Plasma is still beautiful and it's image quality rivals any modern tech!

Top Gun: Maverick 2022
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cesarioFL71 said:
Call of Duty 2 ca. 2005

Give me a remaster of this awesome game with RTX and updated textures with some fresh MP maps and I'm golden! :)
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Playing this on the Xbox 360 and having it mostly hit 60 fps was an eye-opener for me. Especially since my poor graphics card couldn't do it. That was almost 20 years ago now. Damn.... Where has the time gone.
 
OMG! Do I remember the hype in the weeks before MW2 released. Michael Bay SP campaign combined with a nice MP experience. That was actually the last MP game I really got into......... My 4080 flaked out on me yesterday. Gotta go a few days with my backup 3060ti. :(

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By request photos of the unit. The carrying handles allow for easier handling and provide added stability in portrait position.
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As far as I know these units were the very last professional plasma monitors to be made. I have two from Jan 2014 and one from Dec 2013.
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Running in 1:1 pixel mode at 32:9 aspect ratio. None of the consumer panels from Panasonic perform this level of scaling; only the professional line. That and the lack of any signal processing really allows this unit to shine as a pure monitor.
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l88bastard said:
If you like terminator then you'll love robocop game and I'm sure it will look stunning on plasma
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Yeah....i plan on picking it up soon. The team that developed Resistance really put alot of love into the game. I'm quite enjoying the game and it's true to the movie atmosphere.
 
Technically OLED tech is vastly superior to PDP in most metrics.
That doesn't however always mean actual products will utilize tech to surpass older tech like PDP in every metric. It is enough to make monitor or TV with bad calibration or other stupid limitations and it can easily be worse than older tech.

PDP biggest advantage is its forced strobing.
OLEDs you can also strobe but don't need to and this means manufacturers don't focus on strobing feature enough to make it excellent. You need to in short time pump quite a lot of power to the panel which I doubt current displays are technically capable of. Panels themselves I would assume could be driven harder but only with better power supply. You couldn't get the same level of HDR highlights when strobing but making SDR image brightner than any plasma had while having shorter pulse should not be an issue.

Other than that there are quite a few differences and quirks of PDP tech which make these displays desirable. I would however say not for average consumer but display enthusiasts like myself. I replaced my Panasonic 42VT30 with LG 48GQ900 but I didn't sell my old plasma.

Otherwise one big advantage of plasmas is simply a matter of quality versus price. If you want amazing displays for little money you cannot go wrong with good plasma.
Especially for modern consoles like PS5 it could be argued plasmas are exactly great because most games run 60fps and are kinda upscaled with tricks to 4K but then downscaled to 1080p native panel look absolutely beautiful. Brother got Pioneer Kuro LX5090 for less than tenth the price I got my OLED monitor and while I would say my monitor is better than his TV I cannot argue with the fact that in some cases his TV looks better. In fact pretty much the same was true for Panasonic - just Pioneer Kuro is much better plasma.
 
XoR_ said:
Technically OLED tech is vastly superior to PDP in most metrics.
That doesn't however always mean actual products will utilize tech to surpass older tech like PDP in every metric. It is enough to make monitor or TV with bad calibration or other stupid limitations and it can easily be worse than older tech.

PDP biggest advantage is its forced strobing.
OLEDs you can also strobe but don't need to and this means manufacturers don't focus on strobing feature enough to make it excellent. You need to in short time pump quite a lot of power to the panel which I doubt current displays are technically capable of. Panels themselves I would assume could be driven harder but only with better power supply. You couldn't get the same level of HDR highlights when strobing but making SDR image brightner than any plasma had while having shorter pulse should not be an issue.

Other than that there are quite a few differences and quirks of PDP tech which make these displays desirable. I would however say not for average consumer but display enthusiasts like myself. I replaced my Panasonic 42VT30 with LG 48GQ900 but I didn't sell my old plasma.

