I need to get a new TV and I am torn between the LCD and Plasma. I am concerned about the burn in on the Plasma as we have young kids and they tend to leave the TV unattended from time to time. The LCD seem nice but is it worth the extra money? What do you reccommend? The LCD I am looking at is 2″ bigger and is $300 more? What to do?
The life expectancy of a plasma is only 4 years. Go with LCD or DLP
The early plasma’s had a questionable life span. The latest plasma’s are rated at 60,000 hours, the same as the LCD’s. Plasma’s are not good in bright rooms. If you have a bright room and you watch many hours during the day, then for sure go with an LCD. It comes down to personal preferance like everything else. If someone has a LCD they are not going to sing the praises of plasma, and the same would be true of a plasma owner.
Size for size,which one is lighter?
Pretty sure LCD’s are lighter.
I’m not terribly sure it really matter a whole lot there are good plasma’s and good LCD’s, to me the biggest difference is that the plasma’s tend to blur fast moving objects less than the LCD options, the LCD’s are getting better with the 120hz models, but I’ve also heard some mixed reviews on the 120hz models for normal tv. People say that LCD’s are better with bright rooms, I say I’ll buy some better curtains if light is a problem. My biggest grip with LCD’s is they tend to look somewhat washed , normally the blacks are not as black as he blacks on a plasma, for me and my living room we’ll go with a 46-50 inch plasma, Panasonic most likely, though I’d go pioneer if I found a great deal.
Also Plasma’s are pretty much 40+ inches, lcd’s come in all sizes.
All that being said even that I prefer Plasma myself, I just picked up a Vizio 32 inch 1080P LCD TV, thus far we like it a lot, Comparison wise it’s pretty much as good as a the LCD’s that are a couple hundred bucks more, for the price I found couldn’t pass it up. This is the TV I just bought Link PIcked it up for $474 in store, price has changed within the week, I didn’t wait I knew it was a good deal when I saw it. This is a bedroom tv, so a 32 was more than enough (the wife says too much 
, too big is there such a thing? It’s not thee ultimate tv, but bang for the buck, it’s just a plain solid deal, thus far Vizio’s has seemed to been good quality wise, with few complaints or problems.
IIRC there are some AV forums out there, I think that there are some “break in” programs available for the plasma’s that are suppose to “break in” the TV and help prevent it from burning in, for free I believe. Burn in, is suppose to be a lesser issue than older plasma tv’s.
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The early plasma’s had a questionable life span. The latest plasma’s are rated at 60,000 hours, the same as the LCD’s. Plasma’s are not good in bright rooms. If you have a bright room and you watch many hours during the day, then for sure go with an LCD. It comes down to personal preferance like everything else. If someone has a LCD they are not going to sing the praises of plasma, and the same would be true of a plasma owner.
That would be my advice, we have an east west face on our living room windows and the LCD works great, couldnt imagine a plasma in there.
I just got a 52″ Toshiba LCD a couple months ago. When I was making the decision between LCD and Plasma, one of the biggest factors was that the Plasma life was quite a bit less than the LCD. If that has changed, I am unaware of it. With 3 kids, the TV tends to get left on quite a bit and I didn’t really want to shorten the life even more.
The drawbacks to the LCD were the quality of the depth of the color black and the blurring of fast action on the TV. The Toshiba that I ended up getting has addressed both of these issues (at least to an extent) with the 120hz product and a technology that really deepens the black on the picture.
I am pretty happy with the TV because of those 2 “upgrades.”
JD
My plasma TV will last about 41 years if we use it every day for 4 hours.
http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/plasmatv-lifespan.html
Many plasma TV’s now have antireflective screens and anti-burn software.
Watching my new Panasonic 50” plasma the picture is absolutely stunning compared to LCDs (no blurring on fast motion, plus the blacks and colors are so much better). But in a bright room (even with an antireflective screen) I would go with a LCD.
In my opinion the LCDs are catching up, but not yet equal to the plasmas for picture quality.
Whatever you do, don’t believe the crap the TV salesmen will tell you – they are worst than a used car salesman. Do the research on the Internet and decide for yourself. The LCD & plasma technology is rapidly changing.
Dave Gulczinski
BTW…Visio and Pioneer are discontinuing their plasmas. Pioneer is just going to concentrate on their audio equipment.
I have a 52″ Samsung 650 series and it is awesome!! It has the 120 hertz motion flow. Plasmas do not not. The Pioneers have a great picture for a plasma. (I have one of those, too) Sony’s are good, too, but I’ll take this picture over the Sony’s. I install these for a living (Best Buy/Geek Squad) and this Sammy is the best picture I have seen in a tv!! But also my tv has been calibrated which is something you also may want to look at. When the tvs are shipped from the factory the picture levels are cranked up because they don’t know which tv will be pulled out of the box and displayed in the stores. The cranked tvs stand out from the other tvs but are usually way off in colors. When you get them home they look really bright!! Calibrating them brings the colors back to a normal level and get matched to the room lighting. It also makes the tv last longer and use less energy. It’s like getting a new car and putting the pedal to the metal all the time! It will burn out faster. Typical calibrations (not just from BB) cost from $250 to $300 and can be negotiated into the buying price. It takes app 2 to 3 hours to calibrate a tv to ISF standards. There are service codes that the calibrator uses to get into the service menu so the average person can’t just go in and adjust the settings. Plus the calibrator uses a special piece of equipment to do the calibration. Costs about $7k per machine. I could go into it more but you get the point.
