Video Asylum

Posted by cfraser (A) on October 03, 2009 at 15:20:01

In Reply to: RE: Thinking of getting a Plasma TV posted by Ross on October 03, 2009 at 13:19:26

120Hz refresh is an LCD thing to help reduce motion artifacts, not needed for plasmas (least for that reason).

I have noticed, in a pitch dark room, that I could see a vague ghost of a 4:3 frame from when I watched 100 hours (or something ridiculous) of TV DVDs all in a row (over weeks I mean, no 16:9 images in between). This would be consdered plasma abuse by the plasma cops, but it does happen. This went away very quickly BTW, it is not really burn-in like Kal was alluding to. It is recommended to stretch 4:3 to fill the whole screen to prevent this, but I can't stand the distorted AR. Also recommended to intersperse 16:9 viewing with 4:3 viewing if you must have proper AR.

Pioneer, and I presume others, have a thing that "jiggles" the image slightly. You can't really see it and it helps prevent true burn-in. The current phosphors are pretty long-lived, and they are also much naturally brighter than way back, so they don't have to be driven as hard to give decent brightness (also reduces the prospect of burn-in).

For the size you're looking at, Panasonic and Samsung make the best plasmas now. Personally I'd choose Panny, but I know a lot of calibrators like Samsung so there's no doubt they can be tuned up well.