Otherwise one big advantage of plasmas is simply a matter of quality versus price. If you want amazing displays for little money you cannot go wrong with good plasma.
Especially for modern consoles like PS5 it could be argued plasmas are exactly great because most games run 60fps and are kinda upscaled with tricks to 4K but then downscaled to 1080p native panel look absolutely beautiful. Brother got Pioneer Kuro LX5090 for less than tenth the price I got my OLED monitor and while I would say my monitor is better than his TV I cannot argue with the fact that in some cases his TV looks better. In fact pretty much the same was true for Panasonic - just Pioneer Kuro is much better plasma.
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The Sony A95L has black frame insertion that makes motion nearly as good a plasma, maybe even better, but it knocks brightness back down to plasma level. It is also readily available in the game menu to toggle on and off. I never use it, but it is nice to know that extra level of motion performance is available. It is almost like a built in plasma mode Sony is basically the new Kuro. Priced like it to.

Frankly, plasma is really good, but good QD-OLED is just on a whole other level. Adaptive VRR, HDR, 4K res, insane levels of contrast and brightness. Superior shadow details…like insane levels of blackness. Even the A80L, which is priced more reasonably, but uses an LG panel and probably has the same feature set, is phenomenal. If you can swing the price, Sony OLED is a huge upgrade, especially if you are at a distance and on a 55-60 inch plasma.

The smart features are also incredibly well done at this stage. Your plasma WILL break, inevitably. When it does, go for a Sony.
 
Blackstone said:
The Sony A95L has black frame insertion that makes motion nearly as good a plasma, maybe even better, but it knocks brightness back down to plasma level. It is also readily available in the game menu to toggle on and off. I never use it, but it is nice to know that extra level of motion performance is available. It is almost like a built in plasma mode Sony is basically the new Kuro. Priced like it to.

Frankly, plasma is really good, but good QD-OLED is just on a whole other level. Adaptive VRR, HDR, 4K res, insane levels of contrast and brightness. Superior shadow details…like insane levels of blackness. Even the A80L, which is priced more reasonably, but uses an LG panel and probably has the same feature set, is phenomenal. If you can swing the price, Sony OLED is a huge upgrade, especially if you are at a distance and on a 55-60 inch plasma.

The smart features are also incredibly well done at this stage. Your plasma WILL break, inevitably. When it does, go for a Sony.
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I saw the latest LG EVO panels in the store this morning and hot damn. They looked GOOD. They were showing off LG demo but it looked fantastic. Sadly, I still have toddlers running around so I'm not about to dump a couple of grand on a TV only to have them destroy it accidentally.
 
Blackstone said:
The Sony A95L has black frame insertion that makes motion nearly as good a plasma, maybe even better, but it knocks brightness back down to plasma level. It is also readily available in the game menu to toggle on and off. I never use it, but it is nice to know that extra level of motion performance is available. It is almost like a built in plasma mode Sony is basically the new Kuro. Priced like it to.

Frankly, plasma is really good, but good QD-OLED is just on a whole other level. Adaptive VRR, HDR, 4K res, insane levels of contrast and brightness. Superior shadow details…like insane levels of blackness. Even the A80L, which is priced more reasonably, but uses an LG panel and probably has the same feature set, is phenomenal. If you can swing the price, Sony OLED is a huge upgrade, especially if you are at a distance and on a 55-60 inch plasma.

The smart features are also incredibly well done at this stage. Your plasma WILL break, inevitably. When it does, go for a Sony.
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The newest CRTs are 20 years old at this point and still work. I believe the newest plasmas are probably half that age so there's still quite a bit of life in them I would assume.
 
jbltecnicspro said:
I saw the latest LG EVO panels in the store this morning and hot damn. They looked GOOD. They were showing off LG demo but it looked fantastic. Sadly, I still have toddlers running around so I'm not about to dump a couple of grand on a TV only to have them destroy it accidentally.
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Mount it to the wall and route your cables through the wall behind it so they can't reach it.
 
I need a cheap TV for a second room and it looks like 65" plasmas are only $200 or so. Is there any reason to avoid the 3D models? Models I'm looking at currently are a panasonic VIERA TH-P65VT2 or a Kuro KRP-600A (has a fair amount of scratches, but it's only $100 so maybe those could be fixed?)
 
Andrew_Carr said:
I need a cheap TV for a second room and it looks like 65" plasmas are only $200 or so. Is there any reason to avoid the 3D models? Models I'm looking at currently are a panasonic VIERA TH-P65VT2 or a Kuro KRP-600A (has a fair amount of scratches, but it's only $100 so maybe those could be fixed?)
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Kuro, the scratches arent noticeable when viewing content.
 
