All this time wanted a Plasma, now i'm stuck.

I

itsallgood

Guest
Hi everyone

I've been looking into getting a Panasonic PX600 for ages, was actually going to buy it tomorrow -- spent all day looking round shops for best deals, and today, check on here and there is some crazy problem with "purple snakes".

Anyway, thinking about it for a bit, i dont want to have to be worrying all the time about keeping skyone logo on for more then a few hours, so thought i'd look into an lcd instead.


My mate has a really nice samsung lcd, looks great to me, no blurring or any of the other stuff you hear about plasma vs lcd threads, im happy with way it looks, we just really wanted a 42"

Do lcd even come in 42?? and what would be considerd "good" for under the £1400 mark?

Thanks very much for any replies, i was really hoping to get one tomorrow, but i'll prob have to spend months reading up on lcds now lol

Cheers.
 
The Toshiba 42WLT68 seems to be a popular choice, but could be just over your £1400 budget.
 
Thanks man, i'll look into it. :)


I'm not plannning on getting HD just yet, so i need to find an lcd that shows good quality SD, (again, this could just be a plasma vs myth, as my mates lcd looks fine on SD)

Cheers.
 
Plasma vs LCD gets blown way out of proportion on these boards, but I have to say, the Samsung LCDs are poor to average at best with SD in my opinion, with the BRAVIAs and Toshiba WLT68's being the best I've seen from LCD so far. (with the Tosh leading by quite a bit, in my opinion)
 
If you wanted the PX600 you should go for it. Ive never had a plasma, both of my LCD's have been Panasonic, the 500 and now a 600. Unfortunately they dont come in that large a size as LCD's, but Ive heard the PX600 is superb. I also thought that plasma screen burn was a thing of the past with the recent Pioneer and Pannys?
 
Any specific reason for the PX600 ? The PX60 is the exact same panel, it just has slightly poorer speakers (never used by people with AV surround systems) and an SD card slot IIRC. Apart from those PX600's are marginally better looking but much more expensive :confused:

Check HERE for good prices, free delivery and, if you're quick, the free 5yr warranty :smashin:
 
42" sharp xd1e is about £50 under your budget before discount codes, so another one to think about!
 
I was in the same boat as you and have look at almost all the 40" sets avavliable but settled on either a Sony or samsung

HERE IS THE SONY

AND THE SAMSUNG

i have read that Sony now own Samsung and the Samsung set i've listed is close to the forth coming Sony V 2500 sharing many internal parts.
Sony fans bring on the flames :arty:

Sony don't own Samsung, they have a joint venture to make LCD panels - note this is just the glass - the electronics and cases are made by each manufacturer respectively and so the screens have very different performance characteristics.

I'd imagine the new Samsung will use the same glass as the Sony v2500 so that's right at least.

You can get the Sony 40w2000 with full 1080p resolution and 2 HDMIs for £1480 - alot more for not much more than the 40v.
 
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Hi all

I have been looking at a new tv for some time and have pretty much decided on a LCD so I am now at the same point as itsallgood. (sorry for a minor hijack ... but it should help you make up your mind if we get some good responses)

I have been looking closely at the 40" 1080p models and am really struggling to pick a winner. The w2000 (Bravia) and F7 (Sammy) and XD1E (Sharp) are all pretty much around the £1500 mark and I could stretch to that and the x2000 (Bravia) is a well up towards £1900.

Would anyone who knows be so kind as to break down the differences ... I am slowly working my way through the 100s of pages on each model but this is gonna take some time and if I new the key differences I was looking at it would help me focus my reading and searches ...

Things that seem useful (to my inexperienced lcd knowledge) is the number of inputs that will accept 1080p.
SD quality ... Would love to splash out on a Blu-ray too ... but if I am honest that ain't gonna happen soon so I don't want my next few months viewing to suffer.
Wall-mountable is a key option as I am going to do some serious re-jigging of my room centred around the tv.
HMDI version seems less significant to me as the 1.3 standard doesn't offer any visual improvements (right??) and I have my own seperate audio kit.

Any help and advice greatly appreciated

Sam
 
Whatever you get, make sure you check out the promotional code thread on here. Lots of codes for currys, comet and dixons. Some people are getting silly deals on there at the moment, might just bring that tele you want down to the price you want to pay :)

http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=410992

The codes to the end of the thread are obviously the most recent and give the best chance of working.
 
Hi everyone

I've been looking into getting a Panasonic PX600 for ages, was actually going to buy it tomorrow -- spent all day looking round shops for best deals, and today, check on here and there is some crazy problem with "purple snakes".

