42" TV - best prices?

b33r

aliEnRIK wrote: »

They do generally use quite a bit more power. And if a white emblem was left on the screen for 2 days or more you can be pretty sure it will have marked it to a degree

It depends what you use them for. When displaying a darker images they actually use less electricity than an LCD which have a pretty constant steady power usage because of the back light.

True it probably will have suffered some, more likely nowadays to be a bit of retention which can be got rid of by just watching something else for a few minutes. If I was going to be using a panel for constantly playing the same game or connected as a monitor I would probably go LCD for that reason.

I mainly watch films and some TV and the black levels, contrast and natural appearence of the image were most important factors for me which I why I chose plasma and I'd make exactly the same decision again as it is simply fantastic.

LED tvs will probably take over eventually but it will be a long long time before they are affordable above 42in

aliEnRIK

Im sorry but thats also wrong. They still (generally) use more electricity than an LCD. Even if its not displaying any picture.
Ive recently bought a sony 46W5500 and id put it against you pan for black level, contrast and movement anyday (But then its been very well calibrated too)

b33r

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Im sorry but thats also wrong. They still (generally) use more electricity than an LCD. Even if its not displaying any picture.

Well I've never actually done any experiments as I don't own a power meter but just going on what I read when somebody said the same thing to me as I used to have the same beliefs as you (I chose plasma anyway as didn't care about paying a little more to run it if it gave me a better experience). Here's one of the things I bookmarked at the time:

"How does the Power consumption of LCD tv and Plasma tv compare ?The power consumption of an LCD tv is virtually constant because they have a back light that is on all of the time. The back light can be manually adjusted but uses less power on a low setting and more power on a high setting. The modulation of the LCD tvs screen pixels takes very little power.
However Plasma tvs charge a gas to a plasma to generate light. The more light that is required the more often this is done. So it's usual for plasma tvs to require more energy on an image with high levels of brightness, and less energy on low brightness scenes. So the power consumption varies.
The energy requirements that are quoted for Plasma tvs are for full brightness settings. The effect of this is that lcd tvs seem to use less power than plasma tvs. But the power consumption of a plasma tv varies depending on the amount of dark and bright areas on the displayed image. Studies have found that when the viewed programs are mainly dark or on movies the amount of power consumed for plasma tvs will be lower than an lcd tv. However when the viewed programs are sports and cartoons the power consumption for plasma tvs is greater than on lcd tvs. When varied programs are viewed the power consumption is similar for LCD tvs and Plasma tvs. Future plasma tvs are going to consume less than half the amount power consumed at present." Source: http://www.digitaldirect.co.uk/articles/plasma-vs-lcd-flat-screen-differences.

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Ive recently bought a sony 46W5500 and id put it against you pan for black level, contrast and movement anyday (But then its been very well calibrated too)

Don't get me wrong LCDs are getting better and better all the time with each revolution and if calibrated properly the results can be very good but most experts and the geeks over on AV forums which I used to read quite a lot of still give Plasma the edge on those things. I haven't got the resources or time to do my own comparisons so decided to go with the opinions of those that do

aliEnRIK

Sony 40W5500 ~
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Sony-KDL40W5500/Calibration.htm
Calibrated ~ 106 watts

Pan' P42V10 ~
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/panasonic-tx-p42v10-tx-p50v10-20090602153.htm
Calibrated ~ 225 watts

Now I know the pan is 2" bigger but it was short notice. Even if the pan ran at half that it would STILL be higher than the sonys average

As for av forums ~ I post on there too and probably know a lot more about calibrating than most of the posters on there

b33r

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Sony 40W5500 ~
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/Sony-KDL40W5500/Calibration.htm
Calibrated ~ 106 watts

Pan' P42V10 ~
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/panasonic-tx-p42v10-tx-p50v10-20090602153.htm
Calibrated ~ 225 watts

Now I know the pan is 2" bigger but it was short notice. Even if the pan ran at half that it would STILL be higher than the sonys average

Not sure what the relevance is of that. I thought it was your claim that plasmas still use more power when there is no picture/dark image was what we had disagreed on?

If what i had bookmarked was true the quoted figures were always the peak output anyway so could be misleading?

aliEnRIK wrote: »

As for av forums ~ I post on there too and probably know a lot more about calibrating than most of the posters on there

You probably do, they seem to know sod all about LCD calibrating as they're all Plasma fanboys in my experience on there lol

EDIT: Also just to add, if it takes so much experience of calibrating to get a good picture out of an LCD where do you find the information, nevermind the fact knowing you even need to find the information in the first place unless you have read something about it. Wouldn't it be easier if they sent them calibrated? My Plasma pic was spot on out of the box although I did turn the brightness down a touch.