I got two weeks ago Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 and...
...everything people say about there being something to image of these plasmas which make them even better to look at than OLEDs is true.

Though I don't think it has anything to do with plasma tech itself but rather ratios of green-cyan light that stimulates rods were nailed with phosphor formulations for R, G and B subpixels leading to getting close to optimal ratios of rod stimulation to cause this 'glowing' effect that makes colors look much more vibrant while still distinctly looking the same hue and saturation. This glowing also cause literal pleasure.

Since these things can be tuned on OLED and even I did see IPS monitor with very similar colors it isn't plasma (or CRT - I also own CRT with very similar colors) specific advantage. In fact Panasonic plasmas I did use didn't hit these colors. 37PV80 has nice colors but it was EBU phosphors look - maybe it even used EBU phosphors, who knows. 42VT30 had similar colors too. 50GT30 I also viewed a lot had slightly better colors almost hitting 'glowing' thresholds and this one was best showing from Panasonic plasmas I ever seen. Unlike my 42VT30 there was also much less issues caused by 600Hz sub-field drive - probably because phosphors used were slower than on my 42VT30 which had too fast phosphors and the banding when moving eyes was at times way too distracting for comfort.

Pioneer Kuro however not only doesn't use idiotic 600Hz sub-field drive (which BTW was falsely advertised as improving motion clairty which was big fat lie - it only degraded motion performance!!!) and I can move eyes fast across the sreen all I want and the most I will see is slight cyan and green colorations typical for all plasma panels. That said this effect is much less visible on Kuro making it even less of an issue than I ever had with Panasonic plasmas.

Motion-wise also lacking that 600Hz nonsense Pioneer panel won't have any strange looking sharpening/noise on edges of moving objects. This issue with 600Hz panasonics was never such a big issue for me but Pioneer distintly lack such issues.

Other issues Pioneer lack is banding caused by badly implemented dithering.
Gradation is pretty much perfect. Displaying smooth 0-255 (or rather 15-235) gradient on Panasonic and changing settings like luminance was pretty much painful - errors in gradation would move around. Pioneer displays gradients perfectly at even lowest brightness.

Also where it comes to dithering... knowing how it looks on Panasonic it made impression plasmas barely have any levels to work with. Pioneer on the other hand with especially disabled power saving mode (which increases dithering) has so little visible dithering that I can have my face right in the panel (say 60-70cm distance from panel) and I barely see any dithering. From more expected distance I can only perceive dithering courtesy of my much better than average eyesight (I use 27" 4K monitor from 4 feet and can still see small text like sigs on this forum just fine) that people do comment seeing how I use my monitors sitting so far away from them they don't see text at half of distance. Still if I move to say 6-7 feet (2m) the image looks perfect.

Another thing which shocked me is amount of temporary image retention issues.
On Panasonic I would see HUDs burned in after few hours - same on Pioneer playing Nioh o PS5 with its obtrusive HUDs while using Pioneer in PC mode (which lacks any pixel shifting mind you) and... absolutely nothing.

It also means that at lower luminance (like contrast at 0) this TV can be used as PC monitor without much worry about having any ghostly apperances afterwards. I did see windows logo after using monitor like that for a full day (with occasional full-screen viewing but also contrast was at not 0 but 10) which would rather clearly clear out. Yesterday I spend about 3-4 hours displaying desktop at 0 contrast and same today morning and displaying full screen grayscale - zero temporary image retention... on plasma which was used as TV since 2008 or so.

HEck, my WOLED panel look pretty bad out of the box than this plasma after more than a decade of use.
Colors also look nicer - more vibrant/glowing.

WOLED is hwoever much better for games given zero input lag, 120Hz and VRR support. OLED also has much better black level and luminance can go much higher. Colors also as I figured it out depend on rod stimulation and different glowing colors can be had depending on it - so WOLED can display different glowing colors with its light spectrum - just on average Kuro has much nicer colors.

