Plasma, LCD or "normal TV"

Rizzo the Rat wrote:

Hi
I was just wondering what kind of TVs people recommend for watching satellite TV?
i hear the quality with a plasma is not as good with other options.
I am thinking of buying a 32" LCD TV and was wondering does anyone else have a LCD TV for Sky and how do they find it? Is it worth the financial outlay in terms of picuture and sound quality?

Best value at the moment I think are back projection Tv's

Personally, I would recommend a projector. Can't bet it for picture size, and quality is perfect too.

are projectors OK for general use like TV I thought they were mainly used for films gaming etc.
Correct me if I am wrong though

My projector(AE500) is great for Sky (Much better than a LG Plasma that I also have). howver as mr dempsey pointed out, I can watch the plasma with the curtains open on a bright summer day, the Projector really needs a darkened room for it to be right.

The other thing about the projector is it's a little noisy, though with the surround sound booming thats not a problem!

Most Plasma and LCD that claim to be HDTV ready only support "entry level" HDTV, 720 lines. This is a huge improvement for US / Japan viewers on NTSC with really big sets (525Line NTSC has about 480 viewable lines).

TV are smaller in Europe and 576 viewable lines so "entry level" HDTV is not so impressive, which is why US/Japan has HDTV some while.

You need at least a 48" set to get any HDTV advantage (unless you are very close to screen).

Plasma also have a question over lifetime. LCD the lamp needs replaced as often as an entire plasma panel last.

LCD and Plasma do not have as good colour and shade accuracy as CRT, which is why high end professional Phot retouching still recommends CRT for PCs.

Some LCD units in projectors are not good on dark shades and black, merging them all into a murky grey.

Projectors have advantage that for same money you can get:
* Very much higher resolution (1080 line HDTV rather than just 720)
* Variable screen size from 36" to 84" quite easily. Many programs you might want small, Films big.
* You can get adjustable aspect ratio screen (rolls up sideways instead of up/down). Since there will always be films wider than 16:9 and old good TV and Films less than 16:9, this is VERY nice compared with a fixed ratio CRT, Plasma or LCD TV.

Even with our own ordinary projection screen when we borrow the LCD projector from work, It is very nice to adjust amount unrolled to make screen shape match the video.

Any size above 32" I would go for LCD / DLP projector. 32" is minimum for ORDINARY Widescreen TV to have a decent size 4:3 picture!

48" is definately minimum for HDTV. or else you won't notice much difference.

Note that a lot of cheap 28" WS TV and cheap 26" ordinary TV do not even show all the detail of regular DVD/ DVB/TV etc. Compare a 32" Sony / Philips / Mitsubishi WS etc at 10ft viewing distance with good regular picture and HDTV.

Note many Sky channels do not even use full "PAL" DVBs resolution of 720 x 576. Some channels even run at 1/4 screen quality (Shopping) and ITV3 runs at SVCD resolution!

Hi guys,

This is a subject close to my heart. I currently have a 29" 4:3 TV but am considering getting an LCD/Plasma. However this is not really a good time as prices are continuing to drop...

How... my opinions on these options... My greatest respect to you all and I don't want to start a flame war, but some of the comments have been a little misleading. Just to clarify of course, my comments are based on extensive reading of articles and newsgroup postings rather than personal experiece, but I think they are accurate...

Back-projection TV... Hmmmm yes definitely the best value for the size, but the cheap ones seem to me to have rather poor display quality and certainly they are not popular for that reason.

Lifespan... where did this thing about the lifespan of LCD backlights come from??? I've never ever seen an LCD backlight fail... and I've seen some laptops that have had been in use for 6 years. Yes, I admit this isn't the same level of usage as a TV would have, but still, surely if it were a problem I'd have seen it? Yes, there's a lifespan for the backlight... but it's 10's of thousands of hours, which translates into at least 7 years of intensive viewing... Plasmas (and even CRTs) have the same kind of lifespan issues... ie they have one... I'm not sure which is better but the point I would make again is that the lifespan of LCD/Plasma is likely to be long enough to satisfy you... Yes it will fail but in 7-10 years time you'll be able to get a replacement TV for a fraction of what you'll be paying today... Has anyone heard of a backlight bulb on an LCD being replaced?

Projectors... the biggest problem with this is the lifespan of the bulb. It will vary with the model but could be as low as 1000 hours and probably won't be above 5000 hours. If you use it for special movies this is OK, but for regular day to day viewing it would not be cost effective. I agree with the comments about the quality and size, and I've borrowed the work projector too !! but I don't think it's a viable option for normal viewing.

