Don't plasma TVs still have burn in issues that severely shorten the life of the TV? I've heard within two years, burn in can be pretty bad? Are they getting better?

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Dean Lewis wrote:
Don't plasma TVs still have burn in issues that severely shorten the life of the TV? I've heard within two years, burn in can be pretty bad? Are they getting better?

I think that these days they're about as prone to burn-in as CRT TVs are.

I'm not too worried about my CRT set, so I think plasmas are fine.

(I've also heard that the first 100-200 hours of use of a plasma are the most dangerous time as the pixels are all still "fresh" and could be "burnt" more easily. Owners should take care to not pause images during the first few weeks of use. After that, it's much less of an issue.)

I sat on a plane next to a Panasonic rep. who said that burn-in with current Plasmas is gone. It's a myth they still have to deal with. The NYT article also mentions that.

Forget ITV, get a mini mac, a huge lcd which supports 2 HDMIs and get a DV to HDMI cable. The mini mac runs super and front row is insane. ITV is just dumb. Most motorola cable boxes have an HDMI output so to switch from tv to FrontRow is a matter of selecting inputs on the remote. I do it now and it is awesome. Surf the web, Itunes rocks and dvd's play super as well. Home movies play great as well.

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Guest wrote:
ITV is just dumb.

iTV is not even out yet, so that's quite a statement to make...I'm guessing you're guessing here.

I've owned a plasma HDTV for 3 years. No burn in. Pioneer stated instructions have been "stretched" by my kids and their video game play and pausing, and no burn in from that as well. Just use your head and no problems will occur.

Let's say you watch 5 hours of, say, the History channel, and their little icon bug is superimposed in the lower-right corner the entire time. THAT can burn itself into a plasma, particularly during the first days of use. Over time, as these lower-right logos pile up, they appear as yellow or white when the image is black, and gray or brown when the image is white.

I'm still confused by the whole HDTV market. The mere idea of an LCD TV seems absurd, since I get color/contrast inconsistency even on my relatively small computer monitor which is always viewed from almost exactly the same angle. These problems exist on all LCD monitors I've seen. It's gotten a lot better over the years, but there's still a long way to go. Unless there's something very different about the LCD technology used in TVs than in computer monitors, I wouldn't even consider an LCD TV. Wide viewing angles and consistency are musts for TVs.

This is one consumer who will probably not have an HDTV for a few more years. Hopefully by then the prices will be reasonable and the technology will make sense.

I think this is a good time for Apple to step in with their iTV, though. Their strategy lately has been move into markets before there's much demand, and then get a good foothold by the time there IS demand. It's worked well so far.

I have believed ever since apple came forward with Front Row that they would be introducing their own large displays for the living room setting. Now with the empending release of iTv I don't think it will be long til it happens. Hopefully it will be at the Macworld keynote.

ehh... color consistency IS NOT television's strong suit. the signal itself is prone to wild color variances, TV's are NEVER color calibrated, and the cable service providers give you a signal that is compressed twice... once at nearly 95 % and then re-compressed at nearly 95%.

I don't want to promote the things that make my television picture look like crap but... the human eye buys it all anyway. as long as you're not aware of it, the crappy picture does not bother you.

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Guest wrote:
ehh... color consistency IS NOT television's strong suit. the signal itself is prone to wild color variances, TV's are NEVER color calibrated, and the cable service providers give you a signal that is compressed twice... once at nearly 95 % and then re-compressed at nearly 95%.

I don't want to promote the things that make my television picture look like crap but... the human eye buys it all anyway. as long as you're not aware of it, the crappy picture does not bother you.

I meant self-consistency. On LCDs, the same color will look very different depending on where it is on the screen. It practically gave me a heart attack when I switched from CRTs. It's tolerable on monitors because you're almost always positioned directly in front of it, but TVs are another matter.

Plasmas don't have burn-in anymore? Just walk into a Best Buy or Circuit City and look at the plasmas. A Panasonic that has been on display for a few months has enough burn-in to convince me to avoid plasma altogether. (Not to mention the lower resolution and higher price.)

The only things plasma technology has over LCD and microprojection are the contrast ratio and black levels. The brightness levels aren't any better than DLP or Sony's SXRD projection type LCDs.

That said, personally I'll wait a bit longer before upgrading. I have a decent size standard Toshiba set that I like, and don't see any problem with the resolution of my standard DVDs. I sell Sony HDTVs and Blu-ray and all that but I personally don't see any real need to upgrade yet. Eventually, but not yet. No rush.


- Jon

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Jonkun227 wrote:
The only things plasma technology has over LCD and microprojection are the contrast ratio and black levels. The brightness levels aren't any better than DLP or Sony's SXRD projection type LCDs.

I'm not a fan of plasma at all, but "only" contrast ratio and black levels are pretty significant things when talking about displays! Also, I just want to point out that Sony SXRD is actually LCOS, which is different from Sony's LCD rear projection.

Mikuro, you are being rather absurd. Are you sure you don't have some sort of visual disorder? Every LCD monitor on the market renders colors so differently in different parts of the screen that you can see it? Yeah right. Plus, what on Earth are you going to be doing with your TV? Profressional photography and design work for multi-million dollar clients? Do you also not go to the movie theater because they only show a print of the movie and not the original 35mm film it was shot on? There might be some quality loss during the transfer process!

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Biff wrote:
Mikuro, you are being rather absurd. Are you sure you don't have some sort of visual disorder? Every LCD monitor on the market renders colors so differently in different parts of the screen that you can see it? Yeah right. Plus, what on Earth are you going to be doing with your TV? Profressional photography and design work for multi-million dollar clients? Do you also not go to the movie theater because they only show a print of the movie and not the original 35mm film it was shot on? There might be some quality loss during the transfer process!

1. Uhmm....yes? You can't? Granted, I do a bit of graphics work, so naturally I'm sensitive to these things, but...it's kind of hard not to notice. I can't say EVERY LCD on the market is like this, since I haven't personally tested them, but certainly Apple's high-end monitors have this issue, and I've used quite a few modern LCDs from other brands (Sony, Princeton and Xerox), both glossy and matted. This has ALWAYS been the #1 problem with LCDs. The technology has improved over the yeard, but it hasn't shed its nature.

Again, it's not a big deal on a computer monitor because you're always viewing it head on (I can live with some color distortion in the corners and edges). But, moving on to question 2....

2. I intend for a TV to be watched from a wide range of angles. That simple.