Viewing angles on Kuro are just perfect. My WOLED doesn't have these micro-lenses and have cyan color cast from sides - not a big effect but sitting very close it would be noticeable. Newer WOLEDs and QD-OLED should be better here. QD-OLED also might have similarly vibrant colors - the thing however is that the actual looks of colors requires fine-tuning this rod stimulation and Pioneer Kuro looks like lots of effort went in to this aspect. Random narrow RGB peaks will yield different effect with less immediate pleasure from colors and more like it will be possible to 'imagine' glowing colors. At least it works like that on RGB-LED monitor. Anyways, LG tweaks their panels too so newer WOLEDs might have nicer color than my unit so more testing of newer monitors is needed. Definiely Pioneer Kuro colors are very pleasant to look at and viewing angles are as perfect as they can be. No nasty reflections in glass like on older Panasonic plasmas - though of course Panasonic fixed these reflection in newer plasmas too.

Pioneer Kuro comparing to CRT has about the same black level as good CRT with bias/brightness tuned to give correct gamma - and this is of course much better black level than Panasonic plasmas have. All plasmas have excellent ANSI contrast ratio so with very good colors, perfect gradation and very low noise image does look better than most CRTs. I do have CRT with similar colors and it also has great black level - still I would say Kuro image overall looks better. That CRT can get brighter and supports various resolution and doesn't have any input lag so it has its uses.

Gaming-wise motion clarity is amazing on Kuro.
It isn't quite CRT level and there is this slight cyan-green ghosting so it isn't perfect. In UFO test it looks like there is some motion blur as pixels don't go to black fast like on CRT. I would even say Panasonics I used (especially 3d enabled 30 series models) has less motion blur from motion decay... but then again these panasonics would show whole lot of motion related issues due to 600Hz sub-lied drive with strange artifacts on that star background as it moves across the screen. On Pioneer there is literally zero additional noise or artifacts.

Comparing to OLED at 138Hz plasma has better motion sharpness still. From photos on internets parity between sample&hold OLED and Kuro should be at 240-360Hz range. Not quite sure strobing OLEDs but I guess OLED TV with this feature at 60Hz should be comparable. This feature will also disable VRR support and add input lag...

...and of course Kuro doesn't have any VRR and also has input lag - almost two frames. Slightly higher than Panasonics I used but later 50-60 series from what I saw had the same lag as Kuro. Earlier models had like 1.5 frames of lag.

This lag and lack of VRR and 120Hz is the biggest issue when using Kuro for gaming. It is still however within range even I who am completely overreacting according to other people with amount of lag. I can after a while get used to this lag - at least with console gaming where I don't need to precisely aim a lot. For PC gaming with a mouse I would say lag is too big.

And for games I prefer lag-less OLED anyways in game mode (even though I would prefer sRGB emulation - it does add frame of lag - completely artificially as gamut claming can work without adding lag - bummer...) even though motion is worse. Some games I guess will be better played on plasma. We will see...

For now I use Pioneer Kuro as a sort of TV.
Mostly getting my TV fix from YT and for that this panel is perfect. Viewing angles allow me to have it on the side and colors are so pleasant to look at it works great. 60fps videos look very sharp and overall there is this classic TV-like flickering effect. BTW. Flickering at 60Hz is visible looking at the screen with periphery of eye but its much less noticeable than on CRT. Also less noticeable than Panasonics I used. Still its there giving the vibe which is nice.

Most movies are in SDR Rec.709 and for movies this TV is pretty much perfect.

From major flaws there is obvious red hot elephant in the room: ridiculous >400W power consumption. At least at max power TV can get hot quite fast. Sitting close you can feel the heat going from the panel. At least there seems to be no fans - or at least I didn't hear any. There are slight typical for plasma high frequency noises but nothing loud enough to be distracting and quit enough to usually disappear within background noises even without sounds being plated.

