What Fun Productions wrote:
Plasma sets are great if you have a dark room. Beautiful picture.

The price is also attractive.

It's actually the other way around LCD monitors are great if you have a dark room while Plasma screens with their higher contrast ratio do better in lighter rooms.

On a Plasma screen each 'neon' pixel is either lit or not depending on the colour and image requirements.

On a LCD screen, whether backlit by CCFL or LED the back lighting is on so the LCD membrane has the task of using its pixels to generate black to block light transmission which is 100% impossible so you have light bleed which in turn lowers contrast ratio.

A true LED screen would not require to be backlit because like a Plasma screen, each pixel would generate its own light.

A true LED screen would blow the doors off any Plasma screen of equal size in all contests except in generating heat and using more electricity.

Gryph wrote:
I have an LED.  I really don't see much difference between this and the lcd in terms of quality.  It's thinner and somewhat lighter.

That's because the BS advertising worked on you and you bought another LCD screen that is now backlit by LED instead of CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent light). Return it and claim they lied about what they sold you. Class action suits should start popping up soon as real LED screens will start to appear in the next few years albeit it at three to eight times the price for the same sized LCD screen backlit by LEDs.

Wye wrote:
One thing I do have a preference on is refresh rate.  I can't stand the look of the 120hz tvs.  Everything looks like an 80s soap opera to my eyes.  I'm much happier with the 60hz tvs.

i forgot about that aspect of lcd's too. it's very disconcerting, although i hear just about any set can be switched to 60 hz refresh rates to eliminate that silly look.

one drawback of the plasmas is the inherent burn in that can occur. i get them when i watch a baseball or football game that has a constant banner. they do go away, but it's frightening every time i see them.

Michael Broughton wrote:

piker

Wye wrote:
I don't really have a preference one way or the other about the tech.  Our TV is an LG LCD from a couple years ago.  It's more than adequate for our needs.  Picture is clear and sharp, colors and brightness are great. 

One thing I do have a preference on is refresh rate.  I can't stand the look of the 120hz tvs.  Everything looks like an 80s soap opera to my eyes.  I'm much happier with the 60hz tvs.

Beyond that.. whatever looks best in the store and has the right price is fine by me.

A friend of mine had one of those fancy schmancy 240Hz sets.  Movies looked like an episode of Saved By the Bell.  My TV is 120Hz, but after turning it on for 10 minutes, I turned it back off to 60Hz.

I suppose sports would look cool at the 120Hz, but who really cares.  Television tech is racing out of control.  We were perfectly fine with 480i resolution for 50 years.  And now in about 15, we've made the jump through 720p to 1080i/1080p and now consumer versions of 2160p sets are being made available.

Youth is wasted on the young.

de BUEN PHOTOGRAPHY wrote:

That's because the BS advertising worked on you and you bought another LCD screen that is now backlit by LED instead of CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent light). Return it and claim they lied about what they sold you. Class action suits should start popping up soon as real LED screens will start to appear in the next few years albeit it at three to eight times the price for the same sized LCD screen backlit by LEDs.

This is nothing important.  I have known this for a long time.  I happen to have a 55" LCD because I bought it for a great price.  I would have no problem purchasing a LED TV.

de BUEN PHOTOGRAPHY wrote:
It's actually the other way around LCD monitors are great if you have a dark room while Plasma screens with their higher contrast ratio do better in lighter rooms.

On a Plasma screen each 'neon' pixel is either lit or not depending on the colour and image requirements.

On a LCD screen, whether backlit by CCFL or LED the back lighting is on so the LCD membrane has the task of using its pixels to generate black to block light transmission which is 100% impossible so you have light bleed which in turn lowers contrast ratio.

A true LED screen would not require to be backlit because like a Plasma screen, each pixel would generate its own light.

A true LED screen would blow the doors off any Plasma screen of equal size in all contests except in generating heat and using more electricity.

