[zardell]

Plasma or LCD TV - that is the question....

Neither the OH or I truly understand the difference !

When I called into a few shops today to make enquiries and before I was blinded by the salespersons in depth knowledge (yeah, right) I gleamed that some sets have a High Definition input round the back........and this means..???? ....:confused: ...and why should I need that exactly ?? :(

All OH really wants to do is turn on Sky Sports Channel and watch a game of football or a F1 race without complaining about the picture quality.....

Truth be known, we want a bigger TV. Our little 28 inch seems so small by comparison.

All advice gratefully received.

Julie

xx

[southparkers]

Hi Julie

We've just bought an LCD (not sure why) but for watching sports i'm pretty sure your better with a Plasma, think its better for fast paced acton.

April

[swissmissdesigner]

I vote for Plasma TV, has a better quality.

[kirkandliz]

As a general rule Plasma TV's will be better for watching sports and fast paced action.

Then again most people would not tell the difference.

Would def get a HD ready TV - make sure it has HDMI connections at the back. NZ does not have any HD telly yet as far as I am aware but it is supposed to be coming. So if you are going to be spending a load of money the you might as well make sure it is worth it.
OR if you have a HD device like PS3/XBOX 360.....

Plasma's have a limited life span before the gas needs to be replaced - but I think this is in the thousands of hours of watching - check it out before buying.

LCD's generally have a better picture for viewing from all angles

Personally went for a reasonable quality LCD.

But a lot can depend on the make and quality - a good quality LCD will be better than a poor quality plasma

Other option if you after a big TV - is a rear projection TV - which I would normally steer clear of - but Sony have a newish range SXBRD (or something like that) which is a better quality picture than either any LCD or plasma I've come across.

[IanW99]

You might find this link useful:-

http://www.flattvpeople.com/tutorials/lcd-vs-plasma.asp

HTH
Ian

[jubjub]

Hubby wants an LCD, and he is a fussy blighter..... so I would guess its meant to have a higher picture quality.

Both are good, just depends what PB will be happy with, and if you want to spend the extra for the LCD

[StevieD]

The gas does allegedly need replacing in a plasma PB2, but it is after many thousands of hours of viewing, many hours of footy, "Corro" and any other junk you may want to watch on NZ TV :laugh

It is a case of seeing the tv's set up in a shop, watching what you want to watch and seeing which one looks best to you, both visually and pocketwise.

[BaldyBeardyBloke]

Good advice Mr D (as always). At the end of the day it probably comes down to what you can afford. With most hi-fi & tv type devices you get what you pay for in the end. Probably worth working budget out first then you'll probably find say 4 around that price that you olike the look of, then you're down to sitting in front of them and seeing what they do for you and which one tickles your fancy the most. Would agree that you need to ensure you have to ensure you have HDMI connectivity built in.

[suebeenz]

Don't know a whole lot here, but my understanding is that LCD would use significantly less electricity than a plasma display. (something else to consider)

[Jo Jo]

Which magazine (the UK one) has the following info about and pros and cons of Plasma, LCD and rear projection TVs:

LCD

LCD TVs offer the widest number of screen size options

Liquid crystal display (LCD) screens come to life when light from behind the screen is shone through the screen's matrix of tiny coloured liquid crystal cells. Signals control each cell, letting varying amounts of colour through, and a picture is built up.

Pros:

Screen-sizes LCD offers the widest number of options, from small portable sets to huge 40-inch plus screens.
HD ready Most new LCD sets have the minimum requirements to display superior quality high-definition pictures
Power Compared to plasma, LCD TVs consume far less energy. On average a 32-inch screen consumes 110 watts of power, a 40-inch about 180 watts.
Wall mounting Space saving LCD TVs can be mounted on the wall. However, wall mounting kits usually cost extra.

Cons:

Picture quality When watching standard definition broadcasts or DVDs LCD TVs often suffer from a whole host of digital side-effects such as ghosting, smearing and picture-judder. Our tests show that most flat-panel TVs fail to rival the best conventional CRT TVs when viewing standard definition material. But with the best CRTs no longer available our current LCD Best Buys are decent alternatives.
Black levels Many LCD sets don't do black well, so darker pictures can look washed out.
Viewing Angles Compared to Plasma TVs the picture can fade more rapidly when viewed from acute angles


Plasma

Great screen-size for that home-cinema experience

A plasma display is an array of tiny gas cells sandwiched between two sheets of glass. Each cell acts like a mini fluorescent tube, emitting ultraviolet light which then strikes red, green and blue spots on the screen. These spots glow to build a picture.

