Thinking of buying a plasma

[54xhg]

H,I'm thinking of buying a plasma tv,the one which i am looking at is the panasonic GT30 it will be replacing my sony lcd and it will be my first plasma,i will be using the tv mainly for sky HD and blu ray,i do not have a games console,with it being my first plasma i am a bit worried about image retention when watching sports(i.e.football,cricket)with the on screen graphics i also watch a lot of the news channels and skysports news which also have a lot of on screen graphics,so will i be ok to watch things like that for the first 200 hours.

Thanks,Andy.

 

[deon444]

Watching sports like football will be fine,but sky sports news may cause problems if watched for a prolonged period of time.

The gt30 is an excellent set but does have its issues at times.

Best having a good read through the gt30 owners thread and if you are buying the set make sure you have a good demo of it first

 

[BigBee]

Hi

I bought a 42" GT30 about 5-6 weeks ago, have always owned Samsung LCDs upto then and like you, was put off by image retention.

I haven't got Sky so don't watch a lot of sports but I do have a couple of games consoles which I play quite a lot for a few hours at a time and haven't had a single problem. Some games have static images as well so if anything bad was going to happen I'm sure it would have by now. I think as long as you are reasonable about it and don't leave static images on the screen for hours and hours you will be fine, I've gamed for 5-6 hours solid with no probs.

Regarding image retention, as far as I can gather this is not the same as screen burn which used to plague plasma TVs. I believe that even if you do see image retention (which as I say, I haven't yet), it will only linger for a matter of seconds.

I trialed a number of TVs (LED / LCDs included) before settling on the Panasonic and I am really glad I went for it, it's easily the best TV I've owned and image quality is very important to me. I am still blown away by the clarity of image and the colours are really vibrant without being too glaring and over the top.

As the other chap has stated there are maybe problems with GT30s but to be honest if you look hard enough (and trawl these forums enough!!) you will probably find a fault with any currently available TV, I don't believe any set is 100% perfect. However, as I say I am totally happy and have yet to find a single problem with mine.

 

[golly99]

Got my first plasma (Sammy d6900) last week previously had an LCD and edge LED before. I had the same worries...early days but i've not seen any image retention as yet and that's a mixture of childrens tv logos/sky sports news, ps3 gaming.

 

[mikej]

I would say just make sure you vary your viewing as much as you can and try not to watch channels with fixed graphics for too many hours at a time. You can always zoom in/out, use overscan and turn pixel orbiter on which will help.

Also - turn contrast and brightness down and avoid Dynamic mode. I was careful like this for the first few months and can now game for 3-4 hours at a time without seeing any IR.

 

[zAndy1]

Check out the Samsung PS51D6900 (not sure what size you're looking at?). Absolutely superb TV for frankly silly money

 

[54xhg]

Thanks for the replies,i'm going to have a good look at the GT30 this weekend,i will also have a look at the samsung D6900.