The design of the plasma requires a thicker glass cover, and it is usually glossy, whereas LCD/LED is typically matte.  The reflection is what makes it hard to see in bright rooms - not the actual brightness.  Or maybe the design doesn't require that per say, and that's just the cheap and easy solution that everyone uses.

Additionally, both edge-lit and panel-lit LED TVs have contrast rations that surpass plasmas. 

And no, there won't be a class-action suit, because the "lying manufacturers" never told you they were using an LED panel - you just assumed it.  They said "LED TV", and sold you a TV that used LEDs to produce an image.  You got what you paid for.  If you got 'ripped off', it's your own fault for making assumptions.

To the OP:

It's almost pointless to argue the differences now, since almost nobody makes plasmas under 60" now.  There are so few models that you don't really have enough to compare different technologies - just different models.

Plasmas are regarded as having a more film-like look.  For one, the contrast curve works different than LCD/LEDs.  If you've been a film shooter at some point in your life, you'll immediately understand.  The plasmas still have pure white and pure black, but between is a much longer tonal curve, and lower contrast.  It tends to look more like an old CRT TV.  There are an awful lot of people that feel that this is a much more natural reproduction.  LCDs/LEDs have whiter whites and blacker blacks(on the LEDs), but the whole tonal range is more contrasty, especially with the LEDs.  There are other people that prefer the 'pop' of these sets.

Also, plasmas don't have a refresh rate.  Not as such, anyway.  That makes them potentially smoother, but I recall there being a problem with plasmas producing jittery 3D a couple years back because of that.  I don't know if they've fixed that yet.

If you asked me what I preferred four years ago, I would have told you plasma.  And when LEDs first came out, I thought they were way too contrasty.  But the current top-spec TVs, like Sharp's Aquos with the yellow pixels, and Sony's XBRs with the TriLuminous displays, all render colour as accurately as a plasma set, while still giving the extra 'pop' that a lot of people like.  Those TVs can be set to be natural or to really pop, and will do both great ... previous sets only did one of the other well.

Wye wrote:
I don't really have a preference one way or the other about the tech.  Our TV is an LG LCD from a couple years ago.  It's more than adequate for our needs.  Picture is clear and sharp, colors and brightness are great. 

One thing I do have a preference on is refresh rate.  I can't stand the look of the 120hz tvs.  Everything looks like an 80s soap opera to my eyes.  I'm much happier with the 60hz tvs.

Beyond that.. whatever looks best in the store and has the right price is fine by me.

Wye, my TV can do 240hz and I promise you you'd love it.

That's because I turn off the motion thing that Samsung has (can't recall the name) because otherwise, movies look like SHIT to me.  I have some friends that prefer it.  Can't imagine why.  But anyhow, I turn that shit off and they look normal.

I was scared of buying a new TV until I  found out you can turn that off because like you, I hated the look it creates.

For scrolling text though, it's pretty damn awesome.

de BUEN PHOTOGRAPHY wrote:
It's actually the other way around LCD monitors are great if you have a dark room while Plasma screens with their higher contrast ratio do better in lighter rooms.

You can make an argument that LCDs fair better in lighter environment as they are less prone to glare and back light leakage is less apparent to the viewer.

Zack Zoll wrote:
Plasmas are regarded as having a more film-like look.  For one, the contrast curve works different than LCD/LEDs.  If you've been a film shooter at some point in your life, you'll immediately understand.  The plasmas still have pure white and pure black, but between is a much longer tonal curve, and lower contrast.  It tends to look more like an old CRT TV.  There are an awful lot of people that feel that this is a much more natural reproduction.  LCDs/LEDs have whiter whites and blacker blacks(on the LEDs), but the whole tonal range is more contrasty, especially with the LEDs.  There are other people that prefer the 'pop' of these sets.

well put. i never thought of it in tonal curves like film, but that totally works. makes me want to get my densitometer and graph paper out again...uh, not really.

