New Larger TVs Favor LCD Over Plasma 211
Information Week is carrying a Reuters story examining the shift towards LCD technology in recent large-screen television models. Though some analysts acknowledge that plasma displays have faster response times over large surfaces, the industry seems to be betting that consumers will prefer higher resolution images over time. From the article: "CPT's Wu agrees that plasma panels, especially 50-inch and larger ones, do excel LCDs in some aspects of picture quality, but he says the sheer size of the LCD camp will help LCD panels overcome whatever drawbacks they have in a timely manner ...With the 40-inch-class market gradually taken over by LCD TVs, plasma models need to migrate to the market for 50-inch TVs and above, but demand is not as well developed there, analysts say. 'The United States accounts for more than 70 percent of demand for 50-inch plasma TVs and larger. In other words, there is virtually no 50-inch-class plasma TV market outside the United States,' DisplaySearch director Hisakazu Torii said."
Energy efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
Household equipment is rated in the shops on an energy efficiency scale, and LCD screens score much better than plasma.
Furthermore, plasma has a tendency to burn in. Of course every manufacturer and salesman will tell you that "this is no longer true", but once the problem has happened they are not so firm in their statements anymore.
This causes trouble when watching 4:3 transmissions in true 4:3 format (rather than stretched to 16:9).
It also sometimes causes station logos or newstickers to burn in.
Re:Why would anyone buy either? (Score:4, Informative)
Power consumption! (Score:4, Informative)
LCD power consumption GOOD
Re:SED anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Memory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why would anyone buy either? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why would anyone buy either? (Score:3, Informative)
First you have contrast ratio. Unless you keep the display compleately dark, a black screen isn't really black. Normal lighting sources boost the dark areas and destroy contrast and to a lesser extent color balance. You can get around this by keeping the room compleately dark, but thats not really practical. It might be workable for movie night, but I'd hate to be forced to do all my TV watching in a dark room. Not to mention windows and other possible light sources that might not be under your control.
This issue could be resolved soon with a new screen that only reflects very specific wavelengths of light (namely the same exact RGB hues used in the projector). Since normal ambient light is somewhat evenly distributed amoung a broad spectrum of colors, only a very small percentage will be reflected from most sources and the screen looks very dark grey when the projector is off. However, since all of the light from the projector is in the wavelengths reflected by the screen its just as bright as on a normal white screen. This boosts the contrast ratio and eliminates most ambient light interference problems. Eventually, this will be the way to go for projector viewing, but currently, its still in the "is that a price tag or a model number?" stage and needs more development before being practical. (And I can't seem to find a link to a description of this screen, anyone else have better luck?)
Second you have space constraints. My walls aren't smooth and white. The rooms in this house are a bit odd, and I don't think I could easily find a large flat space thats unobtrusive, especially one that could have furnature arranged around it with room to put the projector far enough away. If you have such a space, then thats great for you, but it doesn't work for everyone.
Re:Why would anyone buy either? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm suprised nobody has mentioned lamp life yet. It's a pricy part and has a short life.
2. Video projectors have a very limited bulb life. In other words, if you are watching TV on your video projector about 3-4 hours every night, you would have to replace the light source bulb about once a year at 200-400 dollars a pop.
snipped from
http://hometheater.about.com/od/hometheaterbasics
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
No they don't. Plasmas suffer burn-in because they emit colors in the same way as a CRT -- using red, green, and blue phosphors. "Burn-in" happens when the phosphors age non-uniformly, such as when a static image is held in place too long. You can combat this by properly setting your contrast (TVs are set to torch mode in the stores because it looks better under the flourescents; at home you should have your contrast set to a much lower level) and by pixel-shifting, but you can't eliminate it so long as the technology uses a consumable resource for emitting colored light (phosphors).
LCDs and DLPs don't burn in because they use filters over white light to emit colors. DLP does this with a color wheel rotating anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 times per second, with the DMD adjusting for each window of the wheel to emit the correct amount of the base color of light (basic wheels contain red, green, and blue filters. Better wheels double up on the colors and often add several different shades of blue and green since our eyes are more attuned to those colors than red. Non-consumer high-end models have individual DMDs and filters for each color). LCDs have discrete filters for red, green, and blue, and the liquid crystal is set to a state to allow just the right amount of each through (thus you can do sub-pixel rendering, such as Cleartype font-smoothing). But it's still all about emitting filtered light, not emitting colored light from a phosphor. Your backlight may go out, but that's replaceable. Good luck replacing individual phosphors when they burn out.
Re:Memory (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:4, Informative)
The reason LCDs are outselling plasma displays is mainly that they are sold in brightly lit stores, where you won't easily see the enormous difference in contrast ratio. On the contrary, LCDs are fabricated to look black in direct lighting, while plasmas sometimes tend to look greyish.
Good stores should have dampened lighting in the TV dept. Plasmas are like projectors, you don't really see what they are capable of in bright light. Turn the lights down on an LCD, and you will see the disastrously poor contrast of LCD technology manifesting itself as glaring, grey areas that are supposed to represent black.
The other reason is that LCD are preadjusted to do a lot of clipping in white and black areas (which people don't always easily react to) to make the picture look less washed-out. If you correctly calibrate an LCD you will see this limitation quickly.
To further fool the customers, LCD vendors have a fantast-number called "dynamic contrast", which represents total contrast after frame-by-frame contrast distribution. It would be OK giving ut this specification, had they not omitted the real number. After all, "dynamic contrast 8000:1!" doesn't sound less cool than "contrast 5000:1". It's dynamic, like Batman & Robin. Too bad the real contrast is 1200:1.
