New Larger TVs Favor LCD Over Plasma

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

[pe1chl]

It may not be a factor in the US market, but here in Europe plasma's have a bad reputation because of their energy consumption.
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:

[Angostura]

As I understand it, the problem with comparing plasma and LCD energy ratings is that LCD's power consumption is independent on the image displayed, whereas plasma's consumption varies with the brightness of the image.

Manufacturers such as Panasonic claim that under normal conditions consumption is about the same. I simply don't know. But I suppose plasma's figures could look unfairly bad if consumption figures are calculated while the TVs are displaying a bright standard test pattern or set of colour bars

Re:

[larryj]

I'm on my second plasma and I've yet to see ANY sign of burn-in. I even play a lot of games (Xbox, 360, PS2, Wii).

Re:

[walt-sjc]

I even play a lot of games (Xbox, 360, PS2, Wii)

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.

Re:Energy efficiency

[CaxDot]

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:

[The-Bus]

Wouldn't it make sense for consumers to buy LCDs which will be in environments mimicking their own? I like watching movies in a dark room but it doesn't make sense to have all the lights out if you're just watching sports or news. Or the kids are just watching a video and playing at the same time. If I were to take a guess as to what kind of rooms these TVs would be in: brightly lit rooms or pitch black rooms, I'd take the former.

It doesn't mean that's the best environment to replicate the movie theatre exp

LCD's energy efficiency is a myth!

[egghat]

German magazine Video tested LCD vs. Plasma under real world conditions (OK, Sin City and Ice Age in a loop). The result: Plasma consume a bit more energy, but not much more.

While LCDs use nearly the same amount of energy regardless of the picture, the plasmas energy uses climbs with the brightness of the content. LCD uses background lighting and the LC filter out light/colours. 200 watts if the picture is white, 200 watts if the picture is black. Plasmas "create" light and a plasma uses much more energy wh

Re:

[tsa]

Can you point me to a website to back your claim? I've never heard of LCD's burning in.

Re:

[ImaNihilist]

Walk into any school computer lab with LCDs and put in a Ubuntu disk. You'll notice when the GUI starts to load that you can see the Start Menu faintly though the maroon colored wallpaper.

Hell, top menu bar on my 6-month old iMac has burned in.

It's not NEARLY as bad on LCDs as it is on most plasmas, but it's still there on almost every single LCD.

Memory

[MichaelSmith]

LCD monitors do get imprinted but the image is lost when power is cycled. Perhaps you should switch the monitor off when booting into ubuntu.

Re:

[ImaNihilist]

Really? Neat. I'll have to look into that. I usually just throw the disk in, then hit restart.

Re:Memory

[glittalogik]

LCD burn is fixable. Make a screen-sized white image and a screen-sized black image and run a slideshow of them alternating for a few hours. This basically 'flexes' the light-blocking bits in each subpixel and gets them unstuck. I used to work at Philips and that's how we fixed it on any of the monitors in the office.

Re:Memory

[@madeus]

I can attest to this actually being true for Plasma screens as well (though it works for slightly different technical reasons obviously). I came across this solution when I found this article on Apple.com [apple.com] when searching Google for more information on what to do about "burn in". It's not quite the as same burn in as on CRT monitors in that it seems to be readily reversible, the trend seems to be to refer to it as 'persistence', though that may be in part because 'persistence' doesn't sound as scary to consumers.

I get burn in on my Plasma (a 50") after watching BBC News 24 (which has a large bright red box with the news logo and time on it in one corner) or when leaving my PVR menu on screen for a few minutes or leaving it outputting my Mac Mini desktop for some time (the bright icons in the Dock tend to burn in). As per the manual, if I watch another channel - particularly something bright - it goes away quickly. How quickly it goes away depends how long it was displaying the image (I think that's actually stated in my manual too).

Plasma does seem much more susceptible to "burn in"/persistence than LCD, but for the moment Plasma displays are the only way to go if you are looking for a large set (because you simply can't by very large LCD's). Plasma sets are also typically quite a bit cheaper, which makes them attractive. Lastly, they are also brighter than both back projection displays and LCD displays - my Pioneer Plasma is brighter than my old 1,500 UKP Sony CRT! Plasma sets seem to be the only ones that are able to deliver a bright picture, even with bright direct sunlight bouncing right off them (not a major selling point perhaps, but I was impressed).