GK photo wrote:

well put. i never thought of it in tonal curves like film, but that totally works. makes me want to get my densitometer and graph paper out again...uh, not really.

I'm thinking a spectrophotometer would be more appropriate.

Andialu wrote:

I'm thinking a spectrophotometer would be more appropriate.

nah, just feeling nostalgic/melancholy over film's inevitable demise. is there actually such a device? now i'll have to go find one and actually do that. dibs on 'the zone system for tv displays.'

de BUEN PHOTOGRAPHY wrote:
On a LCD screen, whether backlit by CCFL or LED the back lighting is on so the LCD membrane has the task of using its pixels to generate black to block light transmission which is 100% impossible so you have light bleed which in turn lowers contrast ratio.

Au contraire, LED-illuminated LCD TV displays modulate the LED illumination with part of the video signal to dim the backlight when low light levels are called for.  The contrast ratio can go out through the roof in a dark room - room illumination can reduce the effect through front-surface reflection.

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:
Plasma here. Love watching movies on it.

Haven't tried hooking it up the the PC because when you do that the resolution drops right down. So that might actually suck to watch the PC on there.

Howcome we have not got true LED TVs?

Even small ones would do but why not?

Cost, mostly.  Sony tried to run with an OLED set a couple years back ... it had a great picture, and was ridiculously thin.  I was actually concerned about breaking the jacks while I was hooking it up.  But it was something like 3-4 times the price of a base model LCD set, and about twice the price of an LED set, which was top-spec at the time.  And the top-spec LED sets were sharper, even if they weren't better in any other ways.

I'm not in the production side of the industry, but I would suspect that the price difference is about the same today, if not greater.  While it's true that OLED technology has improved, there has been an infinitely larger about of money spent on the R&D for LED-lit panels.  That means that even though OLEDs are cheaper now, LEDs are a LOT cheaper now.

For what it's worth, the top-spec TVs are all really great.  I figure that in another 2-3 years, the affordable LED sets will combine the benefits of both plasma and LCD/LED, as the top-spec sets do right now.  Once that happens, plasma will only be a better choice for those looking for the biggest TV for the lowest price.

Zack Zoll wrote:
Cost, mostly.  Sony tried to run with an OLED set a couple years back ... it had a great picture, and was ridiculously thin.  I was actually concerned about breaking the jacks while I was hooking it up.  But it was something like 3-4 times the price of a base model LCD set, and about twice the price of an LED set, which was top-spec at the time.  And the top-spec LED sets were sharper, even if they weren't better in any other ways.

I'm not in the production side of the industry, but I would suspect that the price difference is about the same today, if not greater.  While it's true that OLED technology has improved, there has been an infinitely larger about of money spent on the R&D for LED-lit panels.  That means that even though OLEDs are cheaper now, LEDs are a LOT cheaper now.

For what it's worth, the top-spec TVs are all really great.  I figure that in another 2-3 years, the affordable LED sets will combine the benefits of both plasma and LCD/LED, as the top-spec sets do right now.  Once that happens, plasma will only be a better choice for those looking for the biggest TV for the lowest price.

Thanks for that.

On a whim I hooked up the PC to the plasma via hdmi which is the only option for my TV if you use a computer as an input source.

I was right. The screen drops from 1080p to 1366x768 ..... And on some of the screens in Windows it was noticeable.

AdelaideJohn1967 wrote:

Thanks for that.

On a whim I hooked up the PC to the plasma via hdmi which is the only option for my TV if you use a computer as an input source.

I was right. The screen drops from 1080p to 1366x768 ..... And on some of the screens in Windows it was noticeable.

If you have a decent video card you should be able to adjust the resolution to match the tv. Video cards have been able to output high resolutions for over a decade.

A Lester II wrote:

If you have a decent video card you should be able to adjust the resolution to match the tv. Video cards have been able to output high resolutions for over a decade.

Tried that.

The manual for the TV says 1366x768 is its default setting for pc input