The LED, UHD, Plasma, LCD Debate

[starstress]

Which is a better tv? After some research I was gonna go with plasma until my techy friend gave me a horrified look when I told him so I figured I'd ask android nation. PS -I'm going 3d from the jump

 

[surgerush]

Lcd is better, led is better than that

 

[Names Mark]

What are you using the tv for? gaming, watching blue-ray, basic tv watching?

 

[omnius]

Common convention says plasma gives better performance in rec room home theatres and LCD looks slightly better in well lit rooms. Plasma has a MUCH faster refresh rate either way though.

Good thing you came here. Most "techy friends" know much less than you think.

 

[Remeniz]

In practice there's no such thing as an LED TV. It's clever marketing to make people 'believe' that they're getting a TV who's pixels are made up of tiny multi-coloured LED's. In fact these 'LED' TV's use a matrix of white LED's as back lights behind an LCD panel; It's a different kind of back lighting tech. So you get the same slow LCD response times just with blacker blacks and whiter whites than you would get from LED edge lit displays or the even worse CCFL lit displays.

But you can't beat a very nice full HD Plasma display.

 

[lunatic59]

"better" is a relative term. There are advantages and considerations for each type of display panel. The most critical will be the environment in which you use it. Plasmas will give you the brightest picture with the widest viewing angles, but they don't deliver "true blacks" and consume more power. While the current offering of plasma displays are much more energy efficient than older models (my old vintage 2003 plasma was like hanging a space heater on the wall ) led/lcd displays will still use less.

I suppose it also depends on how fussy you are, how much TV you actually watch and whether you want to be able to discuss tech with your buddies while watching the game and throwing back a few. Unless you go super-budget no-name Walmart house brand, the differences is actual picture quality will not be all that much different. If you are trying to squeak out that .05% variance to say you've got the absolute optimal display for your room as endorsed by internet know-it-alls experts everywhere, you can be assured, within 6 months your bleeding edge technology will revert to an also-ran when the new stuff is appears on the shelves.

 

[NYCHitman1]

Plasma all the way

Don't buy into that LED gimmick lol

 

[330D]

I've had a plasma for 5 years. Couldn't be happier. I never liked the look or fragility of LCD. Totally a preferential opinion, ymmv.

 

[Martimus]

Personally I think Plasma displays are not the best option unless you happen to be investing in a large format plasma display. Smaller displays tend to suffer from screen door effect (where the lines between pixels become visible). The displays are also susceptible to screen burn and image retention.

While I recognize what others say about LED displays are true, I find LED displays to be superior in many applications outside of a home threater. The displays are vivid, the panels are thin and light, and they use relatively little electricity.

In reality, the choice will always be a matter of personal preference. Each modern technology has it's advantages and disadvantages. But, to be honest, if you compare Plasma, LCD, and LED screens to most old CRT TV's, you'll see that they are all vast improvements over old skool televisions...

 

[jmar]

I bought a 51 inch Samsung plasma a couple days before the Superbowl last year, thereby getting a 2011 model. Here is why:

1. I watch a lot, a whole lot, of sports!

2. I watch a fair amount of movies.

3. I play sports video games and some FPS as well.

4. Price point.

The first three bullets are the most important to me because plasma is superior in these categories.

Case in point: my aunt bought a 55 inch LED Samsung around the same time and each of the activities described in bullets 1-3 were far superior on my TV compared to hers (of course I didn't mention it!). Watching a football game in HD kinda made me woozy. With video games it wasn't that bad but noticeable. Movies were a step down, I imagine because of refresh rates. Her TV is 120hZ refresh were as mine is 10 separate "panels," each of which refresh at 60hZ, which adds up to the quoted 600hZ refresh rate of the TV.

My 2

 

[B2L]

Personally I think Plasma displays are not the best option unless you happen to be investing in a large format plasma display. Smaller displays tend to suffer from screen door effect (where the lines between pixels become visible). The displays are also susceptible to screen burn and image retention.

While I recognize what others say about LED displays are true, I find LED displays to be superior in many applications outside of a home threater. The displays are vivid, the panels are thin and light, and they use relatively little electricity.