On the upside is how much money I had to throw at previous owner which is... $77
Yeah, pretty much best plasma display ever made with still amazing image and sweet colors which even today's high end displays didn't quite match for less than hundred bucks. For occasional usage as YT monitor (also when playing games on WOLED) it was cheap enough I will be able to use it for long time until I spend on this whole experience the kind of money that I would need to pay for even cheap second hand WOLED. Not to mention burn-in is much less issue on this TV and WOLEDs didn't get actually good viewing angles until quite recently - and still plasma with its CRT-like viewing angles is arguably better.


p.s. Pioneer Kuro seems to have similar light filter as Panasonic "Infinite Black Pro" filter that from above blocks some light - not as strong or obvious but while viewing angles are perfect from sides there is obvious reduction in brightness looking from above. IT is actually good as it means screen is not as affected by ceiling lights and why such tech was used. Where it comes to suitability to use with lots of light in the room - it is nowhere totally black WOLED surface (especially matte like I have) but most lighting conditions are handled quite well. Better than best CRT TVs in this regard - nothing to complain about and just compared to WOLED which looks still totally black with sunlight coming from windows and is much brighter in this sense it is some limitation.

But then again 77 bucks... am I allowed to complain about anything really?
Having used Panasonic plasmas and already considering them pretty great comparing to LCDs this plasma surprised me quite a lot.
It is like there was similar quality difference between Panasonic Viera and Pioneer Kuro as between good LCD TVs and Panasonic Viera. I will put emphasis on "good LCDs" as cheap LCDs were often unwatchable with terrible contrast ratio, trash viewing angles and often what looked like zero consideration to light spectrum and colors - and of course atrocious motion and on top of that bad LCDs had at times so much input lag even biggest ignorants could not ignore it.

p.s.2
Regarding colors - sweet as they are I can actually not say there was no other plasmas with such colors.
Friend had some LG plasma that has very good colors. Gradation was also very good and motion - the issue being here trash black level and even in game mode multiple frames of input lag. Pioneer almost nails best traits from all plasmas I have seen. Maybe I'd like slightly less input lag on Kuro and Panasonics generally were a bit brighter at the peak (albeit with bigger difference in how much screen dimmed with full white) but being bright enough and for watching videos input lag doesn't matter and is already close to best Panasonics - and actually before TV makers really started caring even Pioneer Kuro had among the best input lag of any available HDTVs for more than decade. 1.5-2 frames of lag was considered optimal and most monitors would have more and at most hit 2-3 frames in game mode.

Modern TVs have sub-frame lag. On WOLED gaming monitor I have even slightly less than best OLED TVs - though its single digit milliseconds less. Hard to be impressed by two frames in this case.
 
XoR_ said:
I got two weeks ago Pioneer Kuro PDP-LX5090 and...
...everything people say about there being something to image of these plasmas which make them even better to look at than OLEDs is true.

Though I don't think it has anything to do with plasma tech itself but rather ratios of green-cyan light that stimulates rods were nailed with phosphor formulations for R, G and B subpixels leading to getting close to optimal ratios of rod stimulation to cause this 'glowing' effect that makes colors look much more vibrant while still distinctly looking the same hue and saturation. This glowing also cause literal pleasure.

Since these things can be tuned on OLED and even I did see IPS monitor with very similar colors it isn't plasma (or CRT - I also own CRT with very similar colors) specific advantage. In fact Panasonic plasmas I did use didn't hit these colors. 37PV80 has nice colors but it was EBU phosphors look - maybe it even used EBU phosphors, who knows. 42VT30 had similar colors too. 50GT30 I also viewed a lot had slightly better colors almost hitting 'glowing' thresholds and this one was best showing from Panasonic plasmas I ever seen. Unlike my 42VT30 there was also much less issues caused by 600Hz sub-field drive - probably because phosphors used were slower than on my 42VT30 which had too fast phosphors and the banding when moving eyes was at times way too distracting for comfort.

Pioneer Kuro however not only doesn't use idiotic 600Hz sub-field drive (which BTW was falsely advertised as improving motion clairty which was big fat lie - it only degraded motion performance!!!) and I can move eyes fast across the sreen all I want and the most I will see is slight cyan and green colorations typical for all plasma panels. That said this effect is much less visible on Kuro making it even less of an issue than I ever had with Panasonic plasmas.

Motion-wise also lacking that 600Hz nonsense Pioneer panel won't have any strange looking sharpening/noise on edges of moving objects. This issue with 600Hz panasonics was never such a big issue for me but Pioneer distintly lack such issues.

Other issues Pioneer lack is banding caused by badly implemented dithering.
Gradation is pretty much perfect. Displaying smooth 0-255 (or rather 15-235) gradient on Panasonic and changing settings like luminance was pretty much painful - errors in gradation would move around. Pioneer displays gradients perfectly at even lowest brightness.

