TV recommendations

Black Morty Rackham

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I wasn't sure whether to post this here, or in Displays. If this is the wrong place, can a mod perhaps move it? :)


Anyway. I'm planning on buying a new TV this year. Due to the size of the room and such, I'm thinking in the 40"-50" range. The idea is to build a HTPC or something similar.

I haven't really kept up with development lately. Is plasma or LCD the way to go these days? I'd rather get a smaller TV with higher image quality than a larger, worse one. What I'm looking for is basically something that doesn't completely crushes the blacks, doesn't over-sharpen the image, and where the stupid bloody motion smoothing stuff can be disabled. Basically, I want the TV to do the bare minimum of post-processing on my image signal. This is the key thing.

Not really sure what my budget is, to be honest. But less than $1000 I suppose. About 5000 SEK.

I figured you guys are usually the go-to crowd for this sort of thing.


Thanks!
 
If you can control the ambient light in the room, plasma is still the way to go. Best picture quality, best blacks, and best response time. Plus they're seemingly always coming down in price. I have seen several deals for Panasonic 50-60" plasmas for 600-750 over the last month. I'm not sure about Sweden.
 
I'm still waiting on a nice TV deal in the 30" - 40" range for my area. Hasn't happened yet.
 
Just my two cents. If your primary content is going to be movies I would suggest a plasma. In a dark room the black bars are not noticeable. Also Plasma typically have better picture uniformity then LCDs because they don't have backlight. Also plasma IMO have the best value when it comes to price vs picture quality.

If you watch most of your TV in a bright room LCD or LED maybe a better option. Also if you want something uses little power go with LCD or LED. Plasma do use quite a bit more power to produce bright.

Just my advice go with the biggest TV that fits your budget. A huge complaint with customers is they often wished they just would've gotten larger size TV.
 
Just my two cents. If your primary content is going to be movies I would suggest a plasma. In a dark room the black bars are not noticeable. Also Plasma typically have better picture uniformity then LCDs because they don't have backlight. Also plasma IMO have the best value when it comes to price vs picture quality.

If you watch most of your TV in a bright room LCD or LED maybe a better option. Also if you want something uses little power go with LCD or LED. Plasma do use quite a bit more power to produce bright.

Just my advice go with the biggest TV that fits your budget. A huge complaint with customers is they often wished they just would've gotten larger size TV.

+1 - I agree with most everything stated here. I think the power usage on modern plasma's vs. LCD/LED is a more/less a non-issue. When I bought my PN58C8000 a couple of years ago, I compared it to the equivalent LED and power usage (although WAS higher), it was nothing compared to older plasmas from years ago.
 
+1 - I agree with most everything stated here. I think the power usage on modern plasma's vs. LCD/LED is a more/less a non-issue. When I bought my PN58C8000 a couple of years ago, I compared it to the equivalent LED and power usage (although WAS higher), it was nothing compared to older plasmas from years ago.

Its not as high as before but its still quite a bit higher on plasmas compared to most LEDs of equivalent sizes. With plasmas they rate it based on the standard setting which in most cases is way too dim for most viewers.

On CNET they usually measure the power consumption from the default settings compared to the calibrated settings. In majority of the cases they nearly double after calibration.

That being said I still got a plasma because for me power consumption wasn't a big deal. But for some people power consumption can be an issue.
 
I'm not that concerned about the power consumption, to be honest. It's not like the TV will be running non-stop, and electricity is really cheap in Sweden anyway.

Not sure which way to go with plasma vs LCD. I suppose the main purpose of the TV, in terms if image quality, is to make it nice for watching movies. So plasma might have the upper hand there.

But what about motion smoothing and such? Is that something that's more common with LCDs than with plasmas? How do I avoid this wretched feature?


Thanks for all the help so far -- very useful!
 
I'm not that concerned about the power consumption, to be honest. It's not like the TV will be running non-stop, and electricity is really cheap in Sweden anyway.

Not sure which way to go with plasma vs LCD. I suppose the main purpose of the TV, in terms if image quality, is to make it nice for watching movies. So plasma might have the upper hand there.

But what about motion smoothing and such? Is that something that's more common with LCDs than with plasmas? How do I avoid this wretched feature?


Thanks for all the help so far -- very useful!

They both have the smoothing, but it can be disabled. A huge misconception is that the smoothing can't be disabled. I wouldn't worry about the smoothing because more often then not it can be disabled.

Plasma for the most part does have a better picture then LED. But in brighter environments plasmas don't do as well they typically have a reflective screen so blacks tend to get washed out and show reflections.

The newer panasonic plasmas like the ST50 have a lourve filter to help combat that so they perform a little better in brighter environments.
 
I do not mean to ban-wagon your thread, but I was going to ask this same question. Rather than creating a duplicate, I figure I will ask here.

For myself, I am looking at a budget of around $2000.00. For it, I would like to get as big of a TV as possible, a sound system( mid range or so ), and a blu-ray player that can do up-scaling of DVDs. Any ideas and/or suggestions would be great.
 
To me comes down to - if you have a bright room, go with LED/LCD. If you have light control, go with Plasma.

Additionally, off-axis viewing will be much, much better with Plasma. If you have non-direct seating, you may want to factor that as well.
 
If you can hang on a while 4k TVs are coming, I think Seiki are making a 50" one for $2000.

Yes it's Seiki... but still, affordable.
 
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