Pros:


Screen-size Huge 37-inch and 42-inch screen sizes are the norm - great for that home-cinema experience.
Wall mounting Space saving plasma TVs can be mounted on the wall. However, wall mounting kits usually cost extra and the bigger the screen the greater the cost.
HD ready Most new plasma TVs are HD ready and have the minimum requirements to display superior quality high-definition pictures.
Viewing angles Compared to LCD both the horizontal and vertical viewing angles are better on Plasma TVs.

Cons:

Picture quality When watching standard definition broadcasts plasma TVs often suffer from a whole host of digital side-effects such as ghosting, smearing and picture-judder. Our tests show that most flat-panel TVs fail to rival the best conventional CRT TVs when viewing standard definition material. But with the best CRTs no longer available our current plasma Best Buys are decent alternatives.
Power consumption Plasma TVs are power hungry and consume far more energy than rival TV technologies (see 'Use less electricity' for some energy saving tips). A 42-inch screen consumes on average 250 watts of power.
Weight Plasma sets weigh a lot more than LCD TVs (even those of comparable screen-size), so setting them up or moving around could prove problematical.
Cost Prices are falling but plasma is still usually the most expensive flat-panel option.


Rear Projection

Rear projection TVs beam the picture onto a mirror in the back of the TV, which then reflects it onto the back of a translucent display. There are three types of rear projection technology: Digital Light Processing (DLP), Liquid Crystal display (LCD) and Cathode Ray Tube (CRT).

Pros:

Screen-size Rear projection TVs offer the largest screen size options of all the flat-panel technologies
Price If you’re determined to get the biggest screen possible within a reasonable budget – rear projection will get you more screen inches for your money.

Cons:

Viewing angles Invariably the worst offender for poor viewing angles. Unless viewed head-on pictures can fade with alarming rapidity.
Brightness Pictures can look dull compared to other TV technologies.
Wall mounting It’s rare to find a rear-projection set that can be wall-mounted. Sets are usually too big and bulky.
Picture quality Just like other digital flat panel technologies, rear projection TVs often suffer from a whole host of picture side-effects such as ghosting, smearing and picture-judder.


https://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/audio_visual/reports/television/watching/lcd_and_plasma_tvs/lcd_plasma_tvs_essential_guide_574_103930_9.jsp

(I'm not sure if that link will work if you're not a subscriber.)

[markmurphy]

Don't know a whole lot here, but my understanding is that LCD would use significantly less electricity than a plasma display. (something else to consider)

Yep, it has to be LCD or you'll basically be drowning your grandchildren (no dramatisatin here!)

[swissmissdesigner]

Good post Jo Jo...!

[zardell]

WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!

What brilliant responses from all of you - thank you so much.

We can now make a more educated choice.

Two of the shops I went into yesterday offered us home trials for a couple of days on any TVs in the shop - can't see that happening back in good old Blighty !

:cheers

Julie and PB2

xx

[ElizabethD]

www.projectorcentral.com

There is a section on flat screens called HDTV solutions.


For those of us in this industry, this site is the most revered for it's unbiased reviews and invaluable information.

As for me, i would buy a front projector before either a plasma or LCD. You mount it on the ceiling and can get a 150" diagonal picture. There is nothing like it for sports or movies. The new home theater models come out usually in September so look for good deals in August. Buy online and buy from an Australian or New Zealand dealer so the warranty will be valid.


www.projectorcentral.com

[katandbob]

....or you'll basically be drowning your grandchildren (no dramatisatin here!)

Sorry I dont get the last part?

Julie - I can vouch for LCD, we got one for $999 32", from H & J's and its just as good as our Phillips one that we flogged to our Brother in law before we left the UK.

I suggest when your looking at each LCD (OR Plasma if you go for that)
That you look at each individual one - it all depends on the resoulution size too - cheaper ones tend to have less pixal quality - check the angles too, some of the more expensive models were worse for viewing at an angle, than the cheaper makes - so the trick is to do LOTS of research before handing over your cash - OH and Haggle - you have better barganing power for a discount with cash! and since they hardly sell many of them they dont like to loose a sale (well it worked for us)

Kat

[barryp]

IMO, HDMI is not particularly relevant here; we're many years away from widespread high-definition programming, and hi-def initial presence will be over a limited geographical area - via Freeview terrestrial rather than Sky. HDMI is a convenience for cable management, if your existing gear supports it.

More recent LCD units have black levels and colour stability comparable to plasma units. They are still more reliable and their imagers are cheaper to replace (merely expensive as opposed to extortionate). They're still not quite as good as plasmas on ghosting, IMO, but I'm not a video game player so I didn't care when buying a TV.

My tip is to lower the contrast on any model you view in a demo environment. At retail, vendors crank the contrast all the way up to magnify perceptions of brightness, and people respond to that initially. But this also oversaturates the colours (particularly light skin colours) and reduces useful life substantially, so try to make your comparisons with the contrast turned down.

