to reflect Panasonic's acquisition of Pioneer/Kuro technology.
That being said, is there a good device that has HDMI, component, composite, S-video, VGA inputs and converts them to DVI? If I could feed those inputs into a DVI monitor, I won't need TV at all.
That being said, is there a good device that has HDMI, component, composite, S-video, VGA inputs and converts them to DVI? If I could feed those inputs into a DVI monitor, I won't need TV at all.
I'd probably try to avoid LG. The reason being that when we did sell them, we'd get ALOT of them come back for warranty.
I passed by a big Panasonic plasma in a shop today. By some chance, there was no input so the letters "HDMI1" were displayed as OSD in the upper left, with a small greyish rectangle behind. There was a lot of noise in this image - is this some anti-IR measure or "normal" for the set?
I'm not totally sure what you are describing, but plasma TVs do have visible noise when compared to other display technologies.
I bought me a Sony 40EX500 this weekend and it's spectacular. The only downside is that it can't play .mkv files which is a real shame. I hope they fix this with a firmware update some day.
I bought me a Sony 40EX500 this weekend and it's spectacular. The only downside is that it can't play .mkv files which is a real shame. I hope they fix this with a firmware update some day.
I passed by a big Panasonic plasma in a shop today. By some chance, there was no input so the letters "HDMI1" were displayed as OSD in the upper left, with a small greyish rectangle behind. There was a lot of noise in this image - is this some anti-IR measure or "normal" for the set?
That setup is screaming for better speakers.
It could have been a low end set, or it could have been dithering, were you 3 inches from the screen?
You definitely need some real speakers.
Bass is easy. Keep installing subwoofers until your ears bleed.
Mirage for surrounds are awesome. Not the teeny tiny ones though. Get the biggest your SO will allow.Show Image(http://www.blogcdn.com/hd.engadget.com/media/2008/07/20080724-mirage.jpg)
oh and rip, I dont have a problem with the SO ;) I get two rooms in the house. This one, and my office :PI've got my home office...aside from that, I "get" the garage and work shop. (both of which I neglect all too often)
Not only speakers, room acoustics typically need some work, too. They should definitely be checked. Problems in the higher-frequency areas usually are tackled relatively easily, bass is another story.
What does one do to deal with bass that is significantly a little too much (and sometimes much more than a little too much) while the rest of the range is at a quiet or normal volume?