Eturnalshift wrote:
I was faced with this decision last year and I ultimately went with a Plasma over an LCD or LED. We were drawn to the higher contrast and also the refresh rates; we use our 50" mainly for gaming and sports... and a higher refresh rate is better to prevent ghosting. The downside is that Plasma TVs do get warm, they use a lot of power they get burn in if you have a static image on screen for too long and they will also lose their quality over a period since the gasses will leak over time.
The heat isn't too much of an issue unless you're touching the TV. Our
Panasonic Viera TC-P50G10 ($1299 in Novermber 2009 at BestBuy) is warm to the touch but it doesn't increase the temperature in the room. It's actually as warm as the back of a CRT. I've seen some cheaper brands get extremely warm... like my sister-in-laws Vizio. That thing pumps out heat. I've read a lot of the newer plasmas are working to reduce the heat output from the TVs so that's working in favor for you.
The power consumption wasn't a concern of mine and I didn't see any abnormal jump in our electric bills since we got the TV. They do use more power though, so I'd double-check your circuit and make sure you don't have a bajillion things plugged into a 15A.
Plasmas are prone to image retention, or burn in, but the newer sets have protections in place to guard against it or fix the problem if it happens. My Viera will shift pixels from the left or right at some intervals just to ensure the pixels aren't stuck in the same place for too long. It helps, but isn't the end-all to the problem. When I was playing Fallout 3 I had some IR from the HUD. To fix this, I went into the menu and turned on a feature that wipes a black screen with a bright white bar. After a dozen passes the HUD was gone from my screen. I can't complain, especially since I've only used that once.
The leaking gas isn't a concern since I've read it takes a long time for it to happen, but all that happens is the gasses inside the TV will leak our or burn up, causing lesser contrast. (When I say it takes a long time for this to happen, I'm talking about 10 years for the halflife... at least that's the number that gets thrown around a lot.)
LCDs and LED LCDs have their problems, too. They often have slower refresh rates, lower contrast ratios, smaller viewing angles and a couple problems that can't be fixed, like dead/frozen pixels. They're perfect if you don't plan on watching a lot of sports, action movies or playing a lot of games.
If Plasma isn't your thing then the LED LCD TV is the top choice between the two remaining contenders. The LED TV is going to be more expensive, but as was stated, you'll get a better image since the TV is backlit evenly. The downside is the technology is new and LEDs will fail at some point. (Hell, so will the backlights for the LCD.) The big unknown (for me last year) was about the LED fail rate is and how much did it cost to replace an LED with it being a really new technology.
Some things -
1 - Get an extended warranty with any purchase.
2 - Make sure you can secure your wall mount into at least two studs.
3 - If you're getting an HD TV make sure you go all the way and upgrade your service provider to get HD service. Watching standard definition on an HD TV is terrible and you'd really be missing out.
Same thing I went through. I decided on a 50" plasma.
The one I bought was the Samsung PN50B850 (super thin like LEDs) and it rocks.
Plasmas have the best refresh rates, and resolutions/colors are the best only ones that beat them are the $3500+ LED Backlits
Plasma's are a lot cheaper the bigger size you go up than say LCD/LED and produce better picture quality then majority of them all and Blu-Rays are a lot smoother than the handy-cam style of the 240hz LED/LCDs that make the movie images look fake to me anyways.
And if your thinking of buying a 3D HDTV the Panasonic Plasma's blow away all the LCD/LED ones because of the speed. You can easily see that by just going into a store and comparing the 3D of the LEDs to Plasmas.
Image Retention is more of an issue in the first month of use of the plasmas, but gets better and pretty much not noticeable anymore after that. You don't want to max out the settings on the TV right away like Dynamic mode which looks bad imo anyway and not natural. And if you play games for long periods of times, just use the built in pixel wipe that removes IR in a few minutes. I use mine for gaming all the time and even as my PC monitor and play for hours.
Plasmas do take up more power though, and do get pretty hot.
I say just go to a store that has good lighting and ask to see the remote so you can adjust the color settings yourself and compare TVs and pic the best for you.
