Thread: Plasma TV's, who has'em and have you had any Issues?$2

So Boxing day is soon approaching and I've been working my ass off the past month. Time to treat myself to a nice new television. I'm still on some sort of budget ($500-$800, maybe $1000 if it's an unreal deal)) and I'm looking to get a minimum 50" TV.
I could get a decent LCD tv, but only 40"-46", but I am NOT going that "small".
Plasma TV's seem to be within my budget, Im just wondering if anyone has purchased a Plasma recently and if you've had any real problems/issues. I've done some research already and it seem like the first 200 hours of opperation are the most crutial (regarding burn/ghost images), has anyone experienced this? My room has no super bright lights, so glare shouldnt be a problem, and as for electricity demands, I guess LED tv run (~$17/year) LCD ($19/year) and plasmas ($22/year) to opporate.

Basically, who has a Plasma TV, and what is your experience with it so far? (good & bad)
Any additional info would be great.

Thank and happy holidays!

ps... I have no idea why it says $2

I got a samsung 50inch plasma I payed about $2200 about 5 years ago for it. Got a steal was originally about 3200 lol. Best tv ever. Has tonssss of burn/ghost protection even has a setting to help get rid of it if you have any. Never had a problem with it.

Go Lcd... I have a 47 LG its nice and has not given me any problems.

I've had a 50" Panasonic S-Series Plasma for 2 years now. Zero problems and I absolutely LOVE it. I find plasma to have more life-like colour than LCD and it also renders motion much better than LCDs IMO. All of the old "issues" that plasma screens may have had were solved years ago. My son plays games on it and burn-in/image retention has not been a problem. The S-Series has a good anti-reflective coating that works well and these coating have likely improved even further over the past 2 years. You will also hear that they run hot - not really true any longer, not enough to be an issue. LCD looks better in the showroom because it appears brighter (known as torch mode) under the harsh lighting. You cannot view a TV in your home on those settings. In real-world use in your home a plasma is plenty bright. BTW- a bright showroom with flouescent lighting is probably the WORST place to critically view a TV. Plasmas DO use more electricity, although improvements have been made. This is their only downside IMO. In the catagories that matter (to me) plasma wins. In contrast/black levels, colour accuracy, viewing angles, response time (rendering smooth motion). Don't let someone talk you out of a plasma based on 5-year old information. Do your research!

Now, if you're talking about a LED backlit LCD, that's a different decision than the LCD-Plasma debate. But those are pricey panels, and you stated that you are looking for good value so I left those out.

Originally Posted by OldFart

I've had a 50" Panasonic S-Series Plasma for 2 years now. Zero problems and I absolutely LOVE it. I find plasma to have more life-like colour than LCD and it also renders motion much better than LCDs IMO. All of the old "issues" that plasma screens may have had were solved years ago. My son plays games on it and burn-in/image retention has not been a problem. The S-Series has a good anti-reflective coating that works well and these coating have likely improved even further over the past 2 years. You will also hear that they run hot - not really true any longer, not enough to be an issue. LCD looks better in the showroom because it appears brighter (known as torch mode) under the harsh lighting. You cannot view a TV in your home on those settings. In real-world use in your home a plasma is plenty bright. BTW- a bright showroom with flouescent lighting is probably the WORST place to critically view a TV. Plasmas DO use more electricity, although improvements have been made. This is their only downside IMO. In the catagories that matter (to me) plasma wins. In contrast/black levels, colour accuracy, viewing angles, response time (rendering smooth motion). Don't let someone talk you out of a plasma based on 5-year old information. Do your research!

Now, if you're talking about a LED backlit LCD, that's a different decision than the LCD-Plasma debate. But those are pricey panels, and you stated that you are looking for good value so I left those out.

Jebus!!! Thank You!!.
Re. LED tv's, they are pretty damn nice, but ya, they are a little out of my current price range. And ya, I DID notice how bright the LCD's looked in the showroom (and was almost a selling factor), good to hear that its all for show, and not really practicle in the home. With all of the Plasmas being produced now adays I was sure that they would have taken care of all the old "issues".
Thanks, now the I just to wake up early.....Doors open at 6am Monday

I have these:
Samsung 47" LED - Paid $770 no tax
Samsung 51" Plasma - Paid $530 w/tax
Sony Bravia 32" LCD - Paid $390 w/tax

Both Samsungs are about a month old. The Sony is 3 years old.
The Plasma is a beast. 51 inches of HD thrust. Plasmas are cheaper and they come in large sizes!
Just make sure to get a good brand, and if posible buy from amazon.
My 46" led had bad pixels, but i called Amazon, and they sent me a new tv! Plus you avoid paying sales tax.

