Educate Me: Plasma vs. LCD displays

[Acert93]

Should I be considering a Plasma at all for my uses? Or stick to LCDs (edge lit?) Any recommendations for my scenario?

My 28" LCD monitor is a slowly expanding "white spot" bleeding through which has slowly been growing faster (about the size of my hand right now) and it is becoming annoying (hint: hard to have nice things with kids!) I use the monitor with my PC as well as my Xbox 360.

I have been seeing the price of displays (TVs and Monitors) dropping and wanted to keep an eye out on a replacement. But I have not been following the trends. From what I gather Plasma still have great blacks and the disparity in power use is not as huge as it once was (?)

A 32" display would probably do fine but I wouldn't turn my nose up at 37". Maybe I am crazy but since most have RGB and HDMI plugs I don't see why I could not use it with my PC as well? I quite like my large 28" display (1080p) and as it is 24-36" away from my eyes it feels fine.

So what should I be looking for? I would like something with good IQ, low input lag, good viewing angles, and affordable. Primary use will be a split between an Xbox (games and streaming media) and hooked up to a netbook. I may periodically use it for presentations (hence large is nice if affordable the color issue above doesn't impact PC work much and can be moved to another room). Preferably at a place like Costco or Amazon.

- Plasma or LCD. I heard older plasmas didn't work well as monitors; still true? The idea of a vibrant image and great blacks is appealing. If I understand correctly plasmas life span is much longer than a long time ago and have resolved most burn in issues. They also tend to have better refresh rates and input lag.

- 1080p. A lot of media has finally made it here and as possibly a dual use I would like the higher res.

- Refresh rate. Are all 120Hz 3D? I don't care much for 3D.

- Inputs. I guess I should get something with a minidisplay port? Although my current needs are just RGB and HDMI.

- Input lag. Is having a "game mode" sufficient enough or do I need to research each model? Any good links for this? Model recommendations?

Ok, enough rambling, tell me what you think.

 

[Davros]

doesn't impact PC work much and can be moved to another room). Preferably at a place like Costco or Amazon.

Your going to move your monitor to costco ?

 

[Acert93]

Preferably purchase from a place like Costco or Amazon.

And a smallllll part of me wants to go for a 50" Plasma but it is a weeee bit more than I want to spend (good deals at $600).

 

[V3]

Image retention is still a problem with Plasma, so if you're bothered with it don't go with Plasma.

I've been playing lots of fighting games, VF5, DOA5, etc and the health bar is visible when I watched movies afterwards. It'll go away eventually if I stopped playing them.

But yeah Plasma is great and relatively cheap for the size you get.

 

[NRP]

I prefer plasma, although I can't explain why technically. The picture quality seems more "organic" than LCD. Been a while since I did side-by-side comparisons though.

I game on mine all the time and have never experienced input lag.

 

[Mize]

Sammy's 6XXX/7XXX series backlit LED-LCDs are nice, but nothing is better for movies than a good dark Plasma (so far). At my house we game on an LCD and watch movies on a plasma. If I had to pick only one I'd be hard pressed to go Plasma though as the rare times we game on both I have ghost lines on the plasma the next day. If it's for computer/gaming I'd take a serious look at Samsung 6100/7100 (7100 is faster/more features but 6100 series are very nice). Costco should have them and you get the extra year warranty.

 

[MfA]

I don't understand why there are PVA/MVA/IPS TVs which are driven at 120 Hz (as far as I know 240 Hz is marketing speak for 120 Hz with a scanning backlight) yet we can't buy any monitors with that feature and 120 Hz input capability

 

[Mintmaster]

The only picture quality advantage of LCDs, AFAIK, is that the polarizers inherent in LCD technology is very good at sucking up ambient light, while plasmas traditionally looked a lot grayer in a bright room even when off. This advantage has been reduced/eliminated recently due to better filters on the plasma screens.

When you turn the lights down, though, a good plasma will crush the LCD in contrast ratio (i.e. lower black levels for equal brightness). Most other picture quality aspects - color gamut, color accuracy, resolution, adequate brightness - are pretty much solved with both plasma and LCD, and only vary from the ideal due intentional exaggeration to make images look punchier in a store. Plasmas look better off angle, too, and won't have any motion blur (which modern LCDs have generally cut down to corner cases).

Acert: For your size range, however, I don't think you'll be able to get a good plasma, if any at all. They seem to only exist at 42" and larger.

 

[snarfbot]

120hz native refresh isnt part of the hdmi standard. thats why 3d uses framepacking and stuff to fit 2 frames into a 60hz feed. once they start supporting displayport on tv's i guess they will finally be useful, 120hz tv's that is.

anyway lcd's have come a long way, and especially the mva panels from samsung are tremendous, but youre not going to get one for anywhere close to 600 bucks so id go with a plasma.

the cheapest panasonic 50" 1080p is about that much money, depending on sales and it will mop the floor with any comparably priced lcd.

best bet is just to go to costco walk around look for ones you like, google em, etc you can get a good idea of whether theyll suit your needs.

