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new HDTV questions

myDeaconmyhand said:
LEDs get rated higher than plasma for energy efficiency and black levels, plus they produce brighter picture. I've never read that the picture on a plasma is better, its just a personal opinion from owning one. I 2nd the Samsung plug as well, every place Ive shopped has recommended them first and mine has held its value for 8 months so far.
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LED's are better energy wise, that much is true - to the tune of usually less than $100/year depending on amount of use.

You've got it backward on black levels and picture quality though. Plasmas have always had a significant edge in black levels, with only the absolute top of the heap LCD/LED sets competing in blacks. It's not uncommon for $1,200 plasmas to beat out $2,000+ LED's in picture quality, and over the past 5 years basically every reputable review source has named a plasma as the best looking set every year. OLED sets are expected to be the first technology to be able to unseat Plasmas for picture quality.

LED's can be brighter, typically have matte non-reflective screens, are not subject to image retention (which isn't really a problem in modern plasmas but for some reason remains a selling point) and are usually lighter and thinner with smaller bezels. For extremely sunny rooms they are ideal, and some people prefer the more computer-like look of the screens.

Different strokes for different folks, but those are pretty much the trade-offs.
 
I bought a Panasonic Viera and heavy curtains for the sunlight. I can open/close the curtains when I want, and control the glare on the TV. Most of our viewing is at night anyway.

I would go a little bigger than you think you want. I love our 42", but would probably do 48" if given the chance to do it over.

And listen to DCDeac. In the history of threads like these, his advice is always solid.
 
I switched from a top of the line LG plasma (2003) to a middle-line Samsung LED (2010). After a month traded for a middle- line Samsung (2011) and haven't been happier. The LED picture looked "fake", mostly on network TV shows, and I couldn't get grass to look natural on sports. It also had "flashlighting", where on dark scenes the four corners would glow bluish. And blacks on a plasma vs. an LCD is no contest. Plasma just gets darker.
 
I get nothing but LED TVs and monitors now. Love them way more than LCD or plasma. Look great, run cool, use little power.
 
roland said:
I switched from a top of the line LG plasma (2003) to a middle-line Samsung LED (2010). After a month traded for a middle- line Samsung (2011) and haven't been happier. The LED picture looked "fake", mostly on network TV shows, and I couldn't get grass to look natural on sports. It also had "flashlighting", where on dark scenes the four corners would glow bluish. And blacks on a plasma vs. an LCD is no contest. Plasma just gets darker.
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I've noticed the "fake" look on big LCD's. I can't really describe how or why it looks different, but it's definitely there. I spent a good amount of time this weekend looking at huge tv's because my grandparent's in law are putting an 80 inch in their beach home. Not only that, but they didn't want surround sound speakers, so we ended up trying to find a top of the line soundbar, and ended up with a 1500 dollar Bose CineMate.
 
The "fake" look in LCD/LED sets is usually due to refresh rate issues. Important to keep in mind the two big issues in motion - frame rates and refresh rates.

Original 60hz LCD's suffered from jitter and motion lag. Watch a panorama camera sweep on an old LCD and almost everyone can notice it. Plasmas, due to the way in which they project images, suffer from almost no such lag due to refresh rates (under 2 milliseconds, that's where the 600hz subfield jargon comes from, true 1080p = 60fps/2milliseconds delay per pixel = 600hz subfield). LCD's can be as high as 13+milliseconds. So LCD's upped it to 120hz, and then introduced a backlight flash that essentially doubles that (kinda cheating) and now they call it 240hz. A few elite TV's I think even managed to go true 240hz and double that.

The problem comes when you throw in frame rates. For a plasma, you have no issue, so the only math you do is resolving a frame rate to a supported output. Movies are the biggest problem here. Most films come in 24 frames per second. TV's mostly refresh the screen 30/60/120 etc times per second. Very fancy tv's can accept 1080p/24 output from a Blu Ray player (if it supports outputting pure 1080p/24), but most are doing 3:2 pulldown. (24 fps * 5 = 120, 30 fps * 4 = 120, so you're turning 4 frames into 5, which means you repeat the 1st frame twice, second frame 3 times, third frame twice, fourth frame 3 times - you split them into pairs and you have your 5 frames).

3:2 pulldown is a feature you'll see listed on most TV's, high quality plasmas do this exceptionally well. Other material is usually upconverted to the tv's highest output - 1080i (interlaced, ie 30fps) material - tv doubles each frame for 1080p/60fps, etc. Complicating things is that some blu ray players and digital set top boxes will also monkey with the frame rate prior to outputting it. If you have a nice tv, always disable that stuff and let your tv handle it.

Back to LCD/LED's. Now you introduce these techniques of converting refresh rates on top of the math of converting frame rates... And the result is an effect that can make movies look like they were filmed with a hand-held camera - super smooth. Some people like it, others can't stand it. But for sports, it can be awesome. A 240hz top of the line LED playing showing a football game with a great feed is can have a "I'm right there watching it" look. Watching golf on my roommate's 55 inch top of the line Samsung LED was incredible.