Yeah, anyways i like my plasma... but my go-to tv is the led.

The issues I had with the plasma were slight burn in and glare due to the window in my living room. But it was an older model (2006 I believe) and as oldfart stated, they have made improvements in this area. The only other remaining issue is the weight difference. If you're gonna wall mount it, they usually require additional supports to be wall mounted. I dont think they can do much for weight reduction due to the materials needed to build them. It's really not a big deal, though. I went LED a while ago and havent looked back. The plasma still did produce better blacks but the LED doubles as a painting on the wall when I put a still image on it.

Never had a plasma, my uncle has one its a 60+ inch and it has burn in protection and is still crisp. LED is the best quality and 120hz up. Check out logicbuy.com

plasma TVs have refresh rates in the 600+ Hz area right out of the box. the picture quality is way better (more black means more color depth). they are cheaper by a good amount as well. however, they burn power like a sum*****. that is the only reason to go against one. seriously.

i plan to buy a plasma to replace my basement (man cave) TV instead of another LCD like my upstairs. i havent found any good reasons to go LED yet.

I guess some Plasmas today are Energy Star certified/qualified (or something like that). Basically, if you have a super white image (eg: clouds), the energy comsuption will spike, and the reverse will happen if you're watching say..... the Dark Knight. In the end, it all averages out to only a couple more dollars than LCD and LED televisions.

Here she is.
LG PV400 50" Plasma.......behind my previous portable 17" LCD TV (~5 years old, served its purpose during college)


Still getting used to it, everytime I walk in my room, I'm like, HOlY $HIT!

Congrats on the purchase! Not my first choice in plasmas (Samsung and Panasonic are kings in this category), but I think you'll be happy with it nonetheless.

When it comes to picture quality, the rule of thumb is still plasma > LCD. All the "new technology" they've been stuffing into LCDs is to try to compensate for their shortcomings vs. plasma.

120hz and 240hz refresh rates were created to try to make up for the motion blur inherent to LCDs that aren't present on plasmas. The good is that they HAVE greatly decreased the blur. The bad is the way they do it leaves the picture with that "soap opera" or "behind the scenes/home camera" kind of effect. The footage doesn't look like it was recorded with a professional camera. This will be personal preference, but I really can't stand how that looks.

LED is merely a form of back-lighting for LCD, not a new form of TV picture/technology altogether. It is used to try and make up for the lack of brightness and contrast inherent to LCD vs. plasma. Again, while it HAS greatly improved the picture, in most cases, it STILL doesn't hold a candle to plasma.

Most of the downfalls to plasma TVs have been eliminated by now. Ghosting can still happen, but is very short lived. A few minutes of watching something else makes it disappear on its own. Burn-in, on the other hand, while still possible, is very difficult to do with today's plasma TVs. To truly burn in an image, you'd really have to go out of your way and try to do it on purpose (i.e. leave a stationary image on the TV for a day or so). To top it off, there are built in features to get rid of any ghosting or burn-in should you some how manage to pull this off. Energy wise, there are plenty of Energy Star rated plasma TVs out there (even my 1.5 year old Samsung), and they use up only slightly more energy than LCDs today. Another thing to keep in mind when looking at the power consumption on TVs is that LCDs are static on usage, where as the amount of energy a plasma TV is using depends on the image at the moment. The brighter the picture (more whites, etc), the more power it uses. When the image is dark, or the screen goes black, virtually no power is being used. This can skew some of the stats and make LCDs look like they're way more efficient then they really are compared to plasmas.