I completely expect LCD displays to ultimately take over from Plasma's though. They are (potentially) a fair bit sharper, and they don't generate nearly as much heat - having the Plasma TV on is quite literally like having a radiator on in the room - particularly if it's a bright image, it gets as hot as the bottom of my PowerBook G4. It's just a matter of time before they can be made cost effectively at large sizes with little to no defects. If I was looking for a second (smaller) display I would definitely consider an LCD as it is. That said, I still expect Plasma TV's will be around and selling well for another 5 years yet (not least because it's much better than back projection and it's still kicking around).

I'm not surprised the US is the only real market for large displays. Not only do people have larger houses in the US (than say in Europe or in Asia) - you shouldn't really go bigger than about 42" unless you have a decent sized room -, and have more disposable income (due to lower taxation) but things like electronic goods are just so much cheaper (down to due to a combination of low taxation and economy of scale, I assume).

e.g. The cheapest price for my 50" Pioneer Plasma on Froogle (or indeed anywhere else) in the UK was ~3,500 UKP (with near identical pricing in stores on the continent). It a bit more expensive than most, as it's noticeably above average in terms of picture quality. At current exchange rates, that's over 6600 USD. When searching US stores in Froogle it was not only less than 3,500 US Dollars it was more like 2,000-2,800 (just under 1,500 UKP). Definitely worth a weekend trip to NYC if you are looking for something similarly expensive (but more portable ;), like a new high end laptop.

Re:

[glittalogik]

For plasma sets, even heavy burn-in/persistance can be minimised by leaving a full-screen white image with the brightness turned up for a while. It'll reduce the total lifespan/half-life of the panel but when you've already got upwards of 60 000 hours to play with, that's not a huge drama. Some sets are already including this as a built-in feature. You don't need to alternate black and white as what you're attempting is to accelerate the aging of the panel so that the relative age and therefore loss of brig

Re:

[pe1chl]

For LCD's that are better than equivalent-sized plasmas, I will happily plug the Philips 42PF9831 (Although I prefer the smaller 37PF9731).

That line of Philips TVs is awesome. I have a 32PF9986. This is the predecessor of the 9831 line (with a little less connectivity). I have it for about two years now, and at the time it was in a league of its own compared to all other LCD sets. It still it better than most of them.

Re:

[molarmass192]

picked up a 60" LCD TV for a mere $2800. Note that this wasn't a low-end one - this was the high-end Sony XBR2 SXRD model.

That's not really comparable to a plasma TV since you're talking about an LCD projection TV, not an LCD flat panel. A fair comparison is that a 60" plasma is about $7K while a 65" flat panel LCD (couldn't find any 60") is about $8.5K. Back on the greater topic, personally, I prefer the image of plasma's to LCDs right now simply because of the image blurring. I watch mostly hockey and

Re:

[walt-sjc]

Um, your TV is a rear projection type. Non-projection LCD's are the same thickness as plasma. Totally different. An example of a sony flat panel is the KDL-52XBR3 which runs around $6500 for a 52".

Re:

[karnal]

It sounds like you're referring to a projection LCD display, which is somewhat different from the displays people here are talking about; what with burn in conversations and all.

I'd imagine the smaller chips used in projection equipment don't have the same issues that a large flat LCD screen has.

Re:

[walt-sjc]

It uses a bright bulb to project an image onto the back of the screen. It matters not that the image gets there by reflecting off of the actual display circuit, or by passing though a translucent mini-panel. Quibble all you want, but it's even listed on Sony's web site as a rear-projection unit.

Re:

[kimvette]

Is it direct view, or is the image projected on the screen by means of reflection?

Oh, it's NOT direct view, but projected onto the screen?

Well, then, is it a projection TV?

Re:

[Duncan3]

Other way around. Plasma screens burn and burn in bad. Don't use them with any game console, you're just asking for trouble.

.

Re:Energy efficiency

[Bertie]

Possibly the most utterly stupid application of plasma screens I've ever seen is at Waterloo Station, here in London. A few years back they stopped using the old departure and arrival boards (you know, the ones where the train stations and numbers flip round like a Rolodex) in favour of HUNDREDS of plasma screens. At the time they were still retailing for thousands of pounds a pop. Needless to say, years of showing nothing but train schedules has left them pretty severely burnt in. And in my view, they were less readable than the old boards in the first place.

Another fine example of money being pissed up the wall in Britain.

Re:Energy efficiency

[jacksonj04]

Leeds spent many thousands on replacing old CRTs with LCDs, which worked roughly alright (Except for the fact that they were ran by Win2K and sometimes got interesting errors) except for, like you said, burn in after a year or two.