Also where it comes to dithering... knowing how it looks on Panasonic it made impression plasmas barely have any levels to work with. Pioneer on the other hand with especially disabled power saving mode (which increases dithering) has so little visible dithering that I can have my face right in the panel (say 60-70cm distance from panel) and I barely see any dithering. From more expected distance I can only perceive dithering courtesy of my much better than average eyesight (I use 27" 4K monitor from 4 feet and can still see small text like sigs on this forum just fine) that people do comment seeing how I use my monitors sitting so far away from them they don't see text at half of distance. Still if I move to say 6-7 feet (2m) the image looks perfect.

Another thing which shocked me is amount of temporary image retention issues.
On Panasonic I would see HUDs burned in after few hours - same on Pioneer playing Nioh o PS5 with its obtrusive HUDs while using Pioneer in PC mode (which lacks any pixel shifting mind you) and... absolutely nothing.

It also means that at lower luminance (like contrast at 0) this TV can be used as PC monitor without much worry about having any ghostly apperances afterwards. I did see windows logo after using monitor like that for a full day (with occasional full-screen viewing but also contrast was at not 0 but 10) which would rather clearly clear out. Yesterday I spend about 3-4 hours displaying desktop at 0 contrast and same today morning and displaying full screen grayscale - zero temporary image retention... on plasma which was used as TV since 2008 or so.

HEck, my WOLED panel look pretty bad out of the box than this plasma after more than a decade of use.
Colors also look nicer - more vibrant/glowing.

WOLED is hwoever much better for games given zero input lag, 120Hz and VRR support. OLED also has much better black level and luminance can go much higher. Colors also as I figured it out depend on rod stimulation and different glowing colors can be had depending on it - so WOLED can display different glowing colors with its light spectrum - just on average Kuro has much nicer colors.

Viewing angles on Kuro are just perfect. My WOLED doesn't have these micro-lenses and have cyan color cast from sides - not a big effect but sitting very close it would be noticeable. Newer WOLEDs and QD-OLED should be better here. QD-OLED also might have similarly vibrant colors - the thing however is that the actual looks of colors requires fine-tuning this rod stimulation and Pioneer Kuro looks like lots of effort went in to this aspect. Random narrow RGB peaks will yield different effect with less immediate pleasure from colors and more like it will be possible to 'imagine' glowing colors. At least it works like that on RGB-LED monitor. Anyways, LG tweaks their panels too so newer WOLEDs might have nicer color than my unit so more testing of newer monitors is needed. Definiely Pioneer Kuro colors are very pleasant to look at and viewing angles are as perfect as they can be. No nasty reflections in glass like on older Panasonic plasmas - though of course Panasonic fixed these reflection in newer plasmas too.

Pioneer Kuro comparing to CRT has about the same black level as good CRT with bias/brightness tuned to give correct gamma - and this is of course much better black level than Panasonic plasmas have. All plasmas have excellent ANSI contrast ratio so with very good colors, perfect gradation and very low noise image does look better than most CRTs. I do have CRT with similar colors and it also has great black level - still I would say Kuro image overall looks better. That CRT can get brighter and supports various resolution and doesn't have any input lag so it has its uses.

Gaming-wise motion clarity is amazing on Kuro.
It isn't quite CRT level and there is this slight cyan-green ghosting so it isn't perfect. In UFO test it looks like there is some motion blur as pixels don't go to black fast like on CRT. I would even say Panasonics I used (especially 3d enabled 30 series models) has less motion blur from motion decay... but then again these panasonics would show whole lot of motion related issues due to 600Hz sub-lied drive with strange artifacts on that star background as it moves across the screen. On Pioneer there is literally zero additional noise or artifacts.

Comparing to OLED at 138Hz plasma has better motion sharpness still. From photos on internets parity between sample&hold OLED and Kuro should be at 240-360Hz range. Not quite sure strobing OLEDs but I guess OLED TV with this feature at 60Hz should be comparable. This feature will also disable VRR support and add input lag...

...and of course Kuro doesn't have any VRR and also has input lag - almost two frames. Slightly higher than Panasonics I used but later 50-60 series from what I saw had the same lag as Kuro. Earlier models had like 1.5 frames of lag.

