I have a Panasonic plasma TV. I know that Panasonic no longer plans to produce them.

John

5 years doesn't seem that long to live for a TV. Are the Plasma life spans REALLY that short? I know tube TV's can last decades. My LCD said it should last ~30,000 hours. @ 4 hours a day that's almost 20 years.

These are the ones I'd would look at again if mine blew up.

http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/PN51F8500AFXZA

http://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs/UN55F8000BFXZA

http://store.sony.com/55-class-54.6-diag-w900a-internet-tv-zid27-KDL55W900A/cat-27-catid-All-Sony-HD-TVs

After comparing it to the 802 side by side for quite a while, the Sony KDL55W900A actually did appear to produce more colors or shading in the colors.

A friend called me a few months ago that was in the market for a new TV asking me the same question posted here. I told him I preferred LED/LCD Samsung TVs over plasma for a lot of the same reasons posted on this thread.

A few days later I was in Best Buy looking at all the TVs on display. The problem I see when comparing Plasma TVs to LED/LCD is the brightness. When comparing TVs, Plasma TVs can not produce good clean whites. To my eyes a white background on a Plasma TV are dull and gray in contrast to a LED/LCD which produces a nice bright clean looking white background. I called my wife over and asked her which looked better and she also preferred the LED/LCD picture.

Bottom line: my friend went to best buy 2 or 3 times with his wife judging all the TVs and liked the Plasma over the LED/LCD TVs and wound up with a Panasonic Plasma.

As far as motion blur I have 3 LCD TVs from 6 or 7 years ago that are only 120Htz and have never noticed any motion blur.

Jerry K

@johnmeyer >> lighting on LCD permits "local contrast enhancement,"

I'm going to disagree with you here. Local dimming, micro dimming, local contrast enhancement etc are, IMHO, marketing speech for making the picture, at best, not look worse. Very, very, very few TVs today have full array back light, which means that a set of LEDs around the edge of your TV, together with an algorithm that changes the contrast of every frame of your TV picture, is trying to create blackness and shadow details. I view that "enhancement" as similar to the over-saturation and over-contrast images displayed on TVs in the shop. It's fake, it looks fake and it typically does nothing positive to your image.

LCDs still are still not up to the quality of plasma tvs, and as long as they use back light through a surface that can't be made pixel-perfect opaque, they never will be. Local dimming produces ghosting, overly-contrasty regions of your image etc.

As long as they are selling plasmas, go for the plasma and hope that quality OLED screens will be on the market before the last Plasma has been made.

I have a 60 inch plasma, as well as a 60 inch led/lcd. (the lcd is even newer and more expensive than the plasma)

I'm not sure why the manufacturers seem to favor lcd because I have always liked the plasma MUCH better. Blacker blacks, better response, and viewing angle is never an issue. I can stand 70 degrees or more off to the side of my plasma and still see perfect colors. The lcd... meh... 30 degrees off to the side and I start seeing a contrast change.

The only downside to plasma as far as I can see is a higher heat output. My 60 is quite the little furnace after a few hours of on time.

I have over 7 years of very hard use on my Samsung 50" plasma and it still looks great.

If you've got very deep pockets buy one of the new OLED TVs :)

Just be warned if you get a really big one you might need a safety rail in front of it to stop kids and pets trying to run in to the scene :)

Bob.

And of course the plasmas are subject to screen burn.

[I]"And of course the plasmas are subject to screen burn. "[/I]

So too are LCDs, just not as badly as plasma.

Bob.

Having been through this process myself only recently, I also did the tour around various stores. I was looking for a TV around 40". When doing this I always look for which picture looks detailed, with good blacks - I cannot put up with washed out blacks. Then I ask for a demo with a BD, so I know the picture isn't being affected by any kind of signal strength. (which may be a roll back to analogue days). The LAST time I did this was around 7 years ago. No doubt then that Plasma was king. This time, every single Plasma I looked at suffered in comparison to it's 'next door neighbour' LED/LCD in all respects - brightness, detail, black level. In the end I chose a Toshiba model. One of the first things I noticed back home, was how far you can move off to the side without the picture being affected compared to the much older Samsung plasma model it replaced. Plasma is a dead technology. Tip: If, like me you just want to watch a decent picture. With the current trend for "smart" TV's there are some real bargains out there at the mo for 'normal' TV's.

One downside to Plasma TVs is that many generate a considerable amount of radio interference.

I have three large screen LCD TVs and a 50" Panasonic VT-series Plasma, it looks positively spectacular but it has to be tweaked relatively often to keep it looking that way. (I also have a 34" Sony 960 "Super Fine Pitch" CRT HDTV which also looks superb, there's something about a properly calibrated CRT that still does it for me even with its inherent geometric distortion.) Anyway, I've been looking at another 70" LCD TV and have come to the conclusion that Samsung is currently making the best LCD televisions. This is looking at them in the stores as well as watching them in "real-world" conditions at some of my friend's houses. Of course, I am anxiously awaiting OLED prices to drop, which they will. All of the reviews I have read online say that they are perfectly calibrated right out of the box and one videophile home theater web site says that they don't know why the even bother to test them as they are essentially perfect. I've used Sony's professional OLED monitors and I have never seen anything that looks that good, ever.

