TV. Technological help required!

[Iwasgoodonce]

I think the TV is dying. It's a 32" Flat screen Toshiba that hasn't lasted as long as I think it should have!
Now, what to replace it with? One of them slim thingies I reckon but trouble is, I'm not in the know.
What's the difference between plasa and LCD? My main worry is I have a habit of playing the Xbox 360 for a bit then leaving it paused. I remember reading one of the above types being prone to having an image 'burn' itself onto the screen. Not good if I happen to pause a 'specialist' film either!!

Help a duffer! What do you use? Any recommendations?

TIA

 

[hamster]

Image burn-in is now solved on Plasma.

Essentially Plasma starts at 42" these days.

Plasma has better blacks in dark room conditions, more vivid colours and sharper fast moving stuff. LCD can do higher resolution (pretty academic as there's not much HD around), gives a finer smoother picture and uses significantly less power. However the quality of signal processing on either makes them even up.

Panasonic are the best in plasma, for LCD choose a Panasonic, Sony, Philips Toshiba or Samsung. Avoid the no-name stuff. You are unlikely to get any service support in future.

All the contrast ratio stuff and things are marketing puff. Like HiFi there's only your taste that counts. Ensure you have a decnt demo - bring along your own DVD disc or something.

 

[Xesh]

Personally I use LCD. I've got a Samsung and it has a good quality picture but it's getting on a bit as it's 3 years old now. I use it for my PC and playing games on my various consoles and I've had no trouble with it. I don't know how it copes with the PS3 or 360 as the most up to date console I have is an N64.

As an interesting note Samsung make many of the LCD panels for Sony.

 

[Andy B]

I recently bought a Panasonic 32" LCD TV (TX32LXD70), very good picture, built in freeview tuner & HD ready.

http://www.hdtvorg.co.uk/reviews/lcd/pa ... 2lxd70.htm

 

[Tallpaul]

Help a duffer! What do you use? Any recommendations?

Set your budget and go from there.

Unless you have a true 1080p HD source (which you probably don't, and even if you did would only be using for a fraction of the time) then i can't see you needing to spend more than £500.

The size you need depends on how far you sit from the screen; although my friend believes that biggest is best and sits 5ft away from a 52" screen and refuses to see that the image quality is awfull

I sit approx. 8ft from my screen and if i were in the market for a TV with occasional DVD/gaming use, i'd buy this:

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/p ... 199303.htm

I have the older version with less HDMI sockets and it's a bloody good TV. You need to play with the screen setting for each individual input i.e. I have a differant settings for TV, DVD & XBOX 360 and it looks great.

IMO any qaulity brand at the same price-point will give you comparable value. Although some will always argue about the Nth degree.

If you really want to get confused, visit www.avforums.co.uk

 

[hamster]

As an interesting note Samsung make many of the LCD panels for Sony.

Not correct, it's a joint venture. Also Sony have tied up with Sharp in a JV for the next generation.

While the Samsung and Sony panels have the same LCD cell, the backlight is very different as is the signal processing.

This Samsung story is a favourite one with their sales reps.

 

[legrandefromage]

(cracks knuckles)

Right - this was my career before being made redundant.

Plasma Flat panel displays were intially designed for static images and early models had great trouble displaying complex moving images like TV.

After a while they were used in high end home-cinema for a few years along with projectors and big quality CRT stuff.

LCDs were very expensive to make and performance was very poor from early displays.

A few years of jiggery pokery later, China has basically made flat panel LCD displays cheaper for all.


Then the fashion police came along and said flat panels are the in thing - so out went the 80 year old CRT design, in came the sparkly flat LCDs.


Plasma TVs still have a much higher contrast ratio than the current generation of LCD displays. This means that they are better at everyday stuff in a bright sitting room (however, all that glass makes a plasma VERY heavy and not so easy to install in the average home. LCD panels can be much lighter).


When buying your first flat screen, look for brightness and contrast information in the features list, a bit like:

Acoustic Solutions 42IN HD Ready Digital Plasma TV.

Resolution: 1024 x 768 Pixels.

Contrast Ratio: 10,000:1

Acoustic Solutions 42in HD Ready LCD Freeview TV

Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels.

Brightness 500 cd/m2.

Contrast ratio 1000:1.

Viewing angle 178/178 degrees.



Taking the two examples above, the plasma is capable of much brighter pictures but not capable of displaying high resolution sources such as 1080i HD.

The LCD can display high res stuff but not very well....



Both types of display can suffer from 'video latency' - this is where a screen can simply fail to keep pace with the information on the screen - football is perfect to demonstrate this as the ball disapears into a pixelly mess somewhere on the pitch - the better defintion the ball, the better the quality of display.

Confused? Damn right!

Quantity over quality -

big LCDs can be cheap but performance can be poor when displaying complex information.

Plasmas are almost as cheap but can be limited in resolution and performance can be poor.

Soooo....

Go to your favourite electrical store: ignore brand names (meaningless these days!) and simply stand back and look at what YOU think is the best picture for you.

phew...

 

[retrobikeguy]

Sorry - Hijack

so...........................while we are at it about gaming Tv's, what about projectors ??

got a xbox360 and ummin and arrin about getting one, just wondered !, anyone any experience with em ?

 

[stew-b]

Go to your favourite electrical store: ignore brand names (meaningless these days!) and simply stand back and look at what YOU think is the best picture for you.

phew...

but most on display are on shop display mode with crazy high contrasts etc...on my samsung plasma engineer menu there is a 'shop' option....

 

[legrandefromage]

you can still cheque/ check/ chzeq video quality though.