 

[sebbbi]

I have had a 42" 1080p Panasonic plasma for over four years now. I have played almost 200 hours of Trials HD + Evolution on it (up to 5 hours in a row) and there's no visible image burn in. The game has a static score counter at the upper left corner of the screen (dark background, white text). I have played some long sessions of DOA2U and DOA4 on it also, and the life bars (bright lines) haven't burned in either.

LCDs were pretty bad (poor contrast, viewing angles, etc) when I bought my plasma. However LCDs have improved a lot since. Panasonic plasma had around 4x higher energy consumption compared to the top LCD models at that time. Plasmas have improved as well, but still LCDs have a big lead on energy consumption.

One of my friends uses a 1080p 60" Panasonic plasma as a PC monitor. The image is pixel perfect (when overscan/etc is disabled) and the colors/contrast is very good. The only downside is that all plasmas have high frequency noise in the image. It looks a little bit like dithering, except that is changes rapidly all the time. It doesn't bother me that much, but I would recommend trying it before buying, if you want to be using it as a PC monitor.

 

[Grall]

I bought a 40" Samsung not quite two months back, 6-series with 3D support. It's really quite tremendous. The image processing is eerily good in many scenes when movement is not too rapid, giving extremely fluid screen updates, and the color and contrast is great. At the same time it's very power efficient as well, most of the unit doesn't noticeably heat up at all. Only at a few spots is it slightly warm, and in total it draws something like 68W typical case. That's quite tremendous, for a screen that's over a meter in size, diagonal.

When I was in the store looking at different models, equivalent sized plasmas gargled at least twice the amount of power and were quite warm at the touch.

Ports-wise this thing's good too. While it has no VGA input it does feature a (fairly useless) SCART input and a component connection for my Wii. There's three HDMI jacks and an optical audio output, so I can still use my older surround decoder for sound from TV transmissions and not having to use those terrible built-in speakers. It also has three (!) USB jacks, one delivering 1A of power for portable HDD units, and a LAN socket which I don't use. There's 5GHz n-standard wifi support as well. Pretty impressive collection of hardware in all, especially considering the price.

Of course, internet connectivity (samsung calls it "smart TV") is effing lame really compared to a real computer or even a modern tablet, but hey... It's there, if anyone wants it.

 

[Gubbi]

I wouldn't worry about image retention. I have a six year old PDP that have seen lots of static HUDs with my XBOX and it has zero retention.

Nothing matches the image quality of Panasonic's PDPs (I mean nothing ). LG and Samsung both have worse contrast ratios compared to Panasonic, but in different ways. LG lacks decent black levels and Samsung lacks brightness.

Because the cell structure of PDPs decrease in efficiency with smaller sizes, power consumption for small models (42" and lower) is quite high for their size. I'd probably only consider PDP for >=50". Panasonics resent models use ~180W for 50". Since the bulk of the energy goes into energizing the plasma, a PDP will feel hotter, because the bulk of the energy is radiated out the front, rather than convect out the back for LCDs.

If you go shopping for a LCD, make sure to test it in low ambient ligth condition at the distance you will use it. The viewing angle dependent distortions of LCDs can amplify non-uniform light bleeding (bright corners). Also test how much image quality deteriorates with game mode enabled.

Cheers

 

[Mize]

My 50" Panasonic Plasma has no permanent "retention" but it definitely gets retention after gaming for some period of hours that is easily seen in lighter movie scenes.

 

[RudeCurve]

One problem plasma could never fix

phosphor persistence...

thanks for playing...

 

[Gubbi]

One problem plasma could never fix

phosphor persistence...

thanks for playing...

Clueless.

Cheers

 

[mrcorbo]

I've been using a 42" 1080p Panasonic Plasma as a primary computer monitor for years now (it replaced a 36" widescreen CRT). It's power-hungry, hot and heavy relative to LCD but as a display it's been phenomenal. It handles games, movies and PC productivity with equal proficiency and image retention, while occasionally present, is really not a major issue. And I am probably a worst-case scenario for usage that would lead to IR.

Having said this, the dynamics of the market pretty much dictate that you get a LCD if < 50", so unless you decide to go real big and hit up that 50" @ $599 (I'm assuming you saw this deal @ Costco) there really isn't much of a choice.

 

[homerdog]

One problem plasma could never fix

phosphor persistence...

thanks for playing...

Hum, I've spent way too many hours comparing different TVs in my downtime when I sold TVs during college and that is the one thing I could never spot. I was looking for it and I have very good eyesight.

Probably if you gave me the right material I could spot it. I was just using normal stuff that 99% of people would watch 99% of the time.

 

[Mize]

It's a funny concept that RC would think that phosphor persistence can be overcome on a CRT but not a plasma.

 

[MfA]

CRT phosphors aren't the same as PDP phosphors ... Plasma did and does still suffer more from it than CRTs.

I wonder why no one has made an app which generates a wiper image based on the image content recorded on the camera ... it could be far more effective than general wiping patterns.

 

[Mize]

Uh, your link is not about CRT vs. Plasma phosphors. It's about Panasonic image retention vs. burn-in.

For the record, CRTs and Plasmas use the same (classes of) phosphors. This is why plasmas have similar IR and burn-in issues to CRTs and why their persistence and color accuracy is so much better than LCD.