pana plasma with 220i NTSC input

65.129.41.177

Posted by petew on January 7, 2002 at 07:55:04

In Reply to: Re: here's the buzz posted by Rich H on January 6, 2002 at 21:04:13:

first let me correct myself on the noise claims I made above:

last night i had another insomnia session and stayed up intermittantly reading David McCullough's "John Adams" and watching the Weather channel. with the amps off (no audio) i could hear a faint buzzing at my listening seat ~12 feet distant, comming from the panasonic. be advised that it is an order of magnitude lower in volume than the buzzing from the 27" CRT I had there before. the sound is only detectable when you are perfectly still in a very quiet house, and even then you must concentrate to detect it.

the set is on a dedicated line with a technical ground, but there is a 500 watt halogen torche lamp in the room--i can't be certain why i was able to hear the tv last night--because the snow outside made the background noise even lower than normal, because of the halogen lamp, or some other interference...

it would be fair for me to wait and life with the set for a few weeks before i post hyperbolic performance claims.

there are no dead pixels...and since i haven't seen any i'm not going to look. the build quality is what you might expect for a set that costs $5500. but in all seriousness, you can't honestly think of the plasma viewscreen as a machine: there are no speaker grills, knobs, buttons, lights or wires--it truely is a free-standing work of art--nothing like a television. It is art, pure art. It is entirely new. It is the future.

I have not yet received the component cables or wall mount bracket from the company i ordered the set from. The video input is from a Monster Silver S-video cable feed from the Sony SAT A50 digital satellite receiver.

There is an enormous variation of signal quality in NTSC broadcasts. Despite the fact that satellite transmissions are all digital and should not suffer from the kinds of transmission degradations to which analog signals are prone (some digital cable transmissions are analog--"digital cable" is a marketing term, not a fact of life), this wide variation in signal quality is readily apparent with a satellite feed, and viewing these signals with a high-fidelity monitor only makes this even more annoying.

C-span and PBS seem to have the most consistant quality of signal, and the FOX network is consistantly the worst signal, though any "live" broadcast tends to be the best quality of which NTSC is capable. NBC has the widest variability--going from the best to the worst at any given moment. A live C-span broadcast is a sight to behold--deep blacks and crisp borders, with colors that make the French impressionists look like monochrome. The movie channels TCM, AMC are very good, especially when they send a cinemascope or "letterbox" signal. Very satisfying! Some of the commercials are broadcast in widescreen with amazing fidelity...I hadn't realized what a wide variation there is.

Since I don't have the componant cables yet I can't say what the 480i signal from DVD looks like and how well the de-interlacer in the panny works. The S-video feed from DVD is wonderful...I'm trying not to get ahead of myself before I run out of superlatives. I can say that the 3:2 pulldown is wonderful! I love black and white films, and viewing film noir on the panny is a royal treat!

In summation, based on 480i DVD and NTSC thru S-video, I can say that the major problem with the panny plasma is "garbage in, garbage out".

it does a great job of scaling, de-lacing and 3:2 pulldown, but when you see a good signal displayed it raises the bar far too much for the kind of crap you too often get with NTSC (how many transmissions even are in 240i? some of them look like 50i !)

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - 42" Panasonic plasma has arrived! - petew 11:54:01 01/05/02 (16)

Re: 42" Panasonic plasma has arrived! - Rich H 21:16:05 01/05/02 (7)

here's the buzz - petew 19:37:23 01/06/02 (6)

Re: here's the buzz - Rich H 21:04:13 01/06/02 (5)

pana plasma with 220i NTSC input - petew 07:55:04 01/07/02 (4)

Re: pana plasma with 220i NTSC input - Rich H 19:50:58 01/07/02 (3)

decision time - petew 07:47:08 01/08/02 (2)

Re: decision time - Rich H 09:21:06 01/08/02 (1)

yep, trust no one - petew 13:34:08 01/08/02 (0)

Re: Don't hold us in suspense? - Rod M 12:09:39 01/05/02 (7)

but they didn't send the hook-up cables... - petew 16:21:24 01/05/02 (6)

Still no cables ...but now no need - Philharmonic Tom 21:31:42 01/06/02 (0)

Lol!!!!!!!!!! (NT) - Susan 12:24:36 01/06/02 (0)

you MUST read this!!!!!!!!! (nt) - Joe Murphy Jr 20:14:18 01/05/02 (1)

Re: Great Post ! (nt) - bmar 22:27:29 01/05/02 (0)

ps - petew 16:22:29 01/05/02 (1)

Thanks pete! (mt) - Rod M 10:42:36 01/06/02 (0)

Follow Ups

pana plasma with 220i NTSC input - petew 07:55:04 01/07/02 (4)

Re: pana plasma with 220i NTSC input - Rich H 19:50:58 01/07/02 (3)

decision time - petew 07:47:08 01/08/02 (2)

Re: decision time - Rich H 09:21:06 01/08/02 (1)

yep, trust no one - petew 13:34:08 01/08/02 (0)

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