plasma or lcd

[encoded]

hi all

if I ever gonna buy a HD-TV than what should I pick?

plasma or lcd/tft?

grtz

[TNT]

LCD for quality, Plasma for size given the same budget. I'd recommend a 1080P set.

[toomanycats]

If you have money to thro away get plasma. The tube will last about 4 years and then you can get another one. If you get an LCD you'll get tired of it before it goes bad. If you really want to play get an LCD projector and then you'll have size and quality. Check out this one. Best bang for the buck.

http://www.projectorpeople.com/projectors/projdtls.asp?itemid=20244&itmname=Sanyo+PLV%2DZ4

[encoded]

If you get an LCD you'll get tired of it before it goes bad.

what do u mean?

[Dan]

They last a long time. Especially compared to plasma.

[toomanycats]

LCD's last a long time. Barring some circuit board problem, the panels are very durable. Just think how many LCD Laptop screens are still out there connected to antiquated computers.

[camj979]

They last a long time. Especially compared to plasma.

And that's a bad thing?? For peeps that don't have alot of money this is beneficial to them, like me.

[drfsupercenter]

I have seen LCD TVs, they often have pixelated pictures and you have to sit far away to make the picture look good.

I only have a normal "old fashioned" TV, but based on what I have seen at others' houses I can tell you LCDs aren't that good.

[BR7]

@drf
From what I understand if it shows pixelation it's uassualy the fault of the Cable/Satellite company.

[toomanycats]

Well I wouldn't go by that kind of empirical evidence. Take a look at the new SONY LCD Direct view TV's. The pictures are stunning. You should look at any TV you buy before you purchase, that's a given, but you should play with the color and brightness settings also to make sure you can adjust the TV to your liking. By default many manufacturers set the color and contrast too high so the TV's will "stand out" on the showroom floor. A quick way to set the color is too look for something RED in the picture and turn the color down till it no longer "bleeds " past the edges of the object. The contrast should be turned down to the halfway point and adjusted to how you think you would watch it.


"drf" not "DFS", O.K. Mr. Supercenter! I noticed your still online, cool man.

[toomanycats]

Try and view a DVD on the unit as the the Caleble/Satellite setups are usually pretty bad in the stores.

[Dan]

And that's a bad thing?? For peeps that don't have alot of money this is beneficial to them, like me.

When did I say it was bad?

I was stating a fact and answering that guys question is all. I have a 42" LCD, love it!

[encoded]

I have seen LCD TVs, they often have pixelated pictures and you have to sit far away to make the picture look good.

I only have a normal "old fashioned" TV, but based on what I have seen at others' houses I can tell you LCDs aren't that good.

thats because they dont broadcast in HD yet ... but if u will look again when HD is out the difference will be huge I think

no HD in Belgium so far ...

[RFBurns]

@drf
From what I understand if it shows pixelation it's uassualy the fault of the Cable/Satellite company.

You are correct!

The problem is that most of what you see on these LCD and Plasma units are analog artifacts. Lets keep in mind that for a majority of our lifetime, we have been watching analog displays that by nature, the display itself does not show the noises and other distortions that are within analog signals.

A good example would be analog cassette.

Remember the "Dolby D" symbol found on cassette decks? Dolby A, Dolby B, Dolby C, are all filtering circuits that remove alot of noises and distortions from not only the tape during playback, but also get rid of noises within the cassette deck itself, the head pre-amplifiers, the recording amplifiers, biasing amps, erase amps, capstan motor generated noises, power supply noises and AC mains noises, are all a part of the analog world.

When audio CD first came out, most of the material found on CD's were originally recorded on analog equipment. These CD's have such a high resoltuion that you could hear distortions and over saturation noises from the master multi-track tapes!

The same is with the LCD and Plasma televisions. It is a digital display. You can say that the old analog television is the cassette, and the LCD/Plasma display is a CD. Thus when viewing analog sources on a digital display, your going to get to see all the neat noise artifacts and distortions naturally embedded in analog video/audio. And the digital display wont discriminate anything.

When you feed the digital display with a digital source, ie HDMI, your feeding it a pure digital signal. Now if the broadcast originating source is feeding an analog signal into their transmitter, which converts that into digital, then you recieve it and watch it, you will see the analog noises digitized and your display will show those digitized noises.

The source, from broadcast originating to end user, the display, must be pure digital from A to Z in order to not see any distortions and noises. This can be experimented with by taking a DVD player and using its digital output HDMI vs a VCR and its composite output.

It wont be long when all sources from broadcasters, be it satellite or cable or terrestrial, will have their sources originate in digital form. Then we will see no more pixilization and other converted noises on our digital displays.

[nwg]

They last a long time. Especially compared to plasma.

What do you mean. Plasmas don't wear out. Some people have been known to get suckered into believing the gas in plasmas disappear and need refilling.

Plasmas have better picture quality so they are better for bigger TV's (I would say above 42" diagonal). LCD is fine below that.

Plasmas have one big drawback. There is a very high possibility that any DOG's (Digital Onscreen Graphics) or logos burn into the screen permantly. That would put me off straight away.

Make sure you send it a decent quality signal. Too many stores supply a crappy signal and make the picture look crap. For HD, HDMI, VGA or DVI is best. For anything else, I wouldn't use anything less than component.

SD material (standard Definition such as regular DVD) can show pixelation when sitting too close. The idea with LCD or plasma is to sit further back than with CRT and the pixelation will disappear as we cannot see it. CRT still has a better picture quality especially when sitting closer.

HD Ready TV's need the following:

Either a 1366 x 720 (720p) or 1920 x 1080 (1080i or 1080p) screen
HDMI or DVI (HDCP) for HD signal
Analogue component input (either through 3 RCA's or through VGA input such as my brothers TV).

Some HD Ready TV's do not show SD very well as the TV has to upscale SD to HD resolution (don't get suckered into upscaling DVD players as a HDTV will do it anyway).

A HD compatible TV will have a screen such as 848 x 480 (or 848 x 576 in PAL). It will normally accept a HD signal but downconvert it to the 848 x 480. SD signals should look better than on a HD Ready TV but it cannot show HD at its proper resolution.