Plasma market getting smaller and higher-end, but it's still alive
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 13th 2009 2:07PM
posted May 13th 2009 2:07PM
posted May 13th 2009 2:07PM
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Just too damn expensive to replace when you put your wii controller through the screen.....
as would happen with LCD?
makes sense. It does have a superior picture to LCD in every way except for brightness.
Whether or not there is a quality difference is debatable, with die hards on both sides. What is undeniable though, is the life span of an LCD vs. Plasma. If you buy LCD, it will last much longer for what amounts to the same image provided you do a little research first.
It's all moot though, nothing beats CRT! I want someone to make a 50" 1080p CRT that is so heavy it falls through the floor. You'll never beat it's picture.
My 7 year old plasma begs to differ....
Wii60: The quality difference isn't debatable, it's a fact. Run down to your local consumer electronic retailer that doesn't use Monster cables, and ask for a demo of their best TV. I'm 99% sure that the TV they'll show you will be a Pioneer Kuro. The Kuro series produce the absolute best picture possible and this isn't coming from a plasma fanboy if that's what you believe, I even bough an LCD Bravia last year. But if I had better funds I would easily have opted for a Kuro, they blow the sock off any other TV on the market.
@bdav
You fool! You jinxed it!
@Wii60:
The picture on such a CRT would be great, but you run into serious issues when designing such tubes. There is what amounts to a practical size limitation on tubes due to the upper corners and keeping the entire picture straight. The phosphors are excited by electrons accelerated through a vacuum, which works pretty well for small sets.
Trouble is, electrons have mass. And it turns out the earth does too. Drop due to gravity is the biggest problem with large tube-style sets. There has been some development in this regard - 32" used to be the max, now you see sets around 37" - but the costs become prohibitive (and not linearly so) when you go up from there.
Meh, just install it in the ceiling, with a recliner under it. The picture'll be unbeatable until it comes loose and crushes me into the basement.
I used to think the same thing, and I was concerned about that, because I watch a lot of hockey, but plasma's overall picture quality finally convinced me to get a new Panny. While LCD is definitely brighter in terms of raw ability to blast your eyeballs, I no longer think that's necessarily a good thing... LCD's just *too* bright, even when properly calibrated by a pro.
Plasma's whites, while dimmer, seem more like what you'd see in a theater, and you don't have to worry about buzz tech when buying, like "response time", "LED TV", or "120 / 240 / eleventy billion Hz". You can't beat the native contrast levels, either.
For me, now when I'm deciding which tech to buy, the deciding factor is panel size. I think that if you're looking to buy a 1080p HDTV larger than 42", then you'd be nuts not to buy a plasma. When I need something smaller than that, I go with a good LCD set.
oversized tv's are pointless if you can barely play any movies of vids on them without quality loss
So all HDTV's are pointless?
Play movies of vids? Are you with the MPAA?
Never did like plasma... too hot... too much energy... get dim after a few years.
LCDs dim at a similar rate to plasmas.
@ k2
negatory
If LCD's dim, it's because of the backlighting is going out and in newer LED backlit displays this becomes a non-issue.
They both reach half brightness at roughly 30,000 hours.
the white LEDs(unlike other colors) used in TVs use phosphors like plasmas do. Despite manufacturer claims, these white LEDs dim just like plasmas.
You can replace the backlights.
You can replace a plasma panel too, I guess. Which one do you think is cheaper?
The lcd panel probably is a lot cheaper to replace. I would be willing to bet that its still expensive enough that its not worth replacing instead of buying a new tv though. Unfortunately electronics never seem worth fixing these days unless you can do it yourself. Even then its often not worth it.
You need to replace the LCD's backlight (CCFL or LED), not the entire panel.
Such a shame, Plasma is the better technology. LCD's just can't compare :( I am glad Panasonic is still in it, love their Plasma's
I agree, if you wont "true"-images you'd be better off with plasma than anything else still.
Plasma can't be taken everywhere. I live in Colorado and about 80-90% of the TV's sold here are LCD because the high altitude...