This lag and lack of VRR and 120Hz is the biggest issue when using Kuro for gaming. It is still however within range even I who am completely overreacting according to other people with amount of lag. I can after a while get used to this lag - at least with console gaming where I don't need to precisely aim a lot. For PC gaming with a mouse I would say lag is too big.

And for games I prefer lag-less OLED anyways in game mode (even though I would prefer sRGB emulation - it does add frame of lag - completely artificially as gamut claming can work without adding lag - bummer...) even though motion is worse. Some games I guess will be better played on plasma. We will see...

For now I use Pioneer Kuro as a sort of TV.
Mostly getting my TV fix from YT and for that this panel is perfect. Viewing angles allow me to have it on the side and colors are so pleasant to look at it works great. 60fps videos look very sharp and overall there is this classic TV-like flickering effect. BTW. Flickering at 60Hz is visible looking at the screen with periphery of eye but its much less noticeable than on CRT. Also less noticeable than Panasonics I used. Still its there giving the vibe which is nice.

Most movies are in SDR Rec.709 and for movies this TV is pretty much perfect.

From major flaws there is obvious red hot elephant in the room: ridiculous >400W power consumption. At least at max power TV can get hot quite fast. Sitting close you can feel the heat going from the panel. At least there seems to be no fans - or at least I didn't hear any. There are slight typical for plasma high frequency noises but nothing loud enough to be distracting and quit enough to usually disappear within background noises even without sounds being plated.

On the upside is how much money I had to throw at previous owner which is... $77
Yeah, pretty much best plasma display ever made with still amazing image and sweet colors which even today's high end displays didn't quite match for less than hundred bucks. For occasional usage as YT monitor (also when playing games on WOLED) it was cheap enough I will be able to use it for long time until I spend on this whole experience the kind of money that I would need to pay for even cheap second hand WOLED. Not to mention burn-in is much less issue on this TV and WOLEDs didn't get actually good viewing angles until quite recently - and still plasma with its CRT-like viewing angles is arguably better.


p.s. Pioneer Kuro seems to have similar light filter as Panasonic "Infinite Black Pro" filter that from above blocks some light - not as strong or obvious but while viewing angles are perfect from sides there is obvious reduction in brightness looking from above. IT is actually good as it means screen is not as affected by ceiling lights and why such tech was used. Where it comes to suitability to use with lots of light in the room - it is nowhere totally black WOLED surface (especially matte like I have) but most lighting conditions are handled quite well. Better than best CRT TVs in this regard - nothing to complain about and just compared to WOLED which looks still totally black with sunlight coming from windows and is much brighter in this sense it is some limitation.

But then again 77 bucks... am I allowed to complain about anything really?
Having used Panasonic plasmas and already considering them pretty great comparing to LCDs this plasma surprised me quite a lot.
It is like there was similar quality difference between Panasonic Viera and Pioneer Kuro as between good LCD TVs and Panasonic Viera. I will put emphasis on "good LCDs" as cheap LCDs were often unwatchable with terrible contrast ratio, trash viewing angles and often what looked like zero consideration to light spectrum and colors - and of course atrocious motion and on top of that bad LCDs had at times so much input lag even biggest ignorants could not ignore it.

p.s.2
Regarding colors - sweet as they are I can actually not say there was no other plasmas with such colors.
Friend had some LG plasma that has very good colors. Gradation was also very good and motion - the issue being here trash black level and even in game mode multiple frames of input lag. Pioneer almost nails best traits from all plasmas I have seen. Maybe I'd like slightly less input lag on Kuro and Panasonics generally were a bit brighter at the peak (albeit with bigger difference in how much screen dimmed with full white) but being bright enough and for watching videos input lag doesn't matter and is already close to best Panasonics - and actually before TV makers really started caring even Pioneer Kuro had among the best input lag of any available HDTVs for more than decade. 1.5-2 frames of lag was considered optimal and most monitors would have more and at most hit 2-3 frames in game mode.

