Plasma vs LCD at 37" - PC usage

[rekj]

Hi,

I'm looking for to buy a new TV this week as I'm moving into a new place.

The size I'd like is 37-40" and it will be used for Sky HD, especially movies and football; Xbox 360 games and also playing games and 1080p films from a PC source. SD quality doesn't matter to me as it'll almost always be displaying HD feeds.

I was looking originally at the 37G10 but if I'm being realistic it's out of my price range.

The Panasonic plasma X10 caught my eye but I have no idea how it'll cope with a PC feed. Will the image quality be significantly lower than a 1080p LCD when playing games and films from the PC through HDMI?

Richer Sounds stock the Panasonic 37S10 and Sony 37V5500. How do these compare?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Thanks

 

[boxrick]

How close will you be sat ? How powerful is your PC?

Running games at 1920 x 1080 is not easy you need a fairly well spec'd computer to be able run at decent frame rates...

The x10 plasma has quite a terrible pc resolution, for 360 games and for standard definition and even blu rays its fine. For pc gaming < 1meter i *wouldnt* recommend it. A bit further back say a few meters or further and it is absolutely fine....

I used to use my px80 which had the virtually the same resolution for pc gaming on, and what it allowed me to do is push the other settings such as antialiasing and ansiotrophic filtering much higher along with getting a much smoother framerate. So in most games i found my older lower res plasma to be excellent

 

[rekj]

How close will you be sat ? How powerful is your PC?

Running games at 1920 x 1080 is not easy you need a fairly well spec'd computer to be able run at decent frame rates...

The x10 plasma has quite a terrible pc resolution, for 360 games and for standard definition and even blu rays its fine. For pc gaming < 1meter i *wouldnt* recommend it. A bit further back say a few meters or further and it is absolutely fine....

I used to use my px80 which had the virtually the same resolution for pc gaming on, and what it allowed me to do is push the other settings such as antialiasing and ansiotrophic filtering much higher along with getting a much smoother framerate. So in most games i found my older lower res plasma to be excellent

Thanks for the reply.

I upgraded my PC fairly recently so it has an ATI 4890. I probably wouldn't be at a distance of <1m though, maybe 8-9' away, whatever that is in metres (3 or so?). I see what you mean about the lower res allowing higher levels of AA.

Would the lower resolution mean that web browsing is uncomfortable?

 

[boxrick]

For web browsing its fine, i actually find that with higher resolutions web browsing is worse cos you cant see what you are reading because its too damn bloody small!

What id recommend!

Get the x10 ( its a brilliant screen ) possibly consider some 42" equivalents 37 gets small very quickly...

So if you want 37" then the x10 is a good bet

If you dont mind a 42 then take a look at the 42" x10 for virtually the same price or some of LGs offerings are pretty good.

42PQ3000 or 42pq6000 available for £500-£550 ish.

All are plasmas and have the same sorts of resolution, the lgs are a little better for motion and freeview the panasonics have slightly better blacks.

When you get the television set if its the LG and using HDMI set it to "just scan" in the aspect ratio then set the resolution to 1360 ( or 1366 if available ) x 768. Even though the native resolution of the panel is a bit different this will look the best from what ive found. If you plan on using VGA then make sure to go to the "screen" option at the bottom picture in the lg and use auto which should match the edges of the screen with the picture.

If you plan on getting the panasonic use the same resolution and make sure to set "overscan" to off in the setup.

With plasmas just be aware they have the potential for screen burn, so if you do web browsing try and do it full screen mode usually f11

If you have any further questions feel free to PM me good luck with the screen!