@Platinum
It's not that they can't be used at high altitudes. You probably have too many Best Buy guys talking too much. Plasmas MAY be louder at high altitudes (and possibly have a shorter lifetime of the panel, which probably doesn't matter).
Living in Colorado has nothing to do with it. I live part time in California and could live at a higher altitude or a lower altitude than anyone in CO. I have a plasma set in California at 100ft elevation and it is fairly noisy. I have a plasma set in Reno at 5800ft (I live on a hill) and it makes no more noise (almost none) than the various LCD sets I also have there. Personally if you are listening to any show with constant sound, the noise isn't very audible considering sitting over 10ft from the screen.
Also, if you've ever been on the Concorde, you'd see a plasma set (it was a normal industrial model, Philips I think) operating at very high altitudes. The pressurization on board is usually equal to around 6500-7500ft.
Obviously, altitude equivalents and variations are also subject to atmospheric pressure variations.
most of the people that i have talked to about their new tv's have gotten plasma tv's
It all depends where you live LCD's are better for high altitudes. So if you move from a place like California to a place like Colorado your TV would have problems if it was Plasma. LCD is just better overall in what your getting with longevity...
Good. I've always been afraid that my Panasonic Plasma might break when plasmas are gone and OLEDs have yet to materialize. I'd hate to get stuck with an lcd.
Yeah, being stuck with one of those horrible LCD's would suck. They are like the terrorists of TV technology.
I had no idea that fanboism extended past the label to the underlying technology.
Fanboyism doesn't extend past the label. Technology like plasma vs lcd is all about provable facts and in every objective comparison plasma wins in all picture quality tests.
Good LCDs (for example, Samsung's TVs) are good enough for most people.
Thats probably true. Its just not good enough for my tastes. We all have certain things that we are willing to spend more money on to get the best and things we don't.
"Fanboyism doesn't extend past the label. Technology like plasma vs lcd is all about provable facts and in every objective comparison plasma wins in all picture quality tests. "
You can't just make blanket statements like that. There's a wide range of quality in both plasmas and LCDs. The new LED LCDs are quite stunning and certainly look better than your average LCD or plasma. And I hate to burst your bubble here, but the current image king is the Mitsubishi LaserVue... a laser based DLP.
We weren't discussing DLPs. We were discussing flat panel televisions. Go champion DLPs in a new thread or at least be more civil in this one. Obviously you have to compare two televisions in the same price range. High end plasma televisions have better picture quality than high end LCDs that is the result of every objective test. I'm not sure if anyone besides Vizio even makes low end or even mid range plasmas. I would like to know how the vizio plasmas compare to other mid range televisions where LCD has a very important place.
Bought a TV last year and choose a Samsung LCD over the available Plasma's. Looked better and were less expensive.
In store comparisons are useless. You have to view calibrated displays with the same source to have any chance of comparisons that are valid.
Maybe he did just that.
What he probably didn't do was compare them using his own personal color meter and contrast measuring equipment that you "true" videophiles do every time you watch some garbage on TV.
Every house should have one of each, LCD and plasma.
it's a shame this wasn't part of the stimulus..
You hear that Obama? Every American should have a HDTV in 2010 and not that cheap shit. We need a $3,000 tax credit for a good TV. We'll call it the Superbowl Stimulus Plan...
the led lcd's look might fine to my eyeballs.......
But they make my wallet cry.
Fix for LCD lovers stuck with a plasma tv: Go to Home Depot and buy a roll of window screen material. Tape to front of the plasma screen. Fixed! You should now get the desired color gamut shift with ever 2-degree change of viewing angle.
(Make sure to get light gray screening. This corrects the annoyingly deep black levels of plasma.)
Har de har har
I suppose your knowledge of LCDs is based on old monitors like this one:
http://www.gokeytech.com/images/MagicTouch2-LCD-Monitor-wHa.jpg
Please, all the reviews I've read say LED sets are just as bad off angle as CCFL.
The black level in LCD suck compare to Plasma.
i still prefer Plasma to LCD..
You'd have to pry my Kuro out of my dead hands, thank you very much.
Did it fall on you?