[mythtv-users] OT: LED or Plasma (was Advice on choosing a TV)

[Brian Wood]

On Sunday 09 May 2010 10:15:08 am Andre wrote:
> On 9 May 2010, at 16:25, Paul Gardiner wrote:
> > I'm confused now! After reading through all the great advice in your
> > replies, I was seeing the sense of not making too much of the choice
> > based on viewing in shops. I've been reading a lot of reviews and
> > forum discussions. That led me to settle on a Panasonic Plasma
> > TX-P50G20B. But I thought I should at least see one before I
> > committed. I visited a shop today, and had them show me it
> > playing various content with varying sources. It looked great, but...
> >
> > the one thing that's now derailed my thinking a bit was a side-by-side
> > comparison with a blu-ray of Avatar between a plasma and a led tv
> 
> Be careful, "LED" TV's are actually LCD with LED backlighting, so almost
>  all of the usual LCD problems persist! Only OLED is really LED TV.
> 
> Most flat panels look great driven from a top quality Bluray, which is
>  great if all you watch is Blurays... Many shops still demo animated movies
>  heavily, motion is slow and clean, colours simple and saturated, poor
>  colour accuracy goes unnoticed, poor motion rendition can't be seen.

The shops certainly know what will look best on what they are selling. If you 
get a shop that says something like" the signal here is lousy" tell them you 
will go to a shop with decent signals. Their tune will change quickly. 

> 
> What does it look like driven from the source you watch the most, in the UK
>  some shops refuse to demo TVs on Freeview (DVBT) because they know how bad
>  it can look! When I bought a new TV a couple of years ago I took along a
>  DVD (made from MythTV, not re-encoded) so I had some examples of live real
>  life SDTV with all the issues that causes, was a real eye opener and got
>  around the shops saying "we don't get a good off air signal in here".

A DVD of "The Matrix" is good for showing up problems with fast motion and 
unpredictable movement.


> Personally I haven't yet seen any LCD that doesn't make me reach for the
>  off switch including so called "broadcast grade" LCDs but I'm very
>  sensitive to mangled motion thanks to 20+ years of working in Sport and
>  News TV.

Likewise. The Graphic artists still insist on having a CRT monitor, anything 
else doesn't give good color accuracy (according to the GAs).

> 
> > (TX-P42G20b and TX-L42D25B). The led looked superb. I was expecting
> > the colours to look more vibrant in shop lighting, but it looked
> > like it was in a far higher resolution, with so much more detail.
> > Is that likely to be down to shop lighting, or are leds inherently
> > sharper than plasmas? I can't imagine how. These were both 1080
> > panels. Would I find under more normal lighting conditions
> > that the Plasma's image was just as sharp and detailed as the
> > LED looked in the shop? Is there some difference in the layout
> > of pixel elements or the image processing that makes the difference?
> 
> What you want in the shop and what you want in your home three months later
>  are often different things.
> 
> There are many artefacts that go unnoticed for months or even years but
>  cannot be un-noticed once seen...

Very true. Sort of like when your tongue finds something odd in your mouth, you 
can't keep it away from the "flaw", even if it has been there for years.