Plasma screens

[Slippery]

As Plasma screens come down in price, they are becomming a real option in consideration for my next Home Theatre purchase.

Are they the best picture available?

Cheers,

Slippery.

[JulesH]

Originally posted by Slippery
As Plasma screens come down in price, they are becomming a real option in consideration for my next Home Theatre purchase.

Are they the best picture available?

Cheers,

Slippery.

I'm interested to know what prices you have seen them at? Not seen any decent makes for less than £4000-£5000 :eek:

What about the maturity of the technology, i.e. dead pixels and burn etc?

[Slippery]

Hopefully continuing to fall as more people adopt. Would consider paying if they are the best around??????

[Cable Monkey]

They offer the worst picture quality of the formats presently available. At the highest price. The 'advantages' of a plasma have more to do with style and practicality, offering a screen size without using space like a CRT/RPTV or the setup and running costs of a projector. A good source will look ok, but not by any means approach the best other formats can offer. A simple indication of this is the ease with wich a 32 or 36 inch plasma screen could be produced. But they aren't because in terms of quality and price they just can't compete with CRT.

[nigel_williams]

I have to agree with Cable Monkey, they look nice BUT are expensive and the picture quality until recently has not been that great.

Yes you can hang them on a wall, a 36" CRT will weigh 80-90Kg so that's out.

Personally, projectors (although expensive) offer the best big picture quality.

I suppose it depends on your motivation for upgrade:
Bigger picture, go the projector route
Smaller box, hang on the wall, aesthetics, go plasma.

Either way, you need to spend £4,000-£5,000

[NeilS]

"They offer the worst picture quality of the formats presently available. At the highest price"

Advice like this is a little unhelpful, have you actually seen a decent plasma? I doubt you have as my Panasonic has a much better picture than the Sony trinitron CRT it replaced.

They have the best geometry of any format available, can produce realistic blacks (which projectors have a hard time doing), have no problems with convergence and are probably cheaper than some projectors.

Regardless of the format, any display will have a hard time blowing up poor quality i.e. analog TV or highly compressed digital pictures to 40" plus and making it watchable. The only way for a proper comparison is with a quality source and similar screen sizes.

Best advice is to book a proper demo in a quality retailers and make up your own mind from there.

[stolt]

I got my 42'' Plasma just before Christmas, as everyone has said the picture format is not the best and it does take some getting use to, it seems to struggle slightly to reproduce dark areas and flesh tones clearly, but saying that I'm really happy with it.
It also looks really cool hanging on the wall, all 3.5 cm from the wall!!!!!!

Get a demo from your local store...I'm sure you will make your mind up from that.

[Ridcully]

I was seriously thinking about get a plasma screen but with the number of logos and DOGs on Sky, I am very concerned about burn through as every manual mentions this.

[LV426]

Originally posted by NeilS
They have the best geometry of any format available, can produce realistic blacks (which projectors have a hard time doing), have no problems with ....
Absolutely right. Every display device has some sort of intrinsic flaw. CRTs are prone to poor geometry and convergence and voltage regulation bounce - things that Plasmas (and LCDs) are effectively immune from.
Which is "best" depends on your own ability to tolerate whatever is going to be wrong with your picture. Personally, I have a serious dislike for CRTs exactly because of those inherent shortcomings. To say nothing of the size/weight issue. I'm looking forward to the day when flat panel TVs cost broadly what CRTs do today in real terms. When that day comes, I don't think the shops will be able to keep up with demand.