So long as you get something reliable that has a picture quality you like, you can't lose.

[suebeenz]

Two reasons for HDMI are of course Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (two competing formats of next-generation dvd). If you don't have HDMI, my understanding is that they may play back in lower resolution, for copy protection purposes.

No idea if they even sell Blu-Ray or HD-DVD discs here in NZ yet. Certainly don't remember seeing them at the video rental store yet.

Probably be a while before anyone's buying these players here in NZ. I'm guessing that by the time you want to buy a HD player, you'll want a new tv anyhow :-)

[suebeenz]

Sorry I dont get the last part?



I think the extra carbon footprint of plasma, and the rising sea levels :-)

(btw - everyone seen 'inconvenient truth' film?)

[Questor]

I'd go LCD every time, but our initial purchase just before we moved out here was based on the fact that a plasma is MUCH easier to break on a nice long boat journey! (that and the insurance would have been an additional premium for a plasma!) But after reading up, I would have gone LCD anyway.
The "ghosting" you can theoretically get on flat panels isn't really noticeable unless you get an el-cheapo screen. Most LCD response rates are good enough now, and plasmas have less of an issue with that.

At the end of the day the important thing is to have a look at plenty of screens (Harvey Norman if you're over here) and see which looks best to you (just make sure they're using an HD source - you wouldn't believe that places like Comet in the UK demoed HD screens with badly tuned BBC!!!

Also, as has been said already, HDMI isn't that important at the minute, and most screens that don't have an HDMI port support HDCP over DVI. The only thing that wouldn't give you is sound, but really most people with a source needing HDMI would have some sort of amp I would have thought...:D

I personally like the Samsung LCDs at the minute and if I had to replace our excellent LG, that's what I'd go for

Jon

[suebeenz]

http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/465fd35c00fdead4273fc0a87f3306dc/Product/View/G9548

( Panasonic Blu-Ray Player NZ$2998 incl GST )

Yikes. A little richer than Walmart's $250 HD players supposedly on sale soon.

At those prices, several years before Kiwis buying HD players (and make it into the video rental stores).

[richard]

http://www.dse.co.nz/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/465fd35c00fdead4273fc0a87f3306dc/Product/View/G9548

( Panasonic Blu-Ray Player NZ$2998 incl GST )

Yikes. A little richer than Walmart's $250 HD players supposedly on sale soon.

At those prices, several years before Kiwis buying HD players (and make it into the video rental stores).

Doesn't the PS3 have a built in Blu-Ray player? Buy one of those for $1200 and you get a free games console thrown in :)

[Croft]

Doesn't the PS3 have a built in Blu-Ray player? Buy one of those for $1200 and you get a free games console thrown in :)

Certainly does, several friends have them now and they rave about the quality of the films, Sony were providing free copies of 'Casino Royale' on Blu-Ray to the first set of people to buy the PS3.

When our 10 year old Sony Widescreen Trinitron (not even flat screen, let alone flat panel, but still an excellent and reliable television) eventually goes we'll be going LCD. Plasma's remaining advantage is that per square inch it is cheaper, but LCDs are fast catching up and are far more versatile. I was told a while ago that Plasma was only a stop gap until LCD technology matured.

[jonSE]

No idea on plasma versus LCD

Bought a 32" LCD TV with HD tuner last year (odd bits are being broadcast in HD here in OZ)

We recently bought a PVR (Hard disc/dvd RW video recorder) to replace the UK settings only video recorder.

With the benefit of hindsight - we should have bought a TV (probably exactly the same LCD screen) but with only a standard definition digital plus analogue tuner thus saving around $500AUS and spent the $500AUS on a PVR with twin HD tuners.

I know it's a bit OT but for anyone thinking of buying a PVR - check that it will record a "timer recording" without having to be switched into standby mode first.

[aberdian]

Watch out when in a shop (and the big retailers are bad for this) - when they have a brand/model they want to shift quickly, whether it's for more profit or if they just want them out the warehouse, then they'll set them up differently to the adjacent TVs so that they look better. Check that the ones which look worse aren't set up through the SCART socket rather than the RGB (? I'm not a techy, but one of my friends works in a high end TV/audio shop and this is from a remembered conversation with him), which gives a lower quality picture. If they were set up the same way as the good looking one then they may well be just as good quality, but the shop makes less profit out of them. Allegedly Dixons and Comet in the UK are the main proponents of this...... Allegedly ;)

Buyer beware!

[IanW99]

Check that the ones which look worse aren't set up through the SCART socket rather than the RGB

This is not accurate the SCART connector has the capability to work with Composite Video as well as RGB (just most TVs don't have this option wired) and most TVs don't actually have an RGB socket (apart from possibly through the SCART).