In reality, the choice will always be a matter of personal preference. Each modern technology has it's advantages and disadvantages. But, to be honest, if you compare Plasma, LCD, and LED screens to most old CRT TV's, you'll see that they are all vast improvements over old skool televisions...

I am inclined to agree, It's all about personal preference. I have had LCDs, LEDs, and plasma TV's, but for some reason LED TV's have always been my favorite. Go to a local best buy or other electronics stores and decide for yourself. You will hear from several people on here describing why their TV choice is the best, but just like with mobile devices, every type of TV has its pros and cons.

 

[NightAngel79]

I bought a 51 inch Samsung plasma a couple days before the Superbowl last year, thereby getting a 2011 model. Here is why:

1. I watch a lot, a whole lot, of sports!

2. I watch a fair amount of movies.

3. I play sports video games and some FPS as well.

4. Price point.

The first three bullets are the most important to me because plasma is superior in these categories.

Case in point: my aunt bought a 55 inch LED Samsung around the same time and each of the activities described in bullets 1-3 were far superior on my TV compared to hers (of course I didn't mention it!). Watching a football game in HD kinda made me woozy. With video games it wasn't that bad but noticeable. Movies were a step down, I imagine because of refresh rates. Her TV is 120hZ refresh were as mine is 10 separate "panels," each of which refresh at 60hZ, which adds up to the quoted 600hZ refresh rate of the TV.

My 2

 

[EarlyMon]

LCD update rates don't translate to plasma subfield processing rates.

LCD is a light permissive technology. It consists of a backlight (fluorescent or LED), the LC panel, and color filters (red, green or blue, for the three subpixels at each pixel) and polarizing filter(s). Each LC element acts as an aperture (ok to think, like a shutter) and opens or closes to let light through or to block it. Once a shutter is open or closed, it stays that way until commanded otherwise. LCDs therefore do not refresh, they update.

The quality metrics for an LCD are the response time for the shutter action and the degree to which the technology in question can close down, to produce purer black. There are many LCD technologies. Finally, some are better for off axis viewing than others, but that metric isn't important to everyone.

Plasmas are a light emissive technology. And it's closely related to conventional CRT technology. In a plasma, a gas is energized, and that energy is transferred to phosphorus paint, and the phosphor glows red, blue or green depending on the subpixels. Just like a CRT, a plasma is a phosphor display.

Old CRTs were subject to ghosting any image left on for too long. The phosphors would degrade and never get back to black. Plasmas solved this (for many models) not because they are plasmas, but because of advances in phosphor technology. The new phosphor formulations are physically (and literally) harder. They light up more quickly but they give off their energy even more quickly, so they need constant pulses of energy to stay lit up. This is called the subfield processing/refresh rate, and for typical high end plasmas today, that is 480 or 600 Hz (Hz means literally, times per second). The refresh rate of a plasma is not a quality metric. It just is what it is, an electrical control signal matched to the phosphor chemistry of a given tv set.

The 120 or 240 Hz update rate for an LCD is a quality metric. Using advances in image processing, a technology called frame rate processing is employed to smooth over transitions at the typical moving picture rates of 24, 30 or 60 frames per second that many people have a sensitivity to. TV marketing departments explain that the pictures are interpolated to magically create new pictures. Nothing could be further from the truth. A good LCD will have 121 setting levels to control frame rate processing by the user. Low end models give 3 settings, and on those, it is best left off.

When frame rate processing was introduced, LCD makers tried it out to overcome crappy LCD panels. LCDs quickly advanced and now frame rate processing is a must have on a better LCD panel. It solves the problem of slow movie rates.

Plasmas would benefit every bit as much from frame rate processing, but when it came out, plasma makers were fighting high cost, high power consumption and soft phosphors. Now that those problems are solved, they don't see a need to reduce the product differentiation and the same total idiots that are pitching frame rate processing as picture interpolation are quite happy that they have convinced consumers to compare LCD frame rate processing at 240 Hz to phosphor energy states at 600 Hz. That's comparing apples to tires, they are that different.

