LCD or Plasma advice please

ABH_3

pernes wrote: »

Hi, I want to purchase a 40 or 42" tv but can't figure out what would be the best between a plasma and HD LCD.

It depends upon what sources you'll be putting through the tv. Is the general reply to the question.

LCD TV FAQ
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222029

PLASMA TV FAQ
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=289947

What should I look for as a good spec? I also want to ditch my old hifi centre and use the tv as a media centre, is this advisable do I need to buy a theatre system. Could I plug in a hard drive and play my mp3 music and view pics through the tele? Sorry for so many questions but I am a bit green and would like a good tv and have a system which could play music around the house in different rooms, wireless would be great.
Many thanks

It's a big topic you would do better asking on the avforums as it depends upon what you specifically want. You could go the 'computer under the tv' route which means a 'media center' and the ability to do all of the above you require, plus surf the internet and watch\record tv content amongst other things. This is known as a htpc: http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=265 which is just a computer with a tv-card interface: http://www.mediapc.tv/index1.html http://www.extrememhz.com/htpcguide-p1.shtml

Then there is the 'media streamer' route which is quite simply, a hardrive in a small caddy that you attach to your computer and tv. Depending upon your connection to the player itself, you could network with your computer and transfer downloaded content to it. Or use it as a means to record tv http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=332 or even be part of a networked storage system incorporating the xbox360 amongst other devices. There are various options and it depends upon your requirements as to what you should be looking at.

HTH

Little_John

The topping up of the plasma gas is a bit of a myth. you need to remember that a plasma screen is split up in to tiny pixels just like an LCD each pixel is a seperate chamber now how big are these things? they are tiny so you would need to use some sort of needle if it was possible to refill them then seal them up again.

If I was buying a TV I woud look at I like to watch, football and other sports, playing games and watching movies from DVD and in the future blue ray plus the odd thing on TV. Plasma has the best contrast ratio and has better blacks so for movies the clear winner is plasma. Sports and high speed movement LCD suffers from motion blur I find it is getting less noticable with HD signals but the problem is still there. Plasma doesnt suffer from this problem as much if at all.

Yes plasma costs more to run in power.

Smaller LCD are better but bigger your better with plasma, I would start considering plasma as soon as I was looking for over 37" the flaws in LCD become more noticable the bigger you get.

Yes plasma screens are difficult to transport, due to the size and the fact they are made of glass the screen can flex and break if not transported upright and 50" plasmas come in boxes that a small family could live in.

poe.tuesday

you need to think about the size of the tv you are planning to get and the optinium view distance, if SD then the optimium viewing distance is 4 times the diagonal size of the screen or 5 times the hight (this changes depending if you have a 4x3 or 16x9 tv), if you have an hd set, then the optiumim view distance is 2 times the diagonal, so if you have a 42 inch hd set (which is approx 3.5 feet) then you should not sit any closer to the set than 7 feet away, any closer and you will start to see things you don't want to

you may say that it does not matter but trust me, it does, especially in the hd domain, it may show enhances images but if those images have any flaws, they also get enhanced, it's like sitting at the front row at the cinema - if you are one of those people then go for your big telly and sit as close to it as you like, if you are a back row sitter then measure out your room and work out the right size tv for your room

one more thing to consider, most programmes (apart from sky movies and some select channels) are still in sd, sd looks vile up-ressed onto a large hd screen

Inactive

poe.tuesday wrote: »

, sd looks vile up-ressed onto a large hd screen

Not on mine it doesn't, but that is why I chose it in the first place, to get a good SD picture.

mostly

if your going to be using a SD source then plasma is the way.

poe.tuesday

Inactive wrote: »

Not on mine it doesn't, but that is why I chose it in the first place, to get a good SD picture.

sd picture is made of of 575 active lines and each line contains 720 pixels, where as your HD tv has got (I presume) 1080 lines and each lines take either 1440 or 1920 pixels, what fills those empty lines/pixels if not either a stretched image or the pixels are doubled up which surely results in poor visual quality (well it does to me)

Inactive

poe.tuesday wrote: »

sd picture is made of of 575 active lines and each line contains 720 pixels, where as your HD tv has got (I presume) 1080 lines and each lines take either 1440 or 1920 pixels, what fills those empty lines/pixels if not either a stretched image or the pixels are doubled up which surely results in poor visual quality (well it does to me)

Well I don't deal with numbers when choosing a TV, I look at what I see, I see a perfect SD picture, sorted.

poe.tuesday

and what you see is what the screen is being fed at the time of purchase, in the case of some HD sellers, this is not what you would normally see at home and I can assure you, most of the sd images that are fed to your tv via your broadcaster certainly is not perfect sd material and certainly does not past the ccir (ITU-R) quality grading system that the ebu adhere to

Inactive

poe.tuesday wrote: »

and what you see is what the screen is being fed at the time of purchase, in the case of some HD sellers, this is not what you would normally see at home and I can assure you, most of the sd images that are fed to your tv via your broadcaster certainly is not perfect sd material and certainly does not past the ccir (ITU-R) quality grading system that the ebu adhere to

Yea whatever..I bought my TV on what I see on the screen via an SD source, the picture quality is superb, so I don't need numbers or quality grading systems to tell me what I can see with my own eyes.:rolleyes:

roddydogs

poe.tuesday wrote: »

sd picture is made of of 575 active lines and each line contains 720 pixels, where as your HD tv has got (I presume) 1080 lines and each lines take either 1440 or 1920 pixels, what fills those empty lines/pixels if not either a stretched image or the pixels are doubled up which surely results in poor visual quality (well it does to me)

Obviously never heard of "Upscaling" a good HD set will upscale to near HD Quality.