It should also be noted that SCART is a european connector and is not common on equipment in NZ.

Still agree with the advise though that the picture source can make such a difference e.g. have they set the contrast or brightness to maximum etc.

For those looking for a HD TV ensure that it can cope with 1080 resolution, it it can't then it isn't true HD. A few years ago in the UK they would sell HD ready TVs that weren't in fact (true) HD at all. Haven't seen this practice in NZ but sure that there will be some models out there.

Ian

[Questor]

Yeah, but do you mean 1080i or 1080p?
1080i is an HD resolution, but 1080p will give you a much nicer picture - and you pay a BIG premium for a 1080p screen

And you don't NEED 1080 at all, 720p is all that most HD is broadcast in at the minute anyway, for future proofing it'd be good though :)

[Super_BQ]

I would go LCD if the screen was used for playing video games. Plasmas have a tough time displying still pictures and the image can burn in on the screen permanently.

My friend went from an LCD to Plasma and the improvement was worlds apart. Especially when having friends over where many will view the screen at an angle.

As far as HDCP (HDMI) goes. I wouldn't make it a priority at all in NZ. Hollywood has made it clear that they won't get hacked again by releasing the HDCP standard (over HDMI). HDCP has provisions for devices to talk to the internet right to the point that for each time you want to play the HD disc, it has to give online authorisation for HD playback. That is if the security is compromised by some hacker.

Besides having to buy a new DVD player that has HDMI outputs, I think the real issue is the content. Movies will have to be remastered from archived tapes to show the HD quality.

This was the arguement with Sony's SACD (which is pretty much dead). They were releasing titles like the Beatles and ABBA on SACD when it was quite clear the original master tapes couldn't show consumers a clear improvement in sound over current CD.

If consumers are going to see the benefit of HD, the content has to be there to support it. Not by releasing a few titles that are filmed in HD. It's going to take a very long time before Hollywood has enough new movies in the archive that are filmed in HD quality

Then there's the problem of getting HD content to the homes from TV station broadcasts. Even in N. America, satellite transmissions in HD are moot at best. They pale in comparison to the real quality seen at the broadcasters' end because of huge compression of the signal.

Here's a thought. If current DVDs are about 8.6 GB of data that yields 2 hours of 480 or 576P EDTV. Imagine how many GBs does Blu-Ray/HD-DVD hold? You can bet double that. Now how are we going to get that amount of data to the homes? This is a problem digital cable subscribers wanting real HD quality. It just doesn't exist because the infrastructure can't handle the bandwidth requirement. BTW, DVDs are alread compressed enough - a la MPEG2 compression.

BQ

[IanW99]

My post was really just trying to point out to other members to not just go and buy the first LCD TV that they see, they need to check out what they will want it for - The "HD ready" isn't enough IMO.

From 2006:
Sky has warned that most TV sets sold in New Zealand are not capable of screening high-definition pictures using the European format it hopes to adopt in the next 1-1/2 to two years.

Other broadcasters appear to favour 720p for action / sports and 1080i for still pictures, so both these formats seem like a good idea to me, and anyone with X-box 360 or PS3 will surely like 1080p (of course price will be a factor).

Ian

[Super_BQ]

Sorry for being bit off topic.

Sky has warned that most TV sets sold in New Zealand are not capable of screening high-definition pictures using the European format it hopes to adopt in the next 1-1/2 to two years.

I don't see where Sky base's that information on. Can you buy a flat panel TV that does not support both PAL and NTSC? These units have built-in re-scalers so whether it's 480P, 576P, 720P, and etc, the TV will rescale the lines to fit on the set # of lines on the panel. Also when we're talking digital, say good by to the problems of different line frequencies ; 50 or 60 Hz cycles used to produce the picture on an analog tv.

[IanW99]

It is because the screen resolution is only part of the issue.

The article I previously quoted goes on to say the following:

It is understood that up to 40 per cent of Sony plasma and LCD screens marketed as "high definition" would not work under Sky's proposal, which needs an anti-pirating device and special multi-media plug. TVNZ, TV3 and other networks also plan to introduce digital services, but have not yet finalised operating formats.

Mr Russell stopped short of warning consumers to put off buying new television sets, but said they should get written assurance from retailers that the sets were future-proof. Sky says it is too early to specify how the transition to HDTV would affect customers with incompatible sets. Industry experts said it was possible viewers watching high-definition programmes on incompatible sets could get a distorted picture.

Ian

[Questor]

I think the problem lies in HDCP as Ian said - although I dunno many panels on sale now that either don't have an HDMI port, or don't support HDCP over DVI. Our screen doesn't have HDMI, but does support HDCP over DVI, so IF (and that's a big IF!) Sky NZ decides to broadcast HD I'll be OK