Modern TVs have sub-frame lag. On WOLED gaming monitor I have even slightly less than best OLED TVs - though its single digit milliseconds less. Hard to be impressed by two frames in this case.
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I've raised this on a few occasions and always get laughed out the room but it is what it is. The image produced by my plasmas is IMO aesthetically better than my C2 Oled. I had the two sitting next to each other for a month and realized almost immediately that the plasma appealed to me moreso than the oled. That said, for the "modern gamer" who wants HDR and 4K the oled is the easy choice but for everything else I will take the plasma.
 
jordan12 said:
Looks awesome, but the lines would drive me crazy
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Thanks! The lines disappear very quickly once your brain acclimates. That said, if you weren't around back in 2007 when NVSurround and Eyefinity were the hotness I understand these multi monitor setups won't appeal to you.
 
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I forgot about one important aspect of Kuro plasma - screen door effect
It stops being visible from about the same distance as 24 inch 1200p IPS
In other words it is so small you can sit with normal distance to normal small monitor (so most of vision sees this screen) and barely see screen door. Pixels are RGB and this TV can work as PC monitor in RGB 0-255 - of course it doesn't do any color subsampling in PC mode.

I am not entirely sure about all Panasonics but those which I did use had quite pronounced gaps between (sub)pixels. I distinctly remember seeing them from quite far away on Panasonic 42VT30 and that was much smaller plasma.

For any wanna-use plasma as PC monitor from up close crazies like myself this is very important.

cesarioFL71 said:
I've raised this on a few occasions and always get laughed out the room but it is what it is. The image produced by my plasmas is IMO aesthetically better than my C2 Oled. I had the two sitting next to each other for a month and realized almost immediately that the plasma appealed to me moreso than the oled. That said, for the "modern gamer" who wants HDR and 4K the oled is the easy choice but for everything else I will take the plasma.
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Imho this plasma and my WOLED (LG 48GQ900) don't display even single color that has actually the same color. Gamuts simply don't overlap. That despite my monitor being literally able to be hardware calibrated to emulate other monitors gamuts.

That said I wouldn't say WOLED has wrong or bad colors. It is more nuanced than that. Its different presentation and one which can be liked a lot. Some scenes look even better as in more life-like e.g. daylight scenes look more correct. Some colors are just better on WOLED - as in glowing more and being more pleasant. It is however different glow, different color basically. Kinda depends on what is displayed - on average however I would agree Kuro has nicer colors.

BTW. You say people laugh but this is actually typical reaction to WOLED user when they see Kuro plasma - unexplainable "somehow this particular plasma looks better". You really have to see the colors yourself to become believer. No photo can capture this nuance - we don't have correct tech to support all colors we can actually see.
 
I don't think I ever saw a Kuro. A regret I suppose.

When it came to large screen sizes and 1080P, only DLP projection seemed to be able to hide the dots from what I could tell.

I remember the first 55" 1080P OLEDs had an exaggerated screen door effect, which some attributed to the layer added to accommodate 3D.

This 48" OLED as my computer display seems fine. Though it is farther back on a stand behind my desk.
 
SH1 said:
I don't think I ever saw a Kuro. A regret I suppose.
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Definitely this was the HDTV to have and remained the best for many years.
Even today I would say it is still worth having. Especially for the current prices and people selling them because of rising electricity prices it might be a good idea to monitor if there is one on sale locally.

I got mine for $77 and brother got one for $105 year and half ago.
I got mine because it has nice colors - always get displays with nice colors I don't get anywhere else.

SH1 said:
When it came to large screen sizes and 1080P, only DLP projection seemed to be able to hide the dots from what I could tell.
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To completely eliminate this effect DLP could probably the only tech. Even color CRT one could argue wasn't free from this effect - not sure if it was called the same.

SH1 said:
I remember the first 55" 1080P OLEDs had an exaggerated screen door effect, which some attributed to the layer added to accommodate 3D.

This 48" OLED as my computer display seems fine. Though it is farther back on a stand behind my desk.
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I bought 48 inch gaming monitor WOLED with DP and 138Hz and matte coating.
Specifically matte coating did me in 🙃

Screen door is surprisingly very good - I would sat at worst comparable to IPS with comparable PPI and maybe even screen door is less obtrusive.
I do use it as monitor at times sitting like 6-7 feet away from it so screen door is my last issue with this monitor.
 
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