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...

[thrill12]

made by data display [datadisplayuk.com], a UK based company. I used to work on these displays. They also specifically mention the short lifespan of the plasma displays.

Re:

[monsted]

"Thousands of pounds"... How much do you think it costs to build the rolodex-style board? I'm willing to bet that you can buy many plasmas for the same price.

Other than that, i would probably pick a nice consumer item like a 30" Dell LCD for the application, if i were to make something similar now.

Re:

[Bertie]

Thousands of pounds per screen (at the time), and I'm not kidding, there's several hundred of them. Also, if you look at them closely, you can see that each one's made of two separate panels, so double that again. Four or five years on and they're almost due for replacement already.

Re:

[Bertie]

Hmm, you might be onto something there, given that Waterloo station serves the "stockbroker belt". I doubt anybody's impressed now, though - they look terrible. And they were never branded, so I can't see why any commercial outfit would have subsidised them if nobody was going to associate the screens with them, rather than their competitors.

I dunno, I just think they were a step backwards when they were installed, and now they look absolutely terrible and will be in need of replacement, whereas the old f

Re:Energy efficiency

[Osty]

LCDs also burn in.

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:

[RMH101]

Yes. They do. During a recent rollout of some electronic data capture systems in a hospital, we put in Microtouch M150 15" LCD touchscreens. These were left displaying a fixed graphic combo box for 5 days mid rollout, and 5 of 30 suffered very noticeable burn in. This isn't typical - we've used the same screens for 4 years at other sites without issue - but it does happen. First time I've seen it..

Re:Energy efficiency

[GTMoogle]

If it happens to 5 of 30, it's a manufacturing defect, although one possibly deemed acceptable (or went unnoticed). So a poorly made LCD can have issues with pixel response - it can probably even be fixed by massaging the screen while having it flicker through the color spectrum. YMMV. It works for dead pixels, at any rate. "L" stands for liquid, so gooshing it around may very well have restorative properties. I've never seen a burned in LCD, so I can't say from experience.

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).

I have seen it

[KenSeymour]

I was working on a project where we had large LCD overhead displays in a facility that operates 7/24. They got "image persistance" as a result. The manual for the monitors recommended having them turned off for a few hours a day to prevent this. This was not an option for our application so we made a change to the application to periodically swap the displays around. I do wonder how the LCD displays they use at the airport avoid this. The good news with LCD "burn-in" is that it is generally reversable.

Re:

[GTMoogle]

*nod*
The about.com article didn't go into it but from what I've heard, most LCDs with a memory problem are either being forced into extremely fast color change times, or are extremely large (>24"). The former means the pixels are *very* sensitive, the latter meaning the traces per pixel are larger. In both cases, the persistance problem is simply that the capacitance voltage of the wires is approaching the lower threshold of the sensitivity of the pixels. To properly ground the traces to eliminate the

Re:

[KenSeymour]

That would explain it. I think these were 42" displays.

As far as TV sets go, most people don't leave them on 24 hours a day.

The LCD displays were much more readable than CRTs would be in this application. It was in a control tower with lots of ambient light.

Re:Energy efficiency

[@madeus]

LCDs and DLPs don't burn in because they use filters over white light to emit colors.

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

[bbrack]

DLP does this with a color wheel rotating anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 times per second

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

Re:

[sootman]

>> LCDs also burn in.

> No they don't.

Yes they do. Want to come to my office and look at some nice 20" LCDs with Apple menus burned into them?

Why would anyone buy either?

[Onan]

I'm not very much of a television watcher, but I do sometimes have friends over to watch movies and such. I recently picked up a projector, and now have a 100ish" display that becomes a blank wall when I'm not using it.

I'm pretty happy with it, projectors are hardly a specialty item any more, and I doubt it was significantly more expensive than a 50" plasma or lcd television. So I'm having a hard time seeing why anyone who wants a big display would ever purchase anything other than a projector.

Is there something here I'm missing?

Re:Why would anyone buy either?

[tsa]

Most people don't have a spare wall to use as a TV screen. Besides, many people don't have the space for a projector. You need to have nothing between the projector and the wall, which is difficult to realize in a small room.

Re:

[colinramsay]

And to get the best out of a projector you need a screen (which means the "blank wall" thing goes out of the window) and lower light levels than an LCD or flatscreen - which means curtains during the day or watching at night.

Re:Why would anyone buy either?