Watty is perhaps overly dismissive of HDTV... I have seen others make the comments that he has about the benefits of HDTV being less noticeable on PAL systems, which is true... and I have no direct experience, but I suspect that it's exaggerating to day that only a 48" TV will give much of a benefit... I suspect it would be easily noticeable on a 32" LCD and impressive on a 40"... Anyhow... that may be an academic discussion since the points made about the availibility of HDTV are accurate...


Sky will start broadcasting HDTV in 2006 in order to be ready for the world cup. They will be hoping to get lots of early adopters to buy in for their plasmas/lcds. However it's likely that they will just initially do sports, some movies, and maybe selected shows. Certainly there will be limited content. Also remember that Sky will require a HDCP enabled input for most of their HD broadcasts... As for other broadcasters, I'm open to correction but I think that no one else has laid out any timetable for HD rollout. Indeed they have not even taken decisions on the format of the HD content.. ie what codec might be used. So.... while I know you (and I) would like a future-proof TV that does HD, it probably is the case that HD won't be mainstream on Sky until 2007/2008... and for other broadcasters... who knows???

You can read much on the web about comparisons of CRT/Plasma/LCD. Also read the forums on http://www.avforums.com

I see http://www.komplet.ie now have a DiBoss 32" LCD for €1499. Somebody on avforums has ordered one of these so there might be a review there next week.

It's a tough call... with the prices dropping so much and the technology improving. I can't comment myself on the LCD quality with Sky but see what people say on avforums... they appear to be generally happy except with some of the low-bitrate channels.

The unknown question is when is the best time to buy... It's hard to buy something and then find that the price has dropped by 30% 9 months later. It seems likely that there will be price drops beyond what has happened already. And it's not just the price... response times and black levels (a big problem for LCDs) get better with each generation.

If you need to buy I'd get a 32" LCD. I'm tempted by the DiBoss one, but if I waited until next year I could probably get a 37" for under €2000. We'll see..

Ix.

marksi wrote:

Unless you have money to burn

I've just looked up the cost of replacement bulbs for my projector. Around 200 Sterling. :eek:

If I had a known that, I probably would have bought a 32"

Rizzo the Rat wrote:

Hi
I was just wondering what kind of TVs people recommend for watching satellite TV?
i hear the quality with a plasma is not as good with other options.
I am thinking of buying a 32" LCD TV and was wondering does anyone else have a LCD TV for Sky and how do they find it? Is it worth the financial outlay in terms of picuture and sound quality?

Moved from a 32" CRT widescreen to a 30" LCD in Jan, and very happy. Wife is delighted with it hanging over the fireplace in place of the mirror that was there. Also freed up a load of space in the corner where the old CRT and it's stand were.

We have SKY, and the image quality is good.

I will tell you though that you can notice a difference between channels in the quality of the image. The movie Channels, BBC, RTE all come through brilliantly. But some other channels like ITV3, UK Living etc... you can see mixelation on and poor contrast on some of their show's. Probably a bandwidth and quality of original contant problem. To be honest you got the same thing on the old 28" TV, but the LCD show's it up more.

DVD's and Games console (XBOX) come through brilliantly.

A mate has a back projection TV, and the image looks constantly washed out, not very sharp. Maybe it's the way he has it set up? But he's a techie, so would expect that he would have set it up correctly.

My neighbour has a 42" plasma. That too looks great, but it shimmers a little.

You should consider where you plan to place the TV. A rule of thumb I picked up from avforums is that you should be sitting a distance from the screen that is between 7 - 9 times the height of the screen. This may explain my neighbours shimmering Plasma.

I've gotten used to the LCD, and tend to nit-pick the image quality on some show's (Morse on ITV3 is a good example), but a mate called around last week and was blown away by it. He has a 28" CRT, and it now thinking of getting an LCD.

Sound from it is good, but for the money, I would expect them all to have good sound.

Yep it cost a lot (€1500), but then again a good quality 32" CRT widescreen is around a grand, the additional €500 isn't that much, especially as it's now up on the wall away from the kiddies grubby hands.

strettie wrote:

Dancin

what make is your LCD ?

and any blurring with sports coverage

Strettie

It's a Mitsubishi, model MD30LCD.

It's great for watching Football matches, the only sport it gets regular use with.

The only motion related problems are when there is a large object on screen (say a close up of someone's head) and it's moving rapidly from side to side (say the head viewed from the side, and it's vigerously nodding). Get a trailing effect from the border of the object.