The shenanigans don't stop there. Many so-called 240 Hz LCDs are really 120Hz models with the backlight flicked on and off at twice that rate. Remember how I explained how an LCD works and you can quickly deduce what is wrong with that and how that trick will help the picture by zero amount.

A great LCD will eat the lunch of a crappy plasma and vice versa. Because great always trumps crappy.

Neither LCDs nor plasmas are perfect, in fact, they are far from it. Plasmas will respond to color changes in the signal much faster than an LCD, no question, but all you need is for that metric to be faster than your personal eyes. Better plasmas will produce true black - no light is no light, after all. LCDs can produce excellent color and offer frame rate processing if you are sensitive to motion change.

All of the contrast specs are bold faced lies, pay zero attention to them.

I recommend first and foremost to remember that plasma and LCD aside, we all literally see a little differently, no one has wrong eyes, we are talking television here, and so watch models carefully in your price range, choose the one that looks best to you and let us know what you get.

 

[lunatic59]

Excellent.

Is there anything you don't know, EM?

 

[EarlyMon]

Excellent.

Is there anything you don't know, EM?

Tons.


PS to NightAngel, dynamic contrast is baloney, you are likely to find better picture quality when it is off.

Our eyes have a limited contrast range, less than 200 to 1. Not thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions to one. If a TV could produce the results numerically claimed, you would suffer retinal damage. The numbers lie.

 

[SUroot]

Tons.

My background if anyone cares -

Spoiler

Before getting into Android, I was an early HDTV adopter, and was the scourge of those forums.

I work in semiconductor R&D and did nuclear weapons (where I first started writing SMP operating systems for mini-computers, nothing at the time was satisfactory for our purposes), space systems before that (and my intro to modifying unix kernels). I started out in audio, and am very well known in the old school manufacturing circles. Oh, and one of the lightning research projects I worked in part for NASA made the Guinness Book.

Most days I'd trade all that for a regular Guinness or better still, a Harp's.

So, tech I get.

Anyway for those interested, that's my background.

PS to NightAngel, dynamic contrast is baloney, you are likely to find better picture quality when it is off.

Our eyes have a limited contrast range, less than 200 to 1. Not thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions to one. If a TV could produce the results numerically claimed, you would suffer retinal damage. The numbers lie.

putting the large numbers aside, its similar with frames per second and inaudible audio ranges that are cut out of mp3. Although you're not supposed to hear them or be able to register anything above around say, 27 fps, we still register them when theyre missing.

 

[EarlyMon]

When talking frames per second, most specs for how well we see were actually measured in the late 1800s through the early 1900s using a spinning disk. Very high tech measurement for its day, but the commonly believed numbers for that are wrong.

To learn more, Google for flicker fusion threshold.

The film movies you see in a theater are at 24 frames per second, that's a standard, but another standard is that the projectors have shutters over the lamp letting light through 48 times per second - twice per frame, and that helps tremendously.

The true median for the flicker fusion threshold is somewhat disputed, but some studies put it above 60Hz.

If you perceive a constant annoyance at overhead fluorescent lighting, beyond the yucky color, you may have a higher flicker fusion threshold and may find that a very good 240 Hz LCD is worth checking into.

PS - substitute 50 for 60 Hz in countries where the PAL standard applies, and expect the other Hz specs that I've mentioned for various technologies to scale accordingly.

 

[pool_shark]

I decided on a 60" plasma to replace my 50" projection TV.

I read a lot about plasma, vs lcd, vs led, scree size, distance away from the TV, 720 vs 1080, viewing angles, and lighting.

Plasma best fit my needs.

 

[EarlyMon]

I'm at 52", I'll bet that 60" is fantastic!

 

[330D]

I've got a puny 42.... Maybe someday I'll be in the big leagues

 

[EarlyMon]

We went with LCD, because in addition to TV, WifelyMon uses ours with our home theater pc do her photo editing. The LCD is mighty hard to beat at still images and I don't have to be concerned about ghosting. I went with the Samsung. The Sammy plasmas are a little susceptible to ghosting, the Panasonics are tougher that way.