I bought my 50" Samsung plasma for $550 last spring, and I absolutely love it. Even though it's only 720p, I've left people mesmerized when I pop in a Blu-ray like Avatar or Sin City, and let them watch a few minutes of it. The picture is insanely sharp, and the colors (well...in the case of Avatar, anyway) are rich with contrast. I rarely play video games, but when I do, I'll end up playing for at least an hour (i.e. full regulation games on NBA 2k, which are about an hour each), and while I've seen image retention from the scoreboard, it's gone within minutes of flipping on the TV. I periodically use the "pixel scrub" for the hell of it, but have yet to use it because I HAD to due to burn-in/image retention. There's no question there's some glare on the screen, but it's never been to the point where it ruins the watching experience for me, even though mine's right next to a window. Once the picture comes on, it's bright enough that the glare isn't really much of an issue. However, this will depend greatly on how bright your room gets.

Some simple break in procedures for the first couple hundred hours of use. Keep the cell light and brightness levels low, as this is when the phosphors are new and unstable, thus burn in is most likely to happen. This is especially true for whites, which is why you want to keep the brightness down for a while. Don't leave anything on with a static logo for long periods of time initially. You want all the phosphors to get evenly exercised in the beginning till they harden. There's a couple easy ways to do this. If you have an Xbox, you can play music on it (I have my computer's portable back up hard drive attached to mine via USB) and set the player to full screen so that the crazy, colorful psychedelic kaleidoscope thing takes up the whole TV screen. The rich and constantly changing colors will really give the new phosphors a good work out. Otherwise, if you don't have an Xbox, or don't want to leave it running too long, you can leave the TV on the Cartoon Network. Just make sure you go through your TVs menu to "zoom in" on the picture so that the CN logo is off the screen. Again, being that most of the cartoons not only display a lot of colors, but also keep them changing at a rapid pace, it's a good workout for your TV.

Lastly, when your TV is broken-in, and you're ready to get the most out of the picture quality, hop over to avsforum.com and look up the best calibration for your model TV. There are a lot of mega nerds over there that will give you the exact run down through the menus on the way to achieve the best picture possible for your model TV. Also an excellent place to gather more info and opinions on anything home theater related.


EDIT:

Originally Posted by Colossus

ps... I have no idea why it says $2

Crap. And here I thought you were giving out $2 for input and advice. Now I typed that all out for nothing!

Originally Posted by RareGMFan

120hz and 240hz refresh rates were created to try to make up for the motion blur inherent to LCDs that aren't present on plasmas. The good is that they HAVE greatly decreased the blur. The bad is the way they do it leaves the picture with that "soap opera" or "behind the scenes/home camera" kind of effect. The footage doesn't look like it was recorded with a professional camera. This will be personal preference, but I really can't stand how that looks.

if you go into the settings on the TV (usually in the picture section) you can turn this effect off. on my LG it is called 'tru-motion'. turn it off and it acts just like any other regular TV. i hate this effect as well. my parents just bought a new TV and left it on since they dont know any better. i was over there on christmas and tried to show them the difference between the two settings and they just didnt see it. i got frustrated and left theirs with it on and stopped watching because it was annoying me.

The only thing I don't like about plasmas is the glare. LCD and LED have a matt finish and plasmas usually have a high gloss finish. I think plasmas have the best picture and if you have a dark room plasmas are the best bang for the buck.

close your blinds. no one likes sunlight anyway.

i love my 50" plasma best 200 dollars ever spent on a new tv. Its a samsung

the black and refresh rate blows my mind


whats sad is it just doesn't seem big to me anymore after a half a year, and neither did my 42inch last year or the 37inch the year before. welp time for an 82 inch if i can afford it.

Originally Posted by Colossus

Here she is.
LG PV400 50" Plasma.......behind my previous portable 17" LCD TV (~5 years old, served its purpose during college)


Still getting used to it, everytime I walk in my room, I'm like, HOlY $HIT!

CONGRATULATIONS !

That's quote a step up for you. My 50 plasma replaced a 27" RCA CRT. 2 years later, it still blows me away. Happy viewing!

Originally Posted by Bio248

if you go into the settings on the TV (usually in the picture section) you can turn this effect off. on my LG it is called 'tru-motion'. turn it off and it acts just like any other regular TV. i hate this effect as well. my parents just bought a new TV and left it on since they dont know any better. i was over there on christmas and tried to show them the difference between the two settings and they just didnt see it. i got frustrated and left theirs with it on and stopped watching because it was annoying me.

I know you can shut off the feature, but if you do, you're right back to square one with the motion blur issues. So basically, with LCDs, you either have to live with the motion blur/ghosting, or live with the "soap opera" effect of higher refresh rates.