I think selecting a TV is somewhat like selecting speakers. You can read everything out there and listen to everybody's opinions but in the end you have to let your eyes and ears be the judge.

While I can appreciate the good black levels of the best plasma displays and the good off angle viewing, the crispness, overall bright output, contrast, and vibrant colors of LCD have always made me go in that direction.

Furthermore it is my opinion that there are a lot more bad quality LCD's out there than Plasma's. If you simply check out a few plasmas and a few LCD's then you'll probably find the plasmas are better. You have to search out the really good LCD's from Sony, Samsung,and LG.

But as I wrote above in the end let your eyes make the decision. Just make sure you see the best each technology has to offer, or at least offer at your price point.

In my opinion local dimming is absolutely necessary in a large size HT display. And back lit local dimming is better than edge lit. If I were to buy a new TV today it would be this one.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006ZH0MGY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1R58ZKS9HZKXV

Plasmas were no longer sold in the EU due to high energy use. As was mentioned earlier an LED backlit LCD panel uses much less electricity. Also LCDs do not have the prominent black border surrounding each pixel as Plasmas do. For me, akin to looking at an electric scoreboard.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I can see that I will have to take some test material to the shops, pester some sales assistants if I can find any, and then decide for myself. Models that have lower motion blur seem to be models with bloated feature sets, unfortunately.

I just got out my newly purchased wattmeter to check the power used by my current TV, and had to accept a display that rotated between volts, amps and watts. No steady watts display that I could find. There were functions to enter in the cost of electicity so that I could see the cost per year, how many trees I was chopping down and whatever else I was doing to the planet. (My TV draws about 500W, by the way). It also takes me several minutes of fiddling around before I can get my bathroom scales to tell me my weight. As Ned Kelly said just before they hanged him, "Such is life".

GeeBax >> And of course the plasmas are subject to screen burn

In newer TVs, not really. At least not anywhere near what you got before. I'd say burn-in on plasmas is a lot less of a problem than the IQ of LCDs, but that's just my opinion.

I just bought one of these in Australia, and I love it: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-KDL65W850A-65-Inch-1080p-Internet/dp/B00ES5YZD6/ref=sr_1_5?s=tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1390811192&sr=1-5

I now that when we were looking for a new domestic TV set a few years ago, several salesman from different shops said that LCD was great and probably the best up to about 40 or 42 inches but that plasma seemed to score better on larger sets. For what it's worth, they also all said that they expected plasma to disappear as LCD (and now LED) technology improved and a brief review of the offerings now available from manufacturers seems to confirm that this is happening.

At the end of the day there are so many factors at play, including cost, the ambient light in the TGV room, the angle at which it is being viewed, the way the colour/brightness controls have been set up (probably the most important factor) etc. As with so many things you pay your money and make a very personal choice and, up to a point where the law of diminishing returns starts to bite, you probably get what you pay for.

Richard

Why is Plasma going away?

The new top brand LED/LCD TVs outperform Plasma TVs in almost every way.

1 less power means less heat and saves on electricity.
2 black levels are just as good if not better then Plasma on today's top LED/LCD TVs
3 white levels/brightness on LED/LCD have always been better. When buying a Plasma any good sale person will tell you you need a dark room. LED/LCD TVs no problem in any room.
4 LED/LCD TVs 5 - 10 - 15 years will have the same picture. Plasma TVs are like neon light bulbs, down hill from day one and needs adjusting as it ages.
5 LED/LCD TVs very thin and light.

What's bad about LED/LCD TV, cost more money but if it last longer it may not.
This is just my observation.

Jerry K







Sent from my iPad

I've always thought plasma displays looked very dark and ghostly. To my eyes, anyway, they always looked like they had a diffusion screen in front of them. I never understood why anyone liked them.

Once LCDs got to the point where they were displaying actual color, i found them to be way better than plasma in every respect.

Arthur,
Last year, my friend was looking for a 40-42" LED HD set. We hit the local Best Buy, and true to form, all the sets were maxed out in brightness and contrast (the default "store setup"). What surprised me, was that Samsung, Sony and LG all had distinctly blueish whites and greys...only Toshiba had a truly neutral white and grey. We bought the Toshiba 40" w/120hz. (the one that's not a "smart" TV) The salesperson who seemed to know the most, told me that many buyers opt for the (expensive) "professional home setup option" where the tech actually accesses the internal service menu to adjust the individual colors, etc. Stuff that's not normally accessible to the buyer. You would think the manufacturers would make this tweaking part of the QC process.
Like you, i also noticed the nice wide viewing angle.
Once I tweaked the set with color bars and disabled the auto contrast / brightness stuff, the picture is really excellent. Great to watch Turner Classic black & white movies that are truly neutral black and white with no color cast.
On the other hand, there are post facilities that are using the high end Panasonic plasmas as client "reference' monitors. I must say, when properly set up, they do look really great.
Ken