I guess I would like to add in some other info.

A lot of cable or satellite signals can be horribly compressed, and on playback you get what we call compression artifacts.

LCDs and plasmas display compression artifacts differently in most cases.

The usual case with an LCD is you get a jerky appearance, like the film stuttered. The usual case with plasmas are to lose edge definition, like the colors bleed a little around things. Those aren't 100% rules, just the common cases. Many of the two camps claiming those as quality differences are right so far as they go, but the issue is garbage in, garbage out. If you don't have a choice for your cable or satellite, that response difference might become part of the purchase decision. In such a case, you have to make the personal call of choosing what appears to be the lesser evil for your eyes.

You can even get compression artifacts on crappy Blu-ray movies. There are whole forums just for that, because Blu-ray supports multiple codecs.

Just thought I would toss that out there.

 

[mikedt]

Personally I think Plasma displays are not the best option unless you happen to be investing in a large format plasma display. Smaller displays tend to suffer from screen door effect (where the lines between pixels become visible). The displays are also susceptible to screen burn and image retention.

While I recognize what others say about LED displays are true, I find LED displays to be superior in many applications outside of a home threater. The displays are vivid, the panels are thin and light, and they use relatively little electricity.

In reality, the choice will always be a matter of personal preference. Each modern technology has it's advantages and disadvantages. But, to be honest, if you compare Plasma, LCD, and LED screens to most old CRT TV's, you'll see that they are all vast improvements over old skool televisions...

Where I am that's what most people use, those old skool CRT TVs, and we can buy them new in the shops. There's almost no HD content, apart from a few expensive Blu-ray discs. I have a CRT set myself. I don't really want a HD plasma, LCD or LED, because the programmes via Inner Mongolia Cable are all in 4:3 PAL. I know some people with these 16:9 HD TVs, but everything always looks kind of squashed on them, short people, oval basketballs, footballs and snooker balls, etc.

There's one thing I don't really like about LCDs, is the apparently very limited viewing angle on them. Was in a hotel in Beijing a couple of weeks ago, room had a TCL flat LCD TV mounted on the wall. It was fine if one stood up and looked straight at it, apart from the seemingly squashed picture, but when trying to watch it while lying on the bed, picture was very dark and going negative!!! This is never a problem with CRT TVs, even when the hotels mount them right near the ceiling, as they so often do. The LCD screen on my laptop has a limited viewing angle, but then I'm always sat directly in front using it, and so is not an issue.

 

[pool_shark]

I'm at 52", I'll bet that 60" is fantastic!

It really is, I enjoy it very much. Netflix and video games look great.

I was going to get a 50" until I realized the picture size would be smaller compared to my projection TV due to the new TV being wider and still measuring diagonally.
I found a website that shows you what size HDTV you would need in order to get the same picture size as your projection TV.

 

[SUroot]

substitute 50 for 60 Hz in countries where the PAL standard applies, and expect the other Hz specs that I've mentioned for various technologies to scale accordingly.

Back in the days of CRT and analogue Technology, 60Hz was the best we had. Then 100hz "Anti flicker" came out.

Looking around now though, we appear to have 50, 100, 200, 400, 600 (Sub field) and 800Hz as options.

:$

 

[NightAngel79]

Thank you for the awesome explanation Early. I'll be saving that.

So the reason I asked is that I saw this very inexpensive Insignia (bestbuy brand) 55 LED for like 800 (i think). Said on it that it was 4,000 - 1 Contrast Ratio or 40,000 Dynamic Contrast Ratio.... the slightly more expensive Vizio's are any where from 10,000 to 1 up to and around 100,000 to 1... the top money samsungs are anywhere from 1,000,000 (and on up) to 1..... These numbers are the only difference I can see between the Insignia and the Samsung.

I will say the more expensive ones looked better but that of course is subjective. Not too mention I'm not above saying that I most likely saw the HUGE difference in the contrast ratio and fooled myself into thinking the sammy's looked better