Am I an Idiot for Having Bought an "Old" Plasma?

[slag]

Ok the set was delivered yesterday, extremely quick delivery.

This plasma is slimmer than some others, but calling this thing "heavy" would be THE.UNDERSTATEMENT.OF.THE.CENTURY.

According to specs it would be be 42kg (90lbs) with the stand and extra 10kg, but..uhm...no. We have carried laundry machines with less effort. It is, let's put it that way, really, really, REALLY heavy.

To make things more complicated, I expected also a Wall mount in the mail (which I ordered elsewhere) and obviously urgently would have needed it yesterday, but it didn't arrive yet. So I had to put the set on its stand.
Now is a holiday again, so I don't expect the wall mount before Tuesday. Which means should I ever decide to wall mount (and I likely won't simply because the insane weight).

(In our case I had to go through considerable hassles to protect the backside of the set from cats. Main reason for wall mounting and not using a stand. Because our #+&%!*** cats have a habbit to spray on everything, and let me tell you that cat pee is the WORST for electronics, especially keyboards and displays because it dissolves the traces on the foil connectors....eg. if cat pee gets into the plasma it means almost a certain un-repairable plasma/panel failure, which was likely also the reason for the last set being killed. Sorry for too much information, but having cats CAN be a total pain in the ass)

Anyway the set is "nice", I don't see any flaws or whatsoever and the picture is as I expected. With all the tweaking etc. I didn't even really have time to actually "enjoy" the set. At first glance, a 60" actually doesn't look too different in size from a 50" ( I assumed the size difference being more "overwhelming")...but at second glance it's clear the set is bigger ("doh!") also given the bezel is a lot thinner than what the Samsung had.

The weight of the thing nicely explains (IMHO) why people don't want plasmas anymore I guess.

Meh, i don't see why the weight is a concern. Any wall mount that supports a 60 inch tv is most likely going to support up to 100 pounds or so, give or take so just attach the mount to a couple wall studs and be done with it. After its mounted on the wall, It's not like you move your tv around a lot.

I used to have have a cat that sprayed. Emphasis on used to. Life is too short to put up with that crap. Now have a cat that doesn't do stupid shit like that.

 

[Worthington]

I've been rocking my 60" Kuro since 2007, and only just replaced it last month with an OLED TV. OP, you did the right thing.

 

[zinfamous]

I've been rocking my 60" Kuro since 2007, and only just replaced it last month with an OLED TV. OP, you did the right thing.

Oh snap! can I have your Kuro?

 

[Zivic]

I carried my 60", 110# kuro up a flight of stairs and set it on its wall mount by myself. They are heavy, but don't be so dramatic. OP are you a man or a mouse?

 

[WhiteNoise]

Kill those cats.

 

[Worthington]

Oh snap! can I have your Kuro?

Heh.. Hoping to CL it and use the proceeds to pick up a new receiver. I can't imagine how much it would be to box it up and ship it to wherever you're at. Damn thing is freaken heavy.

 

[bigboxes]

I adopted flat panel HDTV later than most folks in this forum. I bought one of the last generations of plasma made by Panasonic when I got the VT50. It was the best one they made and I got a great deal just as they were introducing their new models. I have LCD and Plasma and the PQ is not remotely close. My Panny wins hands down. Visitors come over and they go "Ohhhhhh..." just like people do when watching fireworks. It's that much better. There's not a lot of 4K media right now. It's there, just not mainstream. I'm hoping that OLED pricing will continue to drop and that someone other than LG will take their panels and pair them up with some processing power. Until those high end units come down to sub $3k I don't see me retiring my plasma.

 

[zinfamous]

Heh.. Hoping to CL it and use the proceeds to pick up a new receiver. I can't imagine how much it would be to box it up and ship it to wherever you're at. Damn thing is freaken heavy.

well, if you're anywhere near DC, I very well might be willing to buy it from you

 

[Zivic]

There's not a lot of 4K media right now. It's there, just not mainstream. I'm hoping that OLED pricing will continue to drop and that someone other than LG will take their panels and pair them up with some processing power. Until those high end units come down to sub $3k I don't see me retiring my plasma.

There is a fair amount of 4k. Lots on Amazon prime and Netflix.

Sony announced today that they are releasing an oled display for 2017. They are sourcing panels from LG. Rumor is that they will be higher priced than the lg displays

 

[flexy]

I carried my 60", 110# kuro up a flight of stairs and set it on its wall mount by myself. They are heavy, but don't be so dramatic. OP are you a man or a mouse?

I am thin guy but I doubt that ONE person can handle this, seriously. And my wife is also not the strongest But the good thing is..I mean we managed to get it up and working

On topic: The set *actually* has a minor flaw/"bug", and I am still investigating this. This is the so called PWM noise firmware bug that seems to affect all (?) LG Plasmas from 2010. The issue is that the set apparently does dithering in the six lowest IREs from 1-6 not all the way to the border, there is a approx. 1" gap on top and to the left where it doesn't dither in this range. Since it only affects the lowest blacks/grays it is hardly (if at all) noticeable, except of course if you're like me and look pedantically on forums for any flaws Most material likely won't even show this "bug" if it doesn't even use these colors. I am still investigating whether there is a firmware where the bug was fixed but having troubles getting this thing to read my firmware from the USB.

There are also some threads on the net that with some relatively simple tweaks "adjusting two pots" in the set it should be possible to get the set have blacks "almost on Kuro level", although I didn't find blacks "bad" whatsoever, maybe (??) a tiny, subtle notch brighter than the Samsung...but then also more detail in the blacks. (Difficult to say since we watched when it was still rather bright in the room so I don't have a 100% comparison to the old set). Overall I found image quality very satisfying and I didn't even look into in-depth calibration yet.

We watched "The Force Awakens" and I was very pleased by the fantastic, lively and "detailed" colours of the set, "detailed colours" maybe describes it best. I am usually a guy who turns colors/saturation down as opposed to many other people where I am always shuddering about how they watch w/ extremely overdone colors...basically molesting any type of TV with ridiculous settings, I am sure you know what I mean. With this set, colors "pop" