Is Plasma TV Dead?

I really have nothing against plasma displays, really. The only thing is that - while they have more natural colors - the blacks never seem as inky as on most LED LCD displays I see. The blacks on most plasmas I've seen look like a dark murky grey to me. Not very pleasing.
 
Plasmas are nice but they draw too much power and produce a lot of heat. Honestly the issue for me though is that my parents had one they paid a good amount of money for and it died not much more than a year after they bought it. Out of warranty and totally worthless.
 
LCD / LED has nothing on a good Panny Viera, in fact they look like shit next to one. The only thing that will kill off plasmas is oled.
 
I love my 2011 model Panasonic 55" GT30, it weighs just over 100lbs with the stand and I can pick it up and move it myself. I'm kind of nervous about having it moved from Alaska to Florida next month, though.
 
Now is the time to buy as they are clearing out 2011 models, I just picked up a 65" Panasonic plasma for $1579 at amazon with free shipping and am anxiously awaiting its arrival :p
 
I love my 54" Panasonic Plasma. The best picture quality!

LCD pales in comparison.
 
I love how on the internet everything is so black and white and prone to exaggeration. Omg plama sucks! Led for the win ! lcd iz like totally better by 1000000x!

I love my samsung lcd tv with the ccfl back lighting. I would dare anyone to bring there plasma over and tell me "my picture is soooo much better than your". Total bs. Such exaggerations just make people like like total fucking idiots.Perceptible differences? Sure.
 
choppedliver said:
I love how on the internet everything is so black and white and prone to exaggeration. Omg plama sucks! Led for the win ! lcd iz like totally better by 1000000x!

I love my samsung lcd tv with the ccfl back lighting. I would dare anyone to bring there plasma over and tell me "my picture is soooo much better than your". Total bs. Such exaggerations just make people like like total fucking idiots.Perceptible differences? Sure.
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lolwut
 
MajorDomo said:
The list of major manufacturers who make plasma TVs is on the wane and those that are still in the game are showing a reduced bottom line. It looks like the writing is on the wall for the future of plasma sets.
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Power consumption. That's about it. $33/year more. Whoopedee doo. Weight is irrelevant, because they are both going to be mounted on a wall or stand.

Plasma beats LCD in...
  • Number of colors (Billions vs 262,000 - 16.7 million)
  • Contrast ratio
  • Black level
  • Motion blur
  • Viewing angle
People beat the LCD drum, because it is typically cheaper and they want to justify their purchase to themselves and to others by claiming they have the best. LCD is an old technology that was never designed to be used to display rapid movement, but the technology has been pushed to its limits. Plasma is also an old technology, but mimics closer to the CRTs that most of us abandoned, because of their clunky size, despite their superior picture quality.

It is only a bummer that Pioneer went out of business. They took some great technology with them to the grave.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038719619 said:
I was under the impression (and I could be wrong, as I remember reading/hearing this along time ago) that Plasma's biggest problem was its relatively short life span, particularly considering the expense.
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That was true, when plasmas first came out. Both plasma and LCDs typically offer around 60,000 - 100,000 hours of use (41-68 years at 4 hours/day of use), so way longer than you will ever keep either around.
 
Where most of the world lives, in the mid and low end of TV sets there is very little difference in terms of image quality.

I purchased and owned a plasma TV that was defective (died in a day) and returned it for an LCD TV that was sitting next to the plasma on the shelf.

I can tell you that the plasma had warmer black but otherwise they were mostly equal. (yes this is on HD content.)

The LCD had better brights, and with some minor adjustments the IQ was identical. This was on 2 similar cost samsung tvs that were around 500 bucks, both 42 inch.

Perhaps things change when you get to the high end of 800-1200 and over, but even with the expensive ones I saw, the only discernible difference was in the size and individual adjustments each manufacturer makes with regards to settings.

Overall I would rate them as equal enough that it really isn't a discernible factor for most people.
 
Wixard said:
Where most of the world lives, in the mid and low end of TV sets there is very little difference in terms of image quality.

I purchased and owned a plasma TV that was defective (died in a day) and returned it for an LCD TV that was sitting next to the plasma on the shelf.

I can tell you that the plasma had warmer black but otherwise they were mostly equal. (yes this is on HD content.)

The LCD had better brights, and with some minor adjustments the IQ was identical. This was on 2 similar cost samsung tvs that were around 500 bucks, both 42 inch.

Perhaps things change when you get to the high end of 800-1200 and over, but even with the expensive ones I saw, the only discernible difference was in the size and individual adjustments each manufacturer makes with regards to settings.

Overall I would rate them as equal enough that it really isn't a discernible factor for most people.
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You would rate them as "equal" after never even using the plasma ;)
 
Plasma is not dead. a few days ago, panasonic and NHK (something like that) made an 8k, like 120in plasma display. I can imagine there were engineering decisions made behind why it was a plasma over an LCD or OLED display. They may make a comeback.
 
Manaknight said:
after buying a high end plasma it's really hard to go back to lcd. They are certainly getting a lot closer, but it's still not quite as good as a plasma for quality. It's a shame they are getting pushed out of the market.
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Feel dame way got a 42" Pioneer Elite back when it was the top of the line TV, this year we decided we'd like a bigger tv for movies etc. We went to the tv store they had the super slim Samsung LCD and led TVs but the picture was so much worse in my oppinion, anyway we bought a 60" Panasonic vt-30(maybe 35 :$) and its been amazing colors are superb, crystal clear screen just great !
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Between the Panasonic G15 I have and the Panasonic IPS Alpha based unit I have the G15 is hands down a better set. It sucked the day Pioneer exited the Plasma market, and the day Panasonic does it will be worse (not because Panasonic makes a better set...they don't).
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Was disappointed when they did and it meant we weren't going to be replacing the ol elite with a bigger New.one
 
Plasma will die off completely in the next 5 years and not because of LED-LCD's..


It'll die off because of OLED. OLED is superior in every way to Plasma , Plasma has zero advantages over it. So yes it's going to die soon but I love my Plasma , for movies its incredible. But once OLED is affordable which won't take long , I'll happily ditch it for something that doesn't even use a 1/3 of the power a 55 inch Plasma does.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038720624 said:
Pioneer didn't go out of business, they just left the TV business. Big difference.
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Well if you like Pioneer only for their TV's then they might as well have gone out of business.
 
mashie said:
The day my 60" Pioneer Kuro is worn out OLED will be available to replace it, screw LCD screens.
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This. LCD sucks pretty bad compared to a good plasma. My 60" Kuro will serve me well for a few more years to come.
 
I sold home theatre stuff for a few years and I'd always hear about burn-in and "I heard the plasma gas leaks out after a couple years" from people.

My father-in-law was buying a TV and he flat out wouldn't listen to my recommendations based on hearing nonsense about plasma having poor reliability from his ignorant neighbor who owns an LCD.

That being said, the general population buys cheap Vizio LCD televisions from Wal-mart. I have a Kuro and love it, but not everyone wants a 50"+ $2k+ TV.
 
My parents recently got a plasma for a pretty damn good price and the picture quality is very good. I think now is actually a pretty good time to buy a plasma, there are some great deals out there. A $500 looks way better than a $500 LCD of a comparable size.
 
A few years ago I was in for my first big TV purchase. I was never impressed with a plasma picture.

Their pixels seem very distinct like there's too much dead screen between them in proportion to their size. I could also swear at times regions of the screen were updating at different rates and it was driving me nuts. This happened repeatedly in different stores.

I really don't get the fuss.
 
Trepidati0n said:
But as long as people favor thin and sexy (and willing to pay for it)..the superior picture that is plasma will not gain strong traction.
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I never understood the obsession with thin and sexy.
the trade offs are not worth it.
you get shitty edge lit led instead of backlit, and who looks at how thin the tv is under normal viewing conditions anyway?
You watch tv from the front, not from the side.
 
Godmachine said:
Plasma will die off completely in the next 5 years and not because of LED-LCD's..


It'll die off because of OLED. OLED is superior in every way to Plasma , Plasma has zero advantages over it. So yes it's going to die soon but I love my Plasma , for movies its incredible. But once OLED is affordable which won't take long , I'll happily ditch it for something that doesn't even use a 1/3 of the power a 55 inch Plasma does.
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OLED will be great, but I think it will take 8-10 years before they are sub <$2500. LG's 55" is set to be $9k+, if it is released at the end of the year. I remember seeing one of the first plasmas at Circuit City - it was $15k. It took 10 years to come down from that.

Zarathustra[H];1038720624 said:
Pioneer didn't go out of business, they just left the TV business. Big difference.
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I know, I worded it badly. Panasonic bought some of their TV tech, but they haven't yet implemented what was in the KURO line.
 
I prefer the image quality of plasma and we own 3 Panasonic units.
6 months ago we bought 2 50" ones for $550 each from Amazon.
 
I hate LCD for gaming, even on the fastest displays I can still see ghosting or blurring or whatever you want to call the slow pixel response time.

Plasmas are much much better for that.

My only issue with my 60" plasma is it's inability to accept and display a signal that is >60hz eventhough it claims this 600hz subframe refresh (Would it really be so hard for them to all the TV to display a true 120hz refresh rate while hooked up to a PC?).
60hz sucks for me because I can see the screen flashing. The flashing usually goes away for me around 75hz, but I prefer 85hz minimum, 120hz is a dream.
I remember playing quake 3 at true 120hz on my old CRT. It did more for realism than any 3D bullshit or other special effects.

And, when I am talking about 120hz I mean 120hz native. None of this stupid up sampling frame interpretation gimmick BS that LCD uses.
 
Panasonic ST30 plasma here. I absolutely love it. Destroys LCD in every way that matters like motion, black levels, etc. For the quality I'm getting out of a sub $1000 plasma, it would cost 3x as much to make me happy with an lcd, and the black levels would still suck.
 
I have a part time job in a place that has over 140 TV's on display (not Best buy or CompUSA). There's only a handful of high end LED TV's that have a PQ that can hold their own against even a mid range plasma.

Sharp 847U series - Quattron (didn't Sharp buy the Elite branding?)
Samsung D/E 8000 models.

I talk to the masses every weekend about TVs and hear their misconceived beliefs about plasmas. It all changes once I pop in a USB with re-encoded blu-ray movies and watch their jaws drop.
 
I'm curious...why does every plasma TV I've ever seen have blacks that look more grey than black? I read about how great their blacks are but in reality I'm impressed with, say, Samsung's current LED backlit LCD's. The blacks look super inky and wonderful. How come I'm not seeing this with plasma displays? From what i read/hear, plasmas are supposed to have excellent black levels, right? Why is that never the case when I'm looking at a plasma display in person? Is there something I'm missing?
 
mashie said:
The day my 60" Pioneer Kuro is worn out OLED will be available to replace it, screw LCD screens.
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I hope so, I've got a 50in Kuro and whenever I look at new TVs nothing looks anywhere near as good.
 
stop!theradio said:
I'm curious...why does every plasma TV I've ever seen have blacks that look more grey than black? I read about how great their blacks are but in reality I'm impressed with, say, Samsung's current LED backlit LCD's. The blacks look super inky and wonderful. How come I'm not seeing this with plasma displays? From what i read/hear, plasmas are supposed to have excellent black levels, right? Why is that never the case when I'm looking at a plasma display in person? Is there something I'm missing?
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Pioneer Kuro is what's missing in your life
 
stop!theradio said:
I'm curious...why does every plasma TV I've ever seen have blacks that look more grey than black? I read about how great their blacks are but in reality I'm impressed with, say, Samsung's current LED backlit LCD's. The blacks look super inky and wonderful. How come I'm not seeing this with plasma displays? From what i read/hear, plasmas are supposed to have excellent black levels, right? Why is that never the case when I'm looking at a plasma display in person? Is there something I'm missing?
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Was it a high end plasma? The low end plasmas tend to have low lcd-like contrast ratios. Direct sunlight also washes out plasma filters.
 
stop!theradio said:
Is there something I'm missing?
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If you're looking at them in stores they probably are being piped in from a low image quality source unless it's a flagship model that's being run off HDMI from a bluray player. The black levels are also going to depend on the image itself, and the calibration on the unit. Proper calibration and a good image source will give you very good blacks.

The reason plasmas can get much better blacks than LCD's is how they work. Plasma is emissive, whereas LCD's are filter. Plasma uses an array of individual gas filled cells that glow when electrified. Black is "off" for a plasma screen. LCD's use a backlight which is either fluorescent or LED-based, and the LCD crystals filter the light. Black is "on" in the case of an LCD - meaning the LCD pixel is energized to block the light coming through it. Newer LCD screens using LED's for backlight are better than the older fluorescent models at producing darker black levels, but plasma and CRT have always had the edge there.

Personally I hate LCD screens. Plasma and CRT look best to me, especially where motion is concerned. I'm looking forward to what OLED can deliver eventually.
 
I'm thinking about getting a plasma tv coming to replace my lcd one. I use it for a htpc setup for gaming and movies. How is the burn-in problem, does that still happen? That's what I'm most worried about and all retailers I've asked said they dont' cover or accept returns for burn-ins.
 
I've been running a LG 60PX950 for the last 9 months as the sole display for my PC. I love it. Zero burn in. Screen saver and the orbiter function on the TV itself do a great job of this. The orbiter option is great for gaming and mitigating the huds. I have even done a 12 hour marathon with Civ 5 and there was no image retention at all around the bottom of the screen where the hud is pretty static. As mentioned above, my only issue is being stuck at a 60hz refresh. I'm wondering if something simple like a firmware hack could enable displaying at 120hz. Then again that might fry some components, so maybe it's not such a bright idea.
 
Teenk9 said:
I'm thinking about getting a plasma tv coming to replace my lcd one. I use it for a htpc setup for gaming and movies. How is the burn-in problem, does that still happen? That's what I'm most worried about and all retailers I've asked said they dont' cover or accept returns for burn-ins.
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Burn in hasn't been a problem for years.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
OLED will be great, but I think it will take 8-10 years before they are sub <$2500. LG's 55" is set to be $9k+, if it is released at the end of the year. I remember seeing one of the first plasmas at Circuit City - it was $15k. It took 10 years to come down from that.