So sure, LCDs may be better for use with a computer, but that is not the reason why they are winning the battles in the elecronics stores.
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
Certainly DLP's don't suffer from burn in (though they have a lot of other issues of course, the infamous rainbow effect being the biggest problem - though things seem to be improving on that front) but the same can't be said for LCD TV's. Although Plasma screens seem to burn in more easily, LCD displays do suffer [apple.com] too [dell.com], however mostly it seems to only be an issue with larger displays (e.g. 30" or larger - the sort of size used in LCD TV's). I am not sure why that is though.
Your backlight may go out, but that's replaceable. Good luck replacing individual phosphors when they burn out.
That's a bit of a red herring to be fair. As with the back lights on an LCD display, Plasma screen will indeed burn out eventually (mine is rated for something like 8 years continuous usage - i.e. so even if I watch 12 hours a day (which obviously I'm not going to) it should be good for 14 years, which I'm comfortable with. Good luck getting either replaced though!
The depressing reality is, unless you have a good 3rd party repair shop in your area that are comfortable with this sort of thing, or you are willing to take your TV apart yourself you are SOL. Vendors like Sony, Phillips (etc.) just don't want to know and that ones that will talk to you invariably give you a price that is equal to or more than the cost of a brand new unit (especially on smaller screens), and of course new sets of better quality will almost certainly be available for 1/4 of the price by then.
Example: I bought a brand new model 32" Sony CRT 8 years ago for 1,500 UKP (the most expensive set in the store as it happened). I'm going to give it to someone in the office who can use a better TV as there is almost no point in trying to sell it - you can get a better set for about 250 UKP now. It has a long-standing problem with powering up from being completely off (it's okay if you leave it on standby, but otherwise you might need to flick it on and off a couple of times), but it would cost about the same as a new set just to get that issue resolved.
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
They have now been replaced with huge banks of LED displays, similar to those in airports (I believe London KX has done this as well), which are amazingly bright, incredibly readable, and 100x more reliable.
You mean these... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:5, Informative)
The point was phosphors have a lifespan directly related to their average intensity, and for plasmas it's measurable in a matter of years if not months (for the difference between neighboring pixels).
Re:Memory (Score:2, Informative)
For LCD's that are better than equivalent-sized plasmas, I will happily plug the Philips 42PF9831 (Although I prefer the smaller 37PF9731). The Ambilight backing thing makes it a bit unwieldy, but thanks to the scanning backlight, response times are down to 3ms (grey-to-grey, but still), and it's equal to any plasma I've seen for brightness and contrast. Apparently the new Sony Bravias are full of awesome as well, but I haven't checked them out yet.
I'm curious to see if anything comes of the laser TV thing that got posted on here a few weeks ago, but until then, the new generation LCD sets are the win AFAIC.
Unfortunately this stuff all still pretty pricey in Australia, so I'm sticking to my cheap ol' 68cm CRT set and dodgy 2nd hand InFocus DLP projector for movies.
Re:Can't stand LCD (Score:3, Informative)
If anything, I've got too much softness by default on my LCD; I've been using the upscaler in the XBox 360 for DVDs instead, to avoid it.
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:4, Informative)
FYI, it's more on the order of 100 rotations/sec
The reason the DMD does not suffer burn-in is the fact that the hinges that the mirrors are mounted on do not suffer from the same type of repetitive stress wearout that a larger hinge would, not anything due to the color wheel - top end LCDs and DLPs actually have one light source per primary color
Article in IEEE Spectrum (Score:5, Informative)
Their take on it? It won't be settled for another couple of years, and there will be two distinct categories: screens below 50" (or 42"), and screens larger. LCD will dominate the smaller screen size market, though SED may replace that when the cost comes down (after 2010?). For larger screens, don't discount projection technology, particularly in terms of cost.
Incidentally, the cover article [ieee.org] for this issue is on Blake Ross [wikipedia.org], whom they call the Firefox Kid.
I have seen it (Score:3, Informative)
You can do a google search for "LCD image persistence" to read about it. Or you can just go here [about.com].
Re:Energy efficiency (Score:3, Informative)
I would be VERY surprised if anyone already has burn-in from playing games on a Wii.
Lots of different games wouldn't cause any burn-in. Playing the SAME game on a dedicated "gaming" plasma for many months on end would be a whole different story.
Because DLP has inherent limitations LCD doesn't (Score:5, Informative)
1. It is inherently a projector technology, which means:
a. For a front projection situation, DLP image quality is directly dependent upon the illumination within the room and the screen.
b. For a rear projection situation (i.e. the one that looks like a stand-alone TV), DLP requires a screen that has inherently poor viewing angles, particularly when viewed above or below the vertical screen limits. Even older LCDs without the "180 degree" viewing angle are far better than any DLP RPTV screen.
2. It is a technology dependent upon light sources that (currently) have inherently poor lifetimes. Lamps are expensive replacements. When LEDs and lasers come more into the fold, this should alleviate this problem.
(Note: this could also be construed as an advantage since you'd have all new luminance and you can't replace the CCFL backlight in an LCD which has a tendency to degrade unevenly over time).
3. It is a technology that, unless you use three separate DLP chips for the primary colors, will be prone to rainbow effects. Even in the 3DLP setups, convergence can also become an issue.
DLP is good for certain applications but will never be the primary volume driver of the market. Two years ago, it was the only way to get a decent screen size for HD, but not any more. The whole industry has dogpiled onto LCD direct-view, and it'll only get cheaper from here.
Re:Memory (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Memory (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, it's NOT direct view, but projected onto the screen?
Well, then, is it a projection TV?