I’m looking at TVs online and the price for plasma seems to be way cheaper all other things considered.
Am I getting an inferior product if I buy plasma or is it just that LCD is a hot item?
Probably the hot item concept; a good plasma (say… a Panasonic Viera) doesn’t give anything up to LCD in terms of performance, and in a lot of ways (blacks, fast motion) may even be superior.
The big thing is that plasmas tend to be power-hungry, hotter and physically larger than the same size LCD screen.
And, from what I can tell, TVs from reputable manufacturers like Samsung, Panasonic, LG and Sony are more or less priced by size range, not technology. It’s the craptastic stuff by Coby, Vizio and Sceptre that probably does vary; I’m sure their plasma TVs are a generation or two back from what the big boys sell.
… which is why I got my Viera callibrated a month after purchase, substantially reducing the power used and heat generated.
If you live in a hot climate, the heat could be a major concern. I have a friend with a large plasma and it puts out a surprising amount of heat. That may not be so bad if you live up north, but in a hot climate it could mean that you pay for the electricity twice–once to power the TV and once for the AC to cancel out the heat it produces.
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Why Is Plasma So Much Cheaper Than LCD?
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They’re cheaper to make, it’s pretty much that simple.
How does picture calibration reduce energy use?
I’m guessing that he means the brightness was reduced from the levels they often set them at for in-store display, which need to be much brighter than in a home; this is much more of an issue for display technologies that actually generate light in the display (CRT, plasma and LED), although LCD display backlights can also be dimmed (power consumption in a LCD is constant regardless of what is on the screen). This also improves the life of the display, since the phosphors degrade proportionally (if not more than; e.g., 100,000 hours at 50% but only 10,000 hours at 100%, both to 50% brightness) to how hard they are driven (also true for CRT and LED, and LCD backlights assuming you adjust brightness that way and not by adjusting the video).
TVs in “store mode” or “demo mode” tend to have the brightness cranked way up to account for bright ambient light. lowering the brightness to a reasonable level will drastically reduce the TVs power consumption.
We have a 65" plasma display at home. I checked it out with a Kill-A-Watt meter. The power consumption is image-dependent, and varies from about 400 watts (for a pure black scene) up to about 750 watts (for a pure white scene). The typical space heater is about 1500 watts, so the heat output from the TV is notable, but not outrageous.
I don’t know what the power consumption is for a comparably sized LCD unit.
I think this is not really a big concern. I live in a place where it regularly is in the 90s and sometimes 100 in the summer. Last year we installed a 65" plasma TV in our main tv watching room, replacing an LCD. If I go up to it, I can feel the heat, but I’ve noticed neither an increase in the ambient temperature of the room nor in our air conditioning usage (we have Nest thermostats that email you an energy report at the end of every month, so it’s easy to see how your utilization changes month to month for HVAC alone).
Does Plasma “burn in” worse than LCD?
If not I can live with the relative increased bulk and heat in exchange for an upgrade in size.
I notice a lot of plasmas these days lack features that are becoming commonplace on LCD screens. And 720p instead of 1080p. Basically, they seem to be aiming more at a low end bargain shopper than the johnny techwiz types.
zoid, Plasma does have more issues with burn in than LCD (which despite the warnings in the manuals is not likely to occur in regular household use), but even then they’re not as bad as they used to be.
Plasma is more prone to burn-in (or “image retention”) than LCD, yes. That said, I’m not particularly careful with mine and haven’t had any issues whatsoever. They have gotten better over the years and added some features to combat it. But I wouldn’t want to leave it paused on ESPN for three hours or anything.
This is the first thing I thought of when I read the question.
In fact, the first thing I did with my plasma TV when I got it (2007, I think) was to also burn a DVD that constantly changed screen colors and brightnesses every few seconds, and let it run for something like 12 hours; this was supposed to “break in” the screen and help alleviate the problem. I still had occasional “ghosts” show up after having a static image on the screen for a while, but nothing permanent.
The weight is also a big difference. A plasma TV of decent size (say over 50") weighs substantially more than a same sized LCD and takes 2 people to move it. And I assume extra consideration when wall mounting it.
For comparison, my computer draws about 270 watts (total) when idle/doing light work, which is most of the time, and the room (an outer corner room, about 10x10) gets uncomfortably warm if the temperature outside is above 40 during the winter - such that I crack open a window (with no heating, during the summer, I remove the grill from the vent). So I’d expect 400-750 watts would make it get really warm, depending on room size, location and insulation/airflow.
FWIW, xkcd’s latest “What-if” is relevant to this discussion; apparently, 1,875 watts is enough to make the outside of a 1 cubic meter box reach 140F/60C (inside temperature depends on the box/insulation; don’t see any mention either of the starting ambient temperature, but if that’s from 32F/0C, then that’s pretty damn hot, even 187.5 watts would make it noticeably warmer).
I thought burn in had been taken care of, and only the earlier generations of plasmas had that problem.
I wanted a plasma, but my apartment has tons of natural light and I figured that would make the screen hard to see. I got an LED and am happy with it. However I also noticed the plasmas were 5+" bigger than comparably priced LCDs back when I was looking.
I have been very happy with my 40 inch LG plasma as well as my current 50 inch LG plasma. With current technology, I would buy plasma for a new tv.
I believe that top of the line plasma TVs look better than top of the line LCD TVs. When we bought our most recent one, price was not really a factor, and I still went with plasma. The only LCD that seemed competitive was the Elite ($6k-7k at the size I was looking at), and while it looks great, I still didn’t think it was quite as good. Especially in terms of off-axis viewing, color rendition and black levels. However, unless you’re watching in a darkened room, and go to the trouble of actually calibrating the TV (in other words, unless you’re unhealthily obsessed with this stuff like I am), I don’t really think a top of the line TV (whether it be plasma or LCD) is going to provide a good cost/benefit ratio for you. Even the mid-range TVs of the current generation look pretty darned good, and are much cheaper.
As for the burn-in issue, if you’re really obsessed you can go on the site AVS Forum, and find plenty of people talking about image retention even on current models. I think at this point you mostly have to go looking for it to find it (e.g. if you stare at a plain white or grey screen, you may be able to see some), but during normal viewing it’s very unlikely to be noticeable.
It has. Burn is simply not an issue anymore, unless you’re going to have the screen on a static image for a few days in a row.
Break-in images don’t alleviate the chances of getting burn-in - they cycle all the phosphors enough that they reach their true color/hue. People who are going to get their screens calibrated within a short period of purchasing it are recommended to break their screen in.
Well, top of the line is tough to compare, because there’s really no end in sight when it comes to spending money on these things. But yeah - if the conditions of the room are suitable for a plasma (low ambient light) and you don’t have a problem with the weight, heat and power-consumption of the thing, you’ll get more bang for your buck buying a plasma.
Saw a really good deal on the Panasonic GT50 series ($1600 for a 60" - if that’s in your price range). The ST50 is a step down, but apparently there’s not much difference at all. I have an ST30, and am constantly impressed with it.
Ayup. Our 65" plasma weighs somewhere close to 200 pounds.