LCD v Plasma

gameboy

Aldi are selling an LCD TV next week and they have given the reason for choosing LCD over Plasma as this...

LCD TVs have a typical lifespan of over 50,000 hours (25 years of typical use), Plasma is only approximately 25,000 hours. Plasma TVs are very fragile and can easily be damaged during installation. LCD TVs are lighter, user friendly and more robust and therefore much less likely to get damaged. Plasma TVs can suffer from ‘burn-in’ after prolonged use that can result in permanent ‘ghost’ images being visible on the screen – LCD TVs do not suffer from this problem. LCD TVs use less electricity than Plasma TVs.

What does anyone think?

I prefer Plasma as the best ones have 8000:1 Contrast ratio this LCD has 600:1. I think by the end of next years most TVs sold will be one or the other.

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

dynamo985

how much are they selling for?

gameboy

27 inch £599.99 Tevion

Picture-in-picture, 93mm wide, Picture freeze, aluminimum finish, 1280 x 720 resolution, Brightness 550cd/m square, 170 deg viewing angle, 16.7 million colours, Nicam stereo, 2 x 8 watt speakers built in, Infra-red remote, Full teletext with 254 page memory, progressive scan

VGA connector, DVI, 2 SCARTS, PC Audio, Auto tune/sort, OSD menu, wall mountable

684w x 493h x 93d (mm)

3 Year 'pick up, swap and return' warranty

27th December

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

RedDevil_UK

a mate of mine who is a salesman at comet says, LCD will take over from Plasma as plasma have to many problems... customers are calling out the techs to the plasma's all the time, for various problems
pixels locking in to one colour ie you get a bright white dot in the middle of your screen that doesnt go away...( not always white and can be anywhere on the screen)
if you leave your TV on a channel with a logo (VH1, Cbeebies etc etc) then this gets burned into the screen and can be seen whatever channel your on

i have another mate who has had 2! and got rid of both (obviously didnt learn first time lol)
i personally have a back projection TV and i have had 2 screens replaced for the same burn in problem.... lucky for me i took out the extra cover from comet. they replaced them both no problem... but the engineer did tell me that the screen would have cost me £300 if i had to buy it!!!

having said all that, the mate who had 2 plasma's and got rid, has now got a ceiling projector, and plays games from his Xbox on an 8ft screen says its the best thing hes bought (payed £1,999 for it)
having been and looked at it, thats my next TV purchase (i also have an Xbox lol)

Jaffer

LCD is better than Plasma without any doubt. Plasma burns gas to produce the colours resulting more heat. Obviously the risk of damage is higher. LCD is liquid crystal display which we are using for many years say watches, calculators, monitors, display panels and so. They dont produce much heat and they last longer.

Contrast Ratio 600:1 is the lower end I believe. Products like Sony, Lowe etc have much better ratio. End of the day, you will get what you have paid for.

No doubt LCD will take over Plasma very soon. Dont be surprised if most of the Plasma users want to get rid of theirs. We will find them on Ebay for £200-£300 by next year.

So dont rush - wait few more months and get an LCD with better resolution.

Every little helps and a little help goes a long way!

BGonaSTICK

Well I spent a couple of hours looking at LCD TV's at the weekend and IMHO they were all sh!t. Plasma screens weren't much better. I couldn't find one that I could bear to look at for more than a couple of minutes.

And I'm blind as a bat. I'll be sticking with my 3 year old Sony 4:3 for a couple more years until the next generation screens come out.

Jaffer

Hi Stick, I have spent weeks looking around and bought nothing yet.

That is why I said "So dont rush - wait few more months and get an LCD with better resolution."

Every little helps and a little help goes a long way!

PaulR

Agreed that LCDs are getting better BUT at the moment plasmas give the better quality of picture. Yes they do have the disadvantages of screen burn, greater fragility (not a problem once installed), shorter life and higher power consumption.

Set against that plasmas are cheaper, still have a better contrast ratio and are brighter. The problems with screen burn and life are not as bad as they used to be either. Granted these differences may disappear with better development of LCDs but we are talking about next week.