Anyway, thinking about it for a bit, i dont want to have to be worrying all the time about keeping skyone logo on for more then a few hours, so thought i'd look into an lcd instead.


My mate has a really nice samsung lcd, looks great to me, no blurring or any of the other stuff you hear about plasma vs lcd threads, im happy with way it looks, we just really wanted a 42"

Do lcd even come in 42?? and what would be considerd "good" for under the £1400 mark?

Thanks very much for any replies, i was really hoping to get one tomorrow, but i'll prob have to spend months reading up on lcds now lol

Cheers.

I strongly recommend the Pioneer PDP.

http://www.digitaldirect.co.uk/products_moreinfo3/index.asp?product_id=11451

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/index~modelcode~PIO-PDP427XD.htm


Believe it or not I am neural between LCDs and PDPs.

The have been significant development on both LCD and PDP display technologies over the past 10 years, yet both sill have unsolved issues. By saying that, I have to point out that LCDs have higher issue rate then modern plasmas.

I have recommend LCD to people over the past year or so and they all been very happy with it. The fact is that when buying a LCD is a bit of a gamble. You might get problems that others might not have. For example, there is a high possibility of dead pixels, backlight bleeding and mura effect.

Most stores don’t classify backlight bleeding as a faulty (unless it’s extensive) and not everyone covers dead pixel either.

So it’s up to you. You can take the risk are do all others (including me) and get a LCD or, just buy a PDP.
 
I was in the same boat as you and have look at almost all the 40" sets avavliable but settled on either a Sony or samsung

HERE IS THE SONY

AND THE SAMSUNG

i have read that Sony now own Samsung and the Samsung set i've listed is close to the forth coming Sony V 2500 sharing many internal parts.
Sony fans bring on the flames :arty:


Sony and Samsung joined forces to produce one of the largest LCD manufacturing plant in the world called S-LCD and it’s located in South Korea. Both companies poured billions into developing advanced LCD panels and its totally worth it.


Thanks to the hard work by both teams; S-LCD produced an LCD that simple the best for motion video called S-PVA. S-PVA has wider color range and viewing angles, along with increased contrast, deeper blacks and low response time (8ms GTG).



Even though they both Samsung and Sony use S-PVA, Sony BRAVIAs are superior to Samsung in every way. The Sony BRAVIAs use a very advanced image processor called BRAVIA. The BRAVIA engine enhances contrast, color, black levels and its scaling and de-interlacing capabilities are also very impressive.



What’s more is that the BRAVIA “V” series uses the next generation CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) for backlighting, this increases color gamut to display more vibrant, natural looking images.


Click here for more info
 
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I have to point out that LCDs have higher issue rate then modern plasmas.
That really just depends on what "bothers" you about image quality though. I bought a Panasonic Plasma earlier in the year, and found it unwatchable due to how badly it handled motion (green trails behind objects, blue/yellow flashes with high contrast changes) yet I have no problem with how motion is on the latest BRAVIAs (V series at least) or the Toshiba WLT68 LCDs.

I have recommend LCD to people over the past year or so and they all been very happy with it. The fact is that when buying a LCD is a bit of a gamble. You might get problems that others might not have. For example, there is a high possibility of dead pixels, backlight bleeding and mura effect.
It is possible for Plasmas and DLPs to have dead pixels too. (and CRTs can have a similar problem - the last CRT I owned had a black "pixel." One spot was permanently black on the screen)

Dead pixels are blown way out of proportion too. It depends on the panel type, but I've got a pixel stuck red on my Toshiba WLT68, and unless I've actually got a test pattern up, looking for it from a foot or two back, I can't even see it. Not once have I noticed it when using the TV normally at all.

Most stores don’t classify backlight bleeding as a faulty (unless it’s extensive) and not everyone covers dead pixel either.

So it’s up to you. You can take the risk are do all others (including me) and get a LCD or, just buy a PDP.
"Most stores" ? I've only seen one post here complaining about a retailer (EmpireDirect) refusing to take an LCD back for backlight bleeding. This is not a common issue either - I've bought almost 10 LCDs in the last year or so, and not one has suffered from it. (and only two had dead pixels - one each)

While Pioneer may not have the motion issues Panasonic Plasmas have, they are very susceptible to burn-in, as they are numerous topics on these forums alone with people complaining about it. (even with their contrast turned right down it's happened) As I play games and watch channels that have static logos, it's not even worth considering in my opinion. Even "temporary image retention" is unacceptable to me. I don't care if it's five minutes or five days that the image is stuck on the screen, it's unacceptable.