[kisielk]

I find your comment puzzling. I live in Japan and many of my friends have projectors because their apartments are too small to be able to fit even a modest sized television. With a projector they can have a large screen while taking up very little space. Newer LCD projectors are no bigger than a regular sized laptop and fit easily on a shelf or projector mount. Add to this a screen that you can hang from the ceiling on some hooks, and you can get a 50" TV in a tiny space.

Re:

[hey!]

I think he's thinking of the old front projection systems from the 1980s. They had a coffee table sized console that was placed maybe 2m from a large, rigid screen. The screen had to be rigid because it was curved to compensate for off axis optical distortion. Placing the system far enough away from the screen to avoid optical problems would have defeated the purpose of the large screen: you can't sit in front of the projector without blocking the picture.

Modern projection systems are much more compact, an

Re:

[Flaming Babies]

For a 100" projection, you'd need about 7.5 ft x 4.5 ft of blank wall space and a wide enough room to put the projecter 12+ ft away with no obstructions between.
For a 50" plasma, you'd need about 4 ft x 2.5 ft of blank wall space.
I'd say there's a significant difference in the required space.

Re:

[walt-sjc]

For a 100" projection, you'd need about 7.5 ft x 4.5 ft of blank wall space and a wide enough room to put the projecter 12+ ft away with no obstructions between.

This really depends on the projector. Mine has adjustable zoom and can easily create a larger image being only 8' away. The projector is mounted on the ceiling... I don't know about your room, but I generally don't have many obstructions hanging from the ceiling between the seating area and projection wall. Due to limited bulb life (and the expense

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're missing is 2-fold.

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 m

Re:

[TheSHAD0W]

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/better-picture-of- sonys-black-backed-projection-screen-016964.php [gizmodo.com]

Re:Why would anyone buy either?

[Osty]

I'm not very much of a television watcher, but I do sometimes have friends over to watch movies and such. I recently picked up a projector, and now have a 100ish" display that becomes a blank wall when I'm not using it.

Is there something here I'm missing?

There are a number of reasons why people don't want or can't use front projection.

• Not enough room. You need to have a sizeable room for front projection if you really want to get to that 100" size. Being able to project the image is only part of the equation. Optimal viewing distance for a 50" set is between 6 and 10 feet (depending on HD or SD content). Do you really have a room big enough to accomodate a 20ft viewing distance for your 100" image?
• Not enough control over ambient lighting. Front projection needs a relatively dark room, much moreso than a rear-projection TV (CRT, LCoS, DLP, LCD) or direct-view (CRT, LCD, Plasma).
• Wife-acceptance factor. Try telling your wife that she has to make sure the blackout shades are down if she wants to watch her soaps or Oprah in the middle of the day.
• You realize that size isn't everything. Sure, you can get a 100" display, but depending on the technology in your projector you'll likely suffer screen-dooring or pixelization (especially for low-end consumer-grade projectors). 1280x720 (16x9 720p) at 100" diagonal is 14 pixels per inch.
• You realize that the price of the projector isn't everything. For proper viewing, you really need a good screen. A flat, white wall is merely "okay". A flat wall with special paint is better. A proper screen is best. Bear in mind that most people don't have truly flat walls, since drywall is usually somewhat textured. It might look flat, but project an image on it and you've suddenly got a bunch of little bumps causing little shadows all throughout the picture. A screen is really the way to go, and that's not cheap, especially if you want a roll-up model so it hides easily.

When all of the variables are right, front-projection is nice. Getting everything to come together for a proper viewing experience either requires extreme luck or large amounts of money. You can certainly go overboard, like a friend of mine who just put in a $15,000 theater, but even a modest projector + screen + blackout curtains will run you more than the $2000 I spent on a 50" rear-projection DLP.

Re:Why would anyone buy either?

[Technician]

There are a number of reasons why people don't want or can't use front projection.

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/hometheaterbasicsf aq/f/htbasicfaq5.htm [about.com]

Re:

[Osty]

I'm suprised nobody has mentioned lamp life yet. It's a pricy part and has a short life.

Because you have the exact same problem with DLP sets, and a similar issue with LCD (backlight). DLP bulbs are replaceable, though they usually last 2-3 years before replacement. Buy yourself a good store warranty for $100 and you'll get a free lamp replacement out of it (the only time store warrantees are worth anything). By the time you need a second lamp replacement (around the 5-6 year mark), you may as well b

Re:

[Technician]

Because you have the exact same problem with DLP sets, and a similar issue with LCD (backlight).

It is true that DLP projectors have the same issue with lamp life. The article was comparing plasma and LCD which is why I didn't mention DLP sets. Both my laptops are older than 3 years old and get more than 3 hours of use per day. Neither has required a lamp replacement. The 1500 to 3K hour life of a high intensity projector bulb is considerably shorter than a typical cold cathode lamp in an LCD set.

Re:

[pubjames]

Video projectors have a very limited bulb life.

I would hardly call it "very limited". I've been using my Sony projector to watch films about every other day for about three or four years and I haven't had to change the bulb yet.

Re:

[Mattintosh]

My projector (Viewsonic PJ501, el-cheapo) has a lamp rated for 2000 hours of lamp life in "normal" mode or 4000 hours in "whisper" mode (it runs the lamp at half brightness and slows the fan down). 4 hours a night is not going to burn that bulb out for 2.74 years (2 years, 270 days). And you get the benefit of being able to see the front-projected image in any light (because it's at half brightness, rather than the overpowering "normal" brightness that makes everything look like glare). I'm watching it righ

Re:

[smoker2]

Not enough room. You need to have a sizeable room for front projection if you really want to get to that 100" size. Being able to project the image is only part of the equation. Optimal viewing distance for a 50" set is between 6 and 10 feet (depending on HD or SD content). Do you really have a room big enough to accomodate a 20ft viewing distance for your 100" image?

My projector [infocus.com] is about 13 feet from the screen and I get a nice 84" diagonal. I view it from my bed, so my head is underneath and in front of t

Re:

[smoker2]

Forgot to add the link :

The screen in action [headru.sh] 31MB file but you can stream it in VLC or Xine.

Clockwise from top left = DVB broadcast tv, VLC player streaming the X Files from my media server, WinDVD playing chronicles of Riddick, and RealPlayer streaming NasaTV live. The resolution looks crap, but bear in mind that it is only 800x600 and the video has been run through DrDivx ! Also it's hard to focus the camera on a live screen. The monitor is a 19" CRT at 1600x1200.

Re:

[pubjames]

I have both a projector and a big TV. The projector is great for movies, however, who wants to watch the news, for instance, on a big screen in a darkened room? Also, I get motion sickness if I play video games on the projector, but not with the TV.

Re:Why would anyone buy either?

[nmg196]

> I'm having a hard time seeing why anyone who wants a
> big display would ever purchase anything other than a projector.

Because most people also use their TVs in the DAY or with lights on and projectors are absolutely crap in the daytime. The contrast ratio falls to next to nothing if there's any light in the room whatsoever.

The darkest black a projector can display is the black that you see when you look at a WHITE wall. Look at a nearby white wall NOW and decide for yourself if that's an acceptable BLACK level. If LCDs or Plasmas had a black level that bad, NOBODY would buy them and we'd all still be using CRT screens. The ONLY advantage of a projector is it's picture size, but the vast majority of people aren't prepared to cope with all the drawbacks just to get a bigger (washed out) picture.

Also, projectors are very difficult to site in the average living room. They need to go at the opposite end of the room to all your AV kit and preferably high up on a wall or ceiling. You either have to move all your AV kit to the back of the room and fire your remote controls backwards, or run a signal cable the whole distance of your living room to feed the projector.

They're great if all you want is a big picture in cinema-like blackout conditions, but they're hardly practical for the average family who needs to install it in a room with windows.

Re:

[Abcd1234]

All of which is why you have a reasonable sized TV (27" or 32" come to mind) for regular daytime watching, and have the big-screen in a nice home theatre setup, where you can watch your favorite HD content, movies, and so forth.

Frankly, the idea of have a 50"+ screen in my living room is simply laughable. A living room is for more than just watching TV. A gargantuan TV dominating the space is just ugly, IMHO.

Which is why I plan to build a separate A/V room in my basement. Then I can have the big screen d

Re:

[Mattintosh]

Not true. You just aren't doing it right.

1) Turn the brightness down. Many projectors have a half-brightness mode, usually named after one of the other benefits of not running full-blast (long-life, whisper-quiet, etc.). Use that mode and you'll have no problem seeing the picture during the daytime.

2) Don't use a white wall. Get a screen. White walls reflect all sorts of light (depending on the paint finish). Screens (even cheap ones) diffuse light just the right amount to give a good black level while allo

Re:

[nmg196]

If you shine a 2000lm light through an LCD, 1-2% of the light goes through the BLACK areas. Assuming your eye somehow PERFECTLY adapts so you can see NOTHING in the room other than the image itself, the black levels are STILL crap. Even in a cinema the contrast ratio is still pretty bad. You can easily see light in the black areas very easily. You're obviously not very observant.

Re:

[Yvan256]

Please feel free to correct me if the bulb cost and noise situations have improved.

What I'd like to know is, since the major problems of projectors are bulb longevity/cost and noise (from the fan to dissipate heat), couldn't the bulbs be made with those ultra-bright LEDs? We're now at a point where you can almost light up streets with (many of) these things, why can't they be used in a projector? Imagine a silent projector that basically never require new bulbs?

Re:

[karnal]

Very bright LEDs still require some way to diffuse heat - I have several 1 watt, and a 3 watt Lumiled based flashlight(s). Each one of them has a heatsink attached to the LED in question - so I would guess if you have a bank of these, you'd still need some form of active cooling.

In addition, these LEDs don't give a uniform light output over the surface area of the chip, so there would have to be additional items in the light path to ensure uniformity over the area of light output. (I'm just guessing based

Hmm...

[iamdrscience]

I understand the arguement for LCDs, but "Plasma" just sounds so much cooler. In order to make sure that LCDs are the winnning technology, I propose that companies who make LCDs start referring to their displays as "Liquivision" TVs and high-def LCDs as "Extreme Liquivision Plus".

Also, they should put racing stripes on them.

Re:

[PhunkySchtuff]

I think you've hit the nail right on the head there.
A mate of mine just knows that Plasma is the one to get, not this LDC (sic) or whatever...
I work with his partner, and have been educating her as to the benefits of LCD.
Recently they were out shopping and passed by an A/V store, so they went in for a look - he wanted to prove that LCDs were crap and Plasmas were without a doubt the one to get.

He walked purposefully into the store, had a good look over the various screens on display and then walked over to

Power consumption!

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Plasma power consumption BAD
LCD power consumption GOOD

To hell with plasma and LCD

[eebra82]

I'm waiting for one of those VR sets they promised us back in the 90s.

Re:

[am 2k]

Like this [3dvisor.com]?

(I'm not affiliated with them, just used tried one of them)

Why does nobody ever mention DLP?

[Robotech_Master]

Why is it that every comparison of HDTV technology is always plasma vs LCD, with never any discussion of DLP? I know there are DLP sets, and some of my friends say that DLP provides a much better picture than either LCD or plasma. Why aren't these sets part of the comparison?

Re:

[eebra82]

It could have something to do with the fact that LCD screens are directly competing with plasma screens and not so related to DLP technology, which is only used in projectors. How would such a comparison look anyway?

DLP HDTVs

[Kadin2048]

I think because they're not flatscreens, and this is off-putting to a lot of people who want something they can mount on their wall.

I'm not entirely sure of this, but my understanding is that DLP "televisions" are really rear-projection TVs: they have basically a DLP projector in the back, shining on the screen. That means you also need to factor in bulb replacement costs.

I think those two factors, plus general unfamiliarity in the marketplace, has led to them being less popular. And then there's the issue

Re:

[walt-sjc]

From what I have seen, the viewing angles of rear projection is much worse than either LCD flat panel or plasma. Plasma generally has much better viewing angles than any type of LCD (other than front-projection.)

Re:

[PhunkySchtuff]

You're not comparing apples to apples - please correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't have a flat-panel DLP screen hanging on your wall... a DLP is more like a rear-projection set (or used in a projector for a front-projector system)

Re:

[Professor_UNIX]

You're not comparing apples to apples - please correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't have a flat-panel DLP screen hanging on your wall

I'm not sure why anyone would find this appealing though. Where do you put your cable box, DVR, home theater receiver, DVD player, etc.? All that shit goes in the stand under my 32" CRT TV now. I don't know where the hell I'd put them if my TV just hung on the wall. I guess you could go crazy and build it all into shelves on the wall, but you'd still have the ugly cable

Re:

[jonnythan]

In the corner [photobucket.com], out of the way. :)

Re:

[afidel]

In my setup it will go in a low profile credenza. Setup the speakers next to the credenza and the LCD handing on the wall overhead and it looks MUCH better than my current hutch. Some people even go with cube type speaker setups to get a really clean look, but I'm a geek so the floorstanding tower speakers fit my aesthetic =) As to the cables, yes you run them through the wall or install channeling to hide them. Not a big deal if you own, can be a hassle if you rent though a friend got permission for channe

Re:

[walt-sjc]

Um, why is it nuts to want to put all that extra equipment, which is fairly ugly, out of sight? It doesn't take THAT much effort to put wires in the walls. I just made a wiring chase from the area behind the TV down to the basement. All my equipment is in the basement below the living room, and all you see in the living room is the tiny little Xantech IR receiver. A myth box and a 400 disk DVD changer eliminate the need to ever physically touch the equipment for normal usage. If I rent a movie (which is rar

Re:

[DrXym]

DLP implies having a honking great big set in the room or an overhead projector of some kind. I suspect LCD is most often compared to plasma because the form factor is more comparable.

Because DLP has inherent limitations LCD doesn't

[StandardCell]

DLP has the following limitations:

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:

[pete6677]

DLP better than LCD or Plasma? Not any that I've seen. I have seen numerous DLP screens in stores and the picture looks wierd on every one of them. The only advantage that DLP has is lower cost, and that's rapidly disappearing as LCDs and Plasmas get cheaper. When watching a football game on DLP, you can see the pixellation on the black colors and the motion really lags. Colors in general just don't appear correctly.

This is why HDTV discussions ignore DLP. The marketplace will ignore it too within about a y

50 inches, not surprised

[OneSmartFellow]

there is virtually no 50-inch-class plasma TV market outside the United States,

OK, but how much 50-inch-class LCD market is there outside of the United States.
My guess is it's pretty limited as well, after all, 50 inches is huge. I have a large house by English standards, and a 50 inch screen would simply look idiotic in my lounge. Anything larger than about 32-35 inches is simply too big for most houses.

Re:

[BenjyD]

I was thinking that too. My front room is 11'x11' and there are tens of thousands of identical Victorian terraces around here. My 32" looks big in that room, a 50" would be ridiculous.

Re:

[clickclickdrone]

Indeed. American houses and rooms tend to be much bigger than the norm elsewhere. That was part of the reason behind the initially slow takeup of home cinema in general in the UK. An average lounge (12x18 feet or less) looks pretty full when you stuff in a big AV amp, 5 speakers, sub, DVD/laserdisk player and a 40inch TV. My old lounge was I think 10x12 and the home cinema gear took the entire width and 4 feet of that space leaving just 10x8 to stuff in a sofa, my PC, bookshelves and a gas fire.

Re:

[vidarh]

Comparing UK lounges to American ones and pronouncing American rooms tend to be much bigger than elsewhere is rather silly - my first impression when I moved to the UK (from Norway) was that I'd never before seen such cramped, narrow lounges anywhere.... The UK suffer from high population density coupled with a legal system and regulatory system that have made it unattractive to build in height (London for hundreds of years even had a regulation preventing building higher than four floors).

As a result you

Re:

[BenjyD]

Indeed. I would blame it on the antiquated nature of Britain's housing, but it seems that a lot of the new houses being built have equally small rooms.

Personally, I'd like to knock through my two ~12' square reception rooms into one, but I think my landlord might have something to say if I did.

Re:

[MemoryDragon]

Actually rooms in central Europe tend to be bigger than in the UK as well, overall I have seen average houses in the US and central europe and they are pretty up to bar roomsizewise. I am not talking about mansions here, just general average middle class houses. Actually the roomsize even tends to be bigger here than in many suburb s in the US, but Plasma did not take off here, due to energy reasons.

Re:

[clickclickdrone]

>elsewhere is rather silly
Well pardon me for not visiting lounges in every country in the world for research purposes. Just going by what I've been told. I'm very happy you have a big one though.

Re:

[Greyfox]

That's true to a degree but the suckitude reverses when the screen size approaches that if your actual wall. If your entire wall is a screen you don't look like jackass anymore. Plus, you can have it display an image of Big Brother watching you when you're not using it to watch TV. Plus if it has picture in picture you can have the picture of Big Brother watching you even when you ARE watching TV...

eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

'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,'

Funny how 30% becomes virtually nothing when analysts work their magic.

Re:

[thona]

Not really, it makes sense.

Note that he talks of MARKET, not sales.

Yes, there are 30% sold outside the US, but this in MANY countries. That means in many markets, which would have to get distinct marketing. in each country, sales are possbily to small individually to talk of a "market". Together, they are nice - but then, this is not ONE market.

Re:

[drsquare]

The rest of the world has 20 times as many people as America, yet only 40% of the 50" plasma TV demand. This means America has over 46 times the demand than outside America. I'd say that counts as virtually nothing.

Sport...

[Siener]

I use my plasma TV for two things: Watching DVDs and watching sport. It is while watching sport that the faster response time comes into play. Although I love the higher res of LCD I've yet to see an LCD TV where you can watch cricket on without the ball becoming streak.

I'm sure there are some US Slashdotters who have the same experience with sports like baseball.

Say what you want

[Khyber]

I'll be standing over here, with either a highly compacted form of the DIY LCD projector (I'm working on making it near laptop-sized and dealing with heat issues) from Tom's Hardware, or I'm gonna be standing next to that Laser television with a big grin on my face as I pull resolutions higher than the meager 1366x768 most LCD screens come with, far better color gamut, and with no burn-in like a plasma.

Re:

[afidel]

There are quite a few 42" LCD's with 1920*1080 resolution on the market today. They generally have ~8ms response times and can be had as cheap as $1,300 for monitor only models or ~$1,600 for ones with integrated tuners. Other than a PC you aren't going to currently find any source material with more resolution than 1080p so there's little point to having more. Heck even the digital cinema projectors are only 2048x1080 and they project onto a >20m wide screen!

Can't stand LCD

[vidarh]

The problem is sharpness rather than slow updates.

I just bought a 42" HDTV capable plasma, and had to turn the sharpness down to 50%, as otherwise all non-HDTV contents, including DVD's looked extremely blocky and I could see the MPEG artifacts everywhere - the default image was far too clear. I shudder at the thought of how horrendous it would have looked on an LCD screen, as I usually notice the pixelation far easier on LCD screens than I do on plasmas.

Maybe I'll consider an LCD screen when I'm using all HD content, or if they start supporting adaptively blurring lower resolution content sufficiently.

Sharp images only works for me when the DPI of the source is high enough that you can't see individual pixels at normal viewing distances.

Yes, I realize that means that I've on purpose chosen a screen with a "lower" picture quality, but the end result is far better with 90%+ of the content available to me. And it was cheap enough to replace in a couple of years if a usable LCD screen (or other tech) comes along.

Re:

[Aceticon]

Maybe the problem is that you're sitting too close to your television?

I believe the ideal distance to sit from a TV was between 6 and 8 times the diagonal. For your 42" set that's roughly 6 to 8m.

If, for example, you're sitting 4m from the TV (a common distance in a living room in an appartment), it's not that surprising that you see the pixels on the image.

Re:

[iainl]

That sharpness is not a nice, crisp, clear image, but artificial edge enhancement. The fact that it looks hideous with the sharpness up is not a fault of your plasma; it's the case with LCD and even CRT as well.

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.

plasma vs lcd

[scharkalvin]

OK, when WILL plasma tv's offer 1920i resolution? (LCD's have it now)

When will LCD's offer 10000:1 contrast ratio (IE: good blacks). Plasma has it now.
When will LCD's be made in 50" screen sizes at prices under $2000-$2500 (can get a plasma in this size
and price now).

I currently have a 40" direct view tube tv and will be looking to replace it with a HiDef in the
near future. Translating the 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 means that to get a screen with the same height
I want at least a 46" display. (42" would be

Re:

[jonnythan]

That's an LCD rear projection TV, which competes more directly with DLP and CRT than plasma or LCD panel.

We're talking about getting large, affordable direct-view LCD panels to compete with plasma televisions.

Article in IEEE Spectrum

[necro81]

This discussion mirrors an article [ieee.org] that appears in the current issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine [ieee.org]. They review the pros and cons of LCD and Plasma technologies, with a brief look at DLP, SED, LCOS.

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.

IEEE

[wikinerd]

As a member of IEEE, I have read about plasma and LCD in a recent article appeared on Spectrum (I read it on the print edition, but I think the online version [ieee.org] is similar if not the same). The article confirmed what we all know: Plasma is impractical; Long live LCD! The winning technology must be cheap, reliable, with a long lifespan. LCD has all of these characteristics, but Plasma has none of them.

Re:SED anyone?

[Silver Sloth]

From the Wikipedia article you referenced

In October 2006, Toshiba's president announced the company plans to begin full production of 55" SED TVs in July 2007.

So the answer to your question is July 2007.

Re:SED anyone?

[bmo]

SED? What an unfortunate acronym for a display technology.

SED: /SED/, n.
  [TMRC, from Light-Emitting Diode] Smoke-emitting diode. A friode that lost the war. See also LER. [Not to be confused with sed(1), the Unix stream editor. ESR]

http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/SED.html [catb.org]

--
BMO