I know, I worded it badly. Panasonic bought some of their TV tech, but they haven't yet implemented what was in the KURO line.
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Except Plasma cost in the beginning came from component cost and Plasma's came out in 1997. Chips capable of managing the array were very slow around that time since home computers weren't even able to deal with intensive tasking which is why early Plasma's while a huge advance looked like shit with phosphor ghosting trails and horrible burn-in and they weren't even HD , they were 852x480p. They also lost brightness over time drastically , within a year early models lost around 50 percent of there average brightness even with casual usage. OLED has been cooking for a while now and things are so different than they were in 1997.

OLED is very inexpensive with its component cost. The biggest hurdles with OLED have been mass production and long lasting Blue OLED's. Blue OLED's have been extremely difficult to extend there life. Not even 3-4 years ago they only lasted about 3-4k hours and that's completely unacceptable. Now Samsung supposedly has them lasting about 25-35k hours which is much more realistic and doable plus they are cheaper to manufacture than 3-4 years ago. Building an OLED TV really isn't going to take massively expensive material , but getting down the build times will lower costs drastically.

In 5 years manufacturing techniques will be far superior thanks to trial and error. I would imagine in that time frame a 42 inch fully OLED TV could retail for around $3000 or less which is the range I consider "doable" for many consumers. It'll be another 3-5 years for it to come down to the current LCD range of around $300-400 for a 42 inch 1080p LCD (as a deal , not a retail value).
 
J So said:
Pioneer Kuro is what's missing in your life
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So is that pretty much THE plasma TV to get?

j3ff86 said:
Was it a high end plasma? The low end plasmas tend to have low lcd-like contrast ratios. Direct sunlight also washes out plasma filters.
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To be honest, I can't name the specific models I've seen - though I've seen tons of plasmas both in the high and low end ranges. At best, plasma's have looked good to me - but never seemed to give me a reason to get one over an LCD, especially when considering price range.

Phoenix333 said:
If you're looking at them in stores they probably are being piped in from a low image quality source unless it's a flagship model that's being run off HDMI from a bluray player. The black levels are also going to depend on the image itself, and the calibration on the unit. Proper calibration and a good image source will give you very good blacks.

The reason plasmas can get much better blacks than LCD's is how they work. Plasma is emissive, whereas LCD's are filter. Plasma uses an array of individual gas filled cells that glow when electrified. Black is "off" for a plasma screen. LCD's use a backlight which is either fluorescent or LED-based, and the LCD crystals filter the light. Black is "on" in the case of an LCD - meaning the LCD pixel is energized to block the light coming through it. Newer LCD screens using LED's for backlight are better than the older fluorescent models at producing darker black levels, but plasma and CRT have always had the edge there.

Personally I hate LCD screens. Plasma and CRT look best to me, especially where motion is concerned. I'm looking forward to what OLED can deliver eventually.
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I do have a general understanding of the different display technologies and how they work (albeit not on any deeply advanced level), but thank you for the info, I appreciate it nonetheless! With that said - I did look at them in stores so I realize they're almost always not calibrated. The same goes for LCD's, though, which is why I'm asking these questions in this thread. Also, the better plasma TV's that I have looked at had a high quality source being fed through HDMI from a Blu-Ray player, as well as the LCD's.

One fairly recent example I can think of is when I was in Best Buy looking at TV's. In the higher-end display portion of the TV section, there was a Samsung LED backlit LCD sitting next to a plasma TV. I can't remember what brand or model the plasma was (I know - how convenient, right? lol), but it was an expensive high-end model of some sort. The plasma had a more dynamic range of colors and contrast but the blacks never truly looked black...they looked more grey. Also it had slightly more discernible detail in the darker areas when compared to the Samsung. Those are excellent traits for sure, but:

The Samsung on the other hand seemed to have a sharper picture (dot pitch?) with more vibrant colors and the blacks were just insanely inky and dark which I love. I also liked the brightness of the LCD. The brightness was high yet the blacks still looked great. It probably would've been a different story if both TV's were displaying only a blank screen side by side, but *shrugs*.

It could very well be that I've never seen a truly high-end plasma, but I really feel that's not the case here. It could be that the plasma TV's were always calibrated badly every single time, but LCD's are calibrated badly as well. Is it possible that plasmas can be calibrated in such a way where it looks worse than a badly calibrated LCD? Like - it's known that stores like to bump the brightness on their displays way up - so maybe a plasma with its brightness turned all the way up is capable of looking worse than an LCD with its brightness turned all the way up? Perhaps it affects the blacks negatively on plasmas, making them appear grey?

I don't know. I am planning on getting a plasma sometime soon, but I'll have to make sure to view one that I know for a fact has been properly calibrated.
 
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