S-PVA has wider color range and viewing angles, along with increased contrast, deeper blacks and low response time (8ms GTG).
That's certainly true, however

What’s more is that the BRAVIA “V” series uses the next generation CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) for backlighting, this increases color gamut to display more vibrant, natural looking images.
is marketing talk. While WCG-CCFL is capable of producing vivid colours, they are not natural, and there are issues reproducing many colours. Here's an example of this. The first image is a photo of my Toshiba 37WLT68:


And a Sony BRAVIA 32v2000 with WCG-CCFL:


Here's a screen capture from the game (closest I could find) showing how it should look:


Please note that the above photos were taken using composite video, so they're not an indicator of how well either set can perform in terms of sharpness.
 
The new IPS-Alpha used by Tosh and Panasonic is staring to impress me.



Panasonic PDPs known to have some serous issue with motion and the so called purple/green snake artifact. But others from LG, Samsung, Hitachi and Pioneer are excellent PDPs (well, maybe not Samsung)


Dead pixel on a LCD TV is noting cos they turn black but stuck pixels can be very aggravating.

Some stored won't accept slight visible backlight bleeding even though it's a flaw.

Burn-in on the 7th series seems more “resilient” then the previous version. However, temporary image retention is acceptable as the same phenomenon occurs with LCDs that has uses overdrive.

I'm so looking forward to the next generation of Samsung SDI's LCD panel. If the improvements were to be on the same scale as PVA to S-PVA, it'll be no1 LCD around.
 
Dead pixel on a LCD TV is noting cos they turn black but stuck pixels can be very aggravating.
As I said, I have a pixel stuck red on my current LCD, and I cannot see it at all when using the TV normally. (rather than specifically looking for it with test patterns up close)

On Plasmas, I imagine it would be very aggravating, as they will be much larger due to the lower resolution.

From people that I know outside of message boards that have been buying TVs, there have actually been more stuck/dead pixels on Plasmas, rather than LCDs.

Burn-in on the 7th series seems more “resilient” then the previous version. However, temporary image retention is acceptable as the same phenomenon occurs with LCDs that has uses overdrive.
It may be acceptable to you, but it's totally unacceptable to me, and I have yet to see this on any LCD, whether it uses overdriving or not. (and I've had the same image onscreen upwards of 8 hours at times) Just because it's technically possible, does not mean it happens nearly as quickly. With Plasmas, the effect is cumulative - if you put up the same image for an hour a day (eg only watch one channel with a logo) turning off the TV each time, after a week, it would have the effect of having that image on the screen 7 hours in one sitting. With LCD, turning off the screen effectively "resets" it, so it would only have the effect of one hour each time.

That's not to mention the other problems with Plasma such as glare (the Panasonic I had was unwatchable during the day unless I turned contrast to max, which means image retention / burn-in) and dithering.

I can accept that some people prefer Plasmas, but it seems most of the people putting down LCDs are people coming over from the Plasma forums that haven't seen any of the latest LCDs, or if they have, they've been in a shop setting, rather than being properly set up in a normal viewing environment with a decent source.
 
Believe it or not, I do like LCDs but more I read about them, the more problems I find.

I need to buy a LCD that is under 32” with 1:1 pixel mapping via DVI/HDMI and must be capable of displaying 50/75, 60 and 48/72Hz. So, I have been lucky.

I do like PDP, a lot more then LCD but it’s not a multipurpose display device.
 
I have had a Plasma set and I now have an LCD set, to me the LCD wins hands down. I did used to think that the Plasma was the better option until I had my LG and was totally unimpressed with it. The picture was bland to say the least, absolutely no life in it, the black's were terrible (being as this is meant to be a problem on LCD's) and SD was awful. The worst was if I put a DVD on of a film which was older than about 15 years the picture looked absolutley awful, example being Young Guns which was unwatchable. I have just got my hands on a Samsung 40R73BD and I have to say I am gobsmacked. The picture is crystal clear and vibrant, the black's are better than the LG basically it wipes the floor. As for motion blur I did notice some at first but over the weekend I've adjusted a few settings and gone back to the offending scenes and that's cured. By the way the LG set I had (can't remember the model and can't be bothered looking) had rave reviews which is why I went for it. I have to say aswell that if you hang around the LCD and Plasma forum take note of which one has the most people complaining. Gor for the LCD.
 

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