As a side note: A typical calibration dvd doesn’t do a good job of calibrating the tv. All tvs and dvd players are different and as such are not very reliable. Plus you’re only calibrating it to the dvd input…not any other source/input.
I know there are some good deals on TVs now at BB because they are changing over their planograms and models. And if you haven’t owned a flat panel before then just about anything hooked up to a HD source is going to look good. If you want more info on tvs go to Google, type in the model #s, and add cnet review to the back of it. That will pull up the review on that tv. Cnet is the consumers report of the internet. I use them a lot. 
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It has the 120 hertz motion flow. Plasmas do not not.
Plasmas are at 420 Hertz
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It has the 120 hertz motion flow. Plasmas do not not.
Plasmas are at 420 Hertz
I know. I was just referring to the motion flow/true motion hz. Sony is coming out with the 240hz now in their xbr8s and 9s. I really couldn’t notice a difference from the 120 to the 240 only that on high it looked silly on some shows? 
Another thing to look at are the tvs with LEDs vs regular LCD back lighting. They claim to last as long as the tubes lasted and take a lot less energy (up to 40% less?). They are really thin, too (like the XBR8s?…LED…240hz). I saw the 55″ Sammy LED the other day…wasn’t crazy about the picture? 
The Sony was ok though? Still new technology and I’d wait a year to see all the other changes coming out for them.
More stuff to confuse the mind but shows the difference in Plasma VS LCD:
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What is the difference between “Hertz” and “ms” with LCD and Plasma?
I understand them to be both something to do with refresh rates? But cant understand why they differ between the same products if they both do the same thing?
TV signals send a frame or picture update every 16.67 ms (60 times a second or 60 Hz refresh rate). LCDs switch on and off so slowly (response time) that LCD TVs must operate differently than plasma TVs. LCD TVs use a technique called “sample & hold”. The frame or picture update is “sampled”, displayed on the screen and then the screen holds this image until the next frame is received and sampled again. Because this image is held on the screen for the full 16.67 ms with a 60 Hz refresh rate, our brain gets confused. It sees still, frozen images for 16.67 ms yet objects move from one image to the next image. This confusion is what causes motion blur on a LCD TV. To compensate for this, LCD TVs try to produce image updates at 120 times a second or 120 Hz refresh rates. This reduces the image hold time to 8.33 ms and requires faster LCD (4-5 ms) switching or response times. Faster LCD response times and 120 Hz refresh rates are what allows an LCD TV to reduce motion blur. Faster LCD response times alone can NOT do anything for motion blur.
Plasma TVs typically operate at 60 frames (pictures) per second or 60 Hz refresh rates. A plasma cell can switch up to eight thousand times faster than a typical LCD (response time). Plasma TVs sample their video signal, burst the image onto the screen and then allow the plasma cells to decay to black. Because our eyes see the individual frames (images) for only a brief moment, our brain does not get confused and produce motion blur like a LCD TV. If LCDs could switch faster, then an LCD TV could put a black screen between frames like a plasma TV and it would not produce motion blur, but LCDs are too slow to do this and they do not pass enough light. LCD TVs would lose considerable brightness if they put up black frames between the displayed frames.
P.S. Blur has absolutely nothing to do with lag time (LCD response time). Motion blur has everything to do with “sample & hold”. For this reason, only increased refresh rates can reduce blur, but to increase refresh rates, you must have faster LCD response times.
Hertz (Hz) is the rate that the screen is refreshed (repainted) on the screen. A 120 Hz refresh rate means that the whole picture is repainted on the screen 120 times a second. More frequent updates means that motion will appear smoother because there are smaller “jumps” in position between frames.
MilliSeconds (mS or 0.001 Second) is how fast the screen can respond to a change once the electronics in the set sends a change to the screen. The faster the better. Let’s say you are watching a football move across the screen. The edges of the ball will be painted on the screen as they move and the screen will take x number of mS to respond. This “lag” will look like a bit of a blur as the screen paints the image. Less lag means less blur.
BTW…I copied this off a website…not my wording but is like I would say it.
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It has the 120 hertz motion flow. Plasmas do not not.
I’m sorry…we are both right..I should have added that the plasmas have a higher response rate. I have seen some with lower HZ but for the most part plasmas don’t have the issue with blur as lcds do because they run at 400hz or above.
Lots of great info. I think I am going to go with the LCD. 52″ Sammy 650 series. I didn’t want to spend that much but we have a bright family room and I don’t think I would be happy with the plasma.
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The life expectancy of a plasma is only 4 years. Go with LCD or DLP
Plasma is pretty much dead or certainly dying as technology to be honest. Heck even Pioneer who has thee state of the Art technologies in plasmas has quit making and selling them.
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Lots of great info. I think I am going to go with the LCD. 52″ Sammy 650 series. I didn’t want to spend that much but we have a bright family room and I don’t think I would be happy with the plasma.
mnfish, do you do the calibration for the sets on the side?
you can’t go wrong with the
120 hz, 1080i,
I sure like my Sony in a 46″
Jack
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mnfish, do you do the calibration for the sets on the side?
Sadly no. 
I have guys I work with do that. I haven’t been trained on it…yet. 
And the calibrator guys I work with are very corporate “minded” and I was charged for it minus my BB discount. 
But pm me after you get the tv and I can “slide” you the settings I have?
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