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Guest
First let me thank those who answered my previous question about which DVDs to use when Plasma shopping. Thanks, guys.
I went to my first store a couple of days ago, to take a look at the Fujitsu P50XHA. They had 42" and 60" LGs there, too. At first I admired the 42" LG's picture, until they turned on the Fujitsu. I was stunned. The picture was magnificent. I've never seen such a bright and crisp picture on, well, anything.
First the source was an Onkyo DVD player, showing some movie with animated monkeys. You could count the hairs on their heads from quite a distance (I didn't bring my own DVDs because I haven't got a short-list yet. I will when I do). The problems began when I stepped to the display and watched closely.
The objects in focus were extremely sharp, but the backgroun was, well, fuzzy. Out-of-focus objects were rather hard to distinguish (the background had a lot of leaves, being a movie about animated monkeys in the jungle). It might be MPEG's fault, but it was there. It wasn't noticable when watching the screen from normal watching distance.
Then I asked the salesman (I was disappointed to know he couldn't tell me what inputs the display had. He tried to search it on the internet, but couldn't find anything about the non-US model. He wasn't even sure if there were a non-US model. Is there?) to show me 4:3 TV broadcasts.
Once more, I was blown away. This time not because of the picture quality (more on that later), but because I didn't even notice there were no bars on the side. There's some sort of magic there - the picture seems natural as if it was always a 16:9 picture. I don't know what kind of transformation they use, but it's a darn good one. I switched to a soccer match, to see if the game looks funny on the sides of the screen - but I couldn't notice anything strange. I love it.
The problem was picture quality. The display was connected to the Israeli satellite TV provider, and on some channels the bad quality was quite disturbing. It actually bothered me to look at some of them (the image wasn't very sharp, and the colors not as bright). Other channels were better. Obviously this isn't the Plasma's fault, but it still wasn't a rewarding experience to watch some of the channels.
The soccer game I mentioned was even worse. The grass was great, the ads along the field were great, the white lines bordering the field were great, but the players were impossible to look at. It seemed as if each player had some checkered squares around him. Tiny squares, but noticable one from quite a distance.
Obviously this isn't the display's fault, but the quality of the broadcast (the fact that they connected the satellite box using a composite cable probably didn't help, either). Still, I wonder if someone else encountered similar problems, and knows of ways to fix them.
Since most of my viewing is TV, I'm afraid I will spend most of my viewing time ****** off because the picture doesn't look as good as it should. I don't want to pay $15,000 for that, when instead I can pay $3000 for a nice rear-projection TV, be slightly ****** off when I watch DVDs, and have $12,000 extra in the bank to comfort me. Of course, I don't WANT a rear-projection TV, I want a plasma!
I went to my first store a couple of days ago, to take a look at the Fujitsu P50XHA. They had 42" and 60" LGs there, too. At first I admired the 42" LG's picture, until they turned on the Fujitsu. I was stunned. The picture was magnificent. I've never seen such a bright and crisp picture on, well, anything.
First the source was an Onkyo DVD player, showing some movie with animated monkeys. You could count the hairs on their heads from quite a distance (I didn't bring my own DVDs because I haven't got a short-list yet. I will when I do). The problems began when I stepped to the display and watched closely.
The objects in focus were extremely sharp, but the backgroun was, well, fuzzy. Out-of-focus objects were rather hard to distinguish (the background had a lot of leaves, being a movie about animated monkeys in the jungle). It might be MPEG's fault, but it was there. It wasn't noticable when watching the screen from normal watching distance.
Then I asked the salesman (I was disappointed to know he couldn't tell me what inputs the display had. He tried to search it on the internet, but couldn't find anything about the non-US model. He wasn't even sure if there were a non-US model. Is there?) to show me 4:3 TV broadcasts.
Once more, I was blown away. This time not because of the picture quality (more on that later), but because I didn't even notice there were no bars on the side. There's some sort of magic there - the picture seems natural as if it was always a 16:9 picture. I don't know what kind of transformation they use, but it's a darn good one. I switched to a soccer match, to see if the game looks funny on the sides of the screen - but I couldn't notice anything strange. I love it.
The problem was picture quality. The display was connected to the Israeli satellite TV provider, and on some channels the bad quality was quite disturbing. It actually bothered me to look at some of them (the image wasn't very sharp, and the colors not as bright). Other channels were better. Obviously this isn't the Plasma's fault, but it still wasn't a rewarding experience to watch some of the channels.
The soccer game I mentioned was even worse. The grass was great, the ads along the field were great, the white lines bordering the field were great, but the players were impossible to look at. It seemed as if each player had some checkered squares around him. Tiny squares, but noticable one from quite a distance.
Obviously this isn't the display's fault, but the quality of the broadcast (the fact that they connected the satellite box using a composite cable probably didn't help, either). Still, I wonder if someone else encountered similar problems, and knows of ways to fix them.
Since most of my viewing is TV, I'm afraid I will spend most of my viewing time ****** off because the picture doesn't look as good as it should. I don't want to pay $15,000 for that, when instead I can pay $3000 for a nice rear-projection TV, be slightly ****** off when I watch DVDs, and have $12,000 extra in the bank to comfort me. Of course, I don't WANT a rear-projection TV, I want a plasma!