What is a good 42" full HD right now to buy?

[digitalwanderer]

"image persistance", is that like a temporary burn? I've had that a few times from my son leaving the gamecube paused for too long, but it clears itself up fairly fast.

Thanks for the info btw, much appreciated. I'm incredibly ignorant about this stuff and love finding out more.

 

[pakotlar]

"image persistance", is that like a temporary burn? I've had that a few times from my son leaving the gamecube paused for too long, but it clears itself up fairly fast.

Thanks for the info btw, much appreciated. I'm incredibly ignorant about this stuff and love finding out more.

Yeah. It is basically an image that lingers when the content is changed. Usual case is black bars in 4:3 content showing over bright background in latest gen of plasmas. It will appear like a slightly discolored section on bright stuff if you change immediately. However, it is virtually impossible to burn in plasmas these days, where the image will retain that effect indefinetely.

Phosphour burnout is a none issue nowadays. And like I said the phosphour gas in plasmas should last you ~20 years if you watch 7 hours a day or so. What happens is, initially the green phosphours wear out a bit more quickly than the other 2 colors, and then at a certain point it stabilizes, so you won't have a red, or blue push say 20 years down the road. It will just get progressively dimmer, as do all displays.

I still would never buy a plasma that had moderate image retention issues. I'm like the average consumer, I want a worry free display. Go on Avsforum.com and check out their Kuros threads. Theres one on NeoGaf as well. It seems that 8G Pio's do not have any image retention to speak of, even without break-in period. I am not sure if it is overenthusiastic owners or not, but these same owners readily acknowledge image persistence on their older sets (panny 10th gen included). My guess is its diminished to the point that image persistence is now to previous gen as burn-in has been in panels over the last several generations to early models. That would be quite nice I plan to do a lot of 4:3 tv watching and a lot of xbox360 gaming.

 

[pakotlar]

That's a little optimistic, don't you think? $1K for the only flat panel on the planet with those kinds of blacks?

I'm glad we're finally getting high constrast ratios. That AVS link you provided shows someone who understands blacks. CRT's are not kings of black because the ANSI contrast isn't great, and it's really bad on RP CRT's. I don't care about absolute black levels, because I don't watch blank screens! RP CRT's and LCOS have black levels that really vary a lot depending on what else is on the screen.

The guy in that post described my perfect contrast ratio test: A small portion of white (say 5% of the screen) surrounded by black. No cheap iris tricks will help you here, and you really have to control internal reflection. DLP was always very good at such a test (relative to the big-screen competition), and recently they were just shy of "good enough" for me. Flat panels, though, just didn't get dark enough.

This set just came out of nowhere to blow the competition away. I never thought plasmas could get that dark. All we need is 58" 1080p version to get below $2k

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Only one question: What colour is the screen in the presence of ambient light? The one thing I hated about most plasmas it that they're grey, so they don't get as dark when there's light in the room. It's the same reason a 500:1 LCD has fantastic blacks in the office compared to CRT, but looks like crap once the lights go out.

Actually Mint, CRT's are. A properly calibrated high end CRT display will have ANSI contrast ratios far greater than any RPTV, DLP, LCD, or any variation theroff. There is a reason that reference displays are always CRT's. Plasmas have recently come into the picture as well, but still lag behind.

The whole hubub with Kuros is not that its absolute black level is lower than other models (Pioneer themselves said that testing that way would give them pretty much freedom to claim an infinite ratio), but a 20000:1 in frame rating. ANSI is a bit different, but even ANSI is supposedly 3k:1 which is insane. The big deal is that Pioneer has lowered excititations in "off" state (plasma) so phosphour sections give of way less light (to the point where it can nearly be considered as not giving off any light) so in effect you can think of the display as having a 786432 led local dimming backlight (42" model). This is also the reason why the 1080P models are going to have better contrast ratios than their 720P siblings. A 2,073,600 led backlight would also do wonders, but I doubt we are going to reach that state for a long long time.

As far as Kuros under normal light conditions I would scour avsforum. I believe it is using a single pane of glass versus the usual 2 which should cut down on light scattering, but I am not sure if it is using a semi-matte glass, regular old reflect a lot glass, or a matte screen. Newer plasmas often go for the matte screen, so hopefully this one does too. Though to be honest, if you are that worried about black levels, how about not watching them in broad daylight? I've watched a bunch of plasmas and have never noticed them looking "grey" under any sort of normal overhead room-light conditions.

And LCD's certainly don't have deeper blacks than high-end direct view CRTs in lit environments. I really don't know where you've been looking. If you have your LCD in torch mode, a light grey would look pretty damn black too, when ur outputting 500+ lumens.

edit: I re-read what you said. The only way that you would notice a plasma having a gray screen is if you looked at it with the power off on older models. Newer gen plasmas use a black back layer. The phosphour coating will also have a greyish appearance when viewed in direct sunlight in their off state. But um, why in the world would you watch it like that? Unless you were fingerpainting on the front or something.

edit2: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6917161-description.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5001393.html