One thing I would say from personal experience is that when you start talking about big TVs (over 28") you really need image enhancement as you start to notice the lines/pixels otherwise. Personally I wouldn't buy ANY large screen TV (CRT, plasma or LCD) without it.

PaulR

Channel Hopper

Im with this idiot

Unless you want to fit it on a wall , or live in a bottle , get a tube - plenty around for half the price, are multisystem, include speakers, and last five years plus


Dont be an ass, the world still likes donkeys.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

jimbo

Most techies agree that CRT is still the best. My Philips with pixel plus is fantastic.

Jimbo

PaulR

Yup, gotta agree with that. I also have a Philips, a 32pw9618, and it really is the mutt's nuts for picture quality.

Pity about the weight though.

PaulR

steffan_st

Got a 13 year old Sony 29 inch,picture is still great compared to many other new crt-tv:s and better than all flatscreens.I would wait a couple of years with buying a flatscreen.

If I had to buy a new one today it would be a crt again,if I had to go flat it would be a projector but not a backprojector though.

jimbo

Get a stand for it Paul.

Jimbo

BGonaSTICK

LOL, or get the wife to hold it...

Channel Hopper

Theres a joke somewhere there


(Ill get my coat)

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Llew

Wait a bit for the new sets with a slimline CRT. They'll be about 38cm. deep compared to the present 60cm., and about a third of the price of an equivalent size LCD.
Should be arriving next year sometime.

Llew

BGonaSTICK

HaHa, that's what they always used to say on Tomorrows World!

Llew

LOL, I think I might be a bit optimistic for 2005, here's the details:-


http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/0/C9356DDB6...echnology+News

Llew

PaulR

Wife's not holding anything at the moment. Both hands are in bandages after having surgery yesterday for carpel tunnel syndrome.

Guess who's cooking the Chrimbo lunch now?

PaulR

BGonaSTICK

Ouch. Be sure to wish her a Happy Christmas and a speedy recovery from all at SCOUK!

... and don't forget to do the washing up as well...

AdinHH

Agree with the later posters.
CRT, Plasma, LCD (best to worst picture quality).

Traditional CRT sets continue to give much better pictures (and I'd stick to 50Hz versions for anything other than DVD watching at present. If/when HDTV comes along then 100Hz may be worthwhile).

The reason LCD has replaced plasma is mostly down to the manufacturers. LCDs are cheaper to produce and can be used more flexibly in multi applications such as for both TV and as Laptop/PC monitors. Overall, their picture quality is inferior to Plasma and definitely inferior to CRT.
LCDs biggest problems are a narrower viewing angle, some 'smearing' of fast-moving action, poor contrast in dark scenes (killer for Sci-Fi fans) and generally poorer colour rendering. That said, plasma has serious problems with heat, fan-noise, burn-in and power-consumption and as already pointed out, reliability/fragility.
Where plasma still holds on is in bigger panel sizes (bigger than 40 ins). Less than 40 ins is now dominated by LCD. LCD will get bigger panels pretty soon, so plasma is definitely on the way out. However...

LCD has those serious drawbacks which are limitations of its technology. All TV manufacturers are looking at something new, driven by those shortcomings of LCD, and within only a few of years (2007/8?) I'd expect LCD will start to be replaced by FED technology to give much better viewing angle, picture detail, colour reproduction, lower power consumption, etc.

If they were my $ I'd get a decent 28/32 ins CRT for 'normal' viewing and a projector for those special DVD/XBox/PS2 nights.

BGonaSTICK

Nice contribution.

Welcome to the forum.

gameboy

Think I'll cut a hole in the wall and mount a CRT with the back sticking into the other room!

That way i get a great picture and it the only advantage of Plasma and LCD screens.

What do you think? Good idea or what!

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

Channel Hopper

.

It would hang out the back into the garden in our house, these houses have no cavity wall, so that leaves the chimney

Fine until you light the fire

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

les74

I bought myself a 28 Lcd for crimbo and im very pleased with it dvd,s have never been so sharp and have so much detail and brightness progresive scan pip ectr used to have a nokia 32w/screen before one advantage of lcd ect no convergence errors like on crts and flairing with brightness and contrast (hope it dont breakdown after years guarntee runs out didnt want to pay nearly 200 for three years warranty).