Most videophile types will have one input on their LED for movies, set to zero smoothing and enabled 3:2 pulldown, and one input for sports that turns all the smoothing features on. Most average users I see simply leave on all the bells and whistles and get used to it. I will say that some cheaper sets stick the 120hz on the box and lack the hardware inside to actually be able to do all the processing - you get seconds of extreme jitter after extreme smoothness that, well, sucks. So avoid those.

If you mainly watch sports, have a bright room, want an ultra-thin bezel and a badass thin set and don't mind paying for it... LED is your ticket. If you're a movie buff, videophile, you don't mind a slightly less contemporary look and don't have sunlight pouring into you room - or if you want top-of-the-line picture quality for under $1,200 - Plasma is probably best for you.

And now I'm done with my super-nerd TV chat.
 
^What DCDeac said. I see the "fake" look when you move from a 60Hz TV to a 120 or 240 because those two can evenly divide the 24 frames. When we first got a 120Hz I was amazed how much TV shows looked like they were clearly filmed in a studio.
 
Man, I'm going to do some serious renovations if any future house of mine has too much sunlight in the living room. I bought my first large TV last year, a 42" Panasonica Viera plasma and I'll never go back to anything else.
 
I'm about 90% sure I'll be snagging one of those 50" Panny st50's once they drop a bit more in price. I've had a 42" business Panny plasma for the past 6 years that has done an admirable job but is just now showing some signs of flicker and has the dreaded purple spray on occasion. Even though it's 720p it still looks better than most 1080p sets. Was playing Rayman Origins on it with the gf last night, and it is still pretty stunning.

For some reason, as much as I'm into computers/electronics etc., I have a hard time spending over $1k on a TV.
 
DCDeac said:
I'm about 90% sure I'll be snagging one of those 50" Panny st50's once they drop a bit more in price. I've had a 42" business Panny plasma for the past 6 years that has done an admirable job but is just now showing some signs of flicker and has the dreaded purple spray on occasion. Even though it's 720p it still looks better than most 1080p sets. Was playing Rayman Origins on it with the gf last night, and it is still pretty stunning.

For some reason, as much as I'm into computers/electronics etc., I have a hard time spending over $1k on a TV.
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I hear you. I bought my current model for $700 at HHGregg, I thought about going over $1000 but it just wasn't worth it. I'm going to try to make this one last for at least 5 years.
 
DCDeac said:
I'm about 90% sure I'll be snagging one of those 50" Panny st50's once they drop a bit more in price.
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FYI, apparently this year all the TV manufacturers have changed their pricing structure and are going to be more strict on enforcing minimum pricing for retailers, so if you are seriously in the market for a TV,a 2011 model while they are still available is probably going to be the best deal you see for a while.
 
wake said:
FYI, apparently this year all the TV manufacturers have changed their pricing structure and are going to be more strict on enforcing minimum pricing for retailers, so if you are seriously in the market for a TV,a 2011 model while they are still available is probably going to be the best deal you see for a while.
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Link? They always say stuff like this and it never happens. The 2012 50" Panny ST has already dropped from $1,500 MSRP when it was released to $1,260 no tax free shipping. As more 2012 releases drop and the holiday season approaches, I think you'll see prices fall as usual.

There is just too much competition out there, and even the big brands can't sustain only selling through authorized retailers where they can enforce minimums. If they really do try to enforce such restrictions it'll probably just lead to even more BestBuy's closing.
 
DCDeac said:
Link? They always say stuff like this and it never happens. The 2012 50" Panny ST has already dropped from $1,500 MSRP when it was released to $1,260 no tax free shipping. As more 2012 releases drop and the holiday season approaches, I think you'll see prices fall as usual.

There is just too much competition out there, and even the big brands can't sustain only selling through authorized retailers where they can enforce minimums. If they really do try to enforce such restrictions it'll probably just lead to even more BestBuy's closing.
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http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/.../is-now-your-last-chance-to-get-an-hdtv-deal/

It's actually an attempt to help the brick and mortar stores by cutting off the supply to sites who sell for less than the manufacturers set prices.
 
Interesting. So just Sony and Samsung so far, and only on their upper-tier models.

Everyone wants to be Apple... I just don't think even Apple could pull it off if there was a table full of OSX computers of equal or even superior quality sitting right next to them at significant discounts.

I just don't see this working. Maybe what you'll see are steeper, less frequent price cuts as opposed to the typical trickle down of prices day-to-day... And just for those sets. This comes right when Sharp has just released an insanely good LED TV snagging the Elite name from the yet-to-be-defeated Pioneer... I just think there's too much competition for this to work.
 
RedSoxFaithful must have one of the sets with a slower refresh rate. Every movie I watch at his place looks like a reality tv show. When we watched Empire Strikes Back I was really disappointed when Chewbacca didn't get the final rose.
 
I'm a big fan of LCD/LED for my main room which is very bright, though my parents and my friend have Plasmas and they are gorgeous to watch. The only issue is, as previously mentioned, the glare can really ruin the experience. If you're trying to set up a home theater and the room is very dark, go Plasma all the way. You can find better LEDs, but they will cost much more relative to the incremental upgrade in visual quality that you get from $1k, 55-60 inch plasma. Otherwise, go LCD/LED, depending on your price and feature preference.
 
I would recommend at least 120hz. I have a 60hz and there can be some irritating buffer/lag while watching sports like hockey.
 
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