Panasonic Viera Plasma....58"

[GFootsXtreme]

Picked one up a few weeks ago. Absoulutely amazing picture and features. It does require a dark room because plasmas reflect a lot of light in a room. it's easily as bright as any LCD or moreso, but the reflections in a bright room would be distracting.

Setup a full surround with it, it is worth every penny, I highly recommend one if you're in the market for a flat-screen. Far superior motion tracking and quality than any LCD I have seen so far.

[Bisket]

Panasonic, and especially Pioneer, shit on LCD. Only the very high end LCD Samsungs are in the same league as Plasma.

[mrwho]

price?

[GFootsXtreme]

th58pz800u for about $2800 + tax, free delivery

there are many choices from panasonic but what i wanted most was their THX certified mode for viewing, which is great. Again, in a totally dark room THX shows detail you haven't seen before, otherwise you set it to a brighter mode for lights on.

pioneer is the flagship but not worth the price difference. LCD even the 120hz are no match for the 480hz on the plasmas. and the color, brightness and viewing angles are superior imo...i'm comparing to a very good sony lcd.

[captaincapper]

I've noticed that my LCD looks pixelated compared to the picture on my Plasma. Good thing about the LCD is that it is better in a bright room. But as far as picture, the Plasma is noticeably better.

[cuse_man]

I was looking at a plasma....

one was pioneer kuro 1080 when I looked at the refresh rate it said 60Hz

the other 2k less was a panasonic 50 720 but said 480 Hz....


For the guys that know about TVs... wanted to get the kuro, but why is the refresh rate so low ? is it different since it is 1080 instead of 720 ?

[Bisket]

kuros are the best on the market, wouldn't sweat the spec details.

[cuse_man]

yea but my comp monitor does 120Hz...... so I must be missing something on why the kuro is so LOW at 60Hz.... I mean thats a huge drop

[iggs111]

Originally Posted by Bisket23

Panasonic, and especially Pioneer, shit on LCD. Only the very high end LCD Samsungs are in the same league as Plasma.

sharp post..got myself a samsung and i absolutely love it, i think its the best out there

[dave nz]

Got a 40 inch top of the range LCD Samsung recently. Not really that happy with it. Main problem is when watching certain channels where their picture quality isn't great eg not HD the picture looks pretty average. In the shop looked totally different, now know they play recorded DVD's in the stores which is why it looks so much better. Did not know that before u live and learn.

[dhunter]

Originally Posted by dave nz

now know they play recorded DVD's in the stores which is why it looks so much better. Did not know that before u live and learn.

of course they do....and in many cases they use bluray

[GFootsXtreme]

Originally Posted by cuse_man

yea but my comp monitor does 120Hz...... so I must be missing something on why the kuro is so LOW at 60Hz.... I mean thats a huge drop

plasmas use a sub-field drive that runs at 480hz, so it is 4x faster than the LCDs. Subfield drive is the real measure of the plasmas refresh speed. (frame is refreshed 480x a second)

[GFootsXtreme]

Originally Posted by dave nz

Got a 40 inch top of the range LCD Samsung recently. Not really that happy with it. Main problem is when watching certain channels where their picture quality isn't great eg not HD the picture looks pretty average. In the shop looked totally different, now know they play recorded DVD's in the stores which is why it looks so much better. Did not know that before u live and learn.

problem isn't the TV...a SD signal blown up big enough just doesn't look that good.

Recommended seating distance for a SD signal is 3-5x the screen size while HD the distance is closer to 1.5-2x screen size. This causes a classic problem where one way or another you sit too close or too far for certain signals. Having seating distance in the middle is even worse as neither signal is optimized. I try to watch most things in HD so I sit close and if it's SD too bad it's a little grainy...but that's not your TV

[GFootsXtreme]

Originally Posted by cuse_man

I was looking at a plasma....

one was pioneer kuro 1080 when I looked at the refresh rate it said 60Hz

the other 2k less was a panasonic 50 720 but said 480 Hz....


For the guys that know about TVs... wanted to get the kuro, but why is the refresh rate so low ? is it different since it is 1080 instead of 720 ?

There's really 3 issues here and I'll quickly run down with my take on each:

1) Resolution. How many pixels on the screen...the more the better. 720p is not as good as 1080p. Most experts will tell you that until you reach a screen size of 50" it's hard to tell the difference. I'm not sure I agree but at 50" or above 1080p is a must, below that it's your call. If you love watching games on a great TV then get 1080p, if you don't care as much 720 is fine.

2) Refresh rate. How many times is the picture on the screen refreshed per second? 60hz = 60x per second. Human eye sees approximately 24frames per second beyond which the still frames appear to come together into what we call motion. Without rambling on here the gist is that LCDs as a technology suffer from a problem known as motion blur. The technology behind an LCD is such that when an object moves quickly across the screen it appears choppy or to "blur" instead of appearing to be smooth motion. The step taken to correct this was coming out with a 120hz model LCD, which refreshes 2x as often and reduces but doesn't eliminate blur. Plasma TVs use a slightly different measure for refresh...known as sub-field drive. This is the measure of refresh for a plasma and the good ones like the kuro and the panasonics have a 480hz sub-field drive. So it is far superior to LCD but that doesn't even go into how the technologies actually work. Suffice it to say that plasma is far better for motion.

3) But most important is LCD vs Plasma. It took me a while to get a handle on this. Plasma is superior technology. That is the first thing to understand. But it also suffers from a near-fatal attribute which is the issue of lighting. Plasma TVs by nature reflect all the light in a room...even just a couple of small bulbs in the ceiling, you will see it reflect on the front of the screen. So in a nutshell, you only buy plasma if you have a dark room you plan to keep relatively dark. Why? Because you will see the lights reflected right back at you from the screen. LCD absorbs that light, and therefore is far superior for most rooms. There is nothing more important than recognizing this fact! In all other respects a high-end plasma is superior to LCD. And I wouldn't take this to mean that you can't have a plasma in a bright room. a good plamsa is as bright or brighter than an LCD, but the technology is such that in a bright room you will see the LCD absorb the ambient light and appear brighter, while in that same room the plasma can look washed out if enough light is let in.

Buying a Kuro or Pioneer Pro imo is more cash than you need to spend. A Panasonic will more than suffice

[hblocal]

Just letting you guys know for a great deal, costco has a panasonic 50" 1080p plasma for 1300. Best deal i've seen on a 1080p plasma so far, just bought it yesterday and it is awesome. You have to have a membership to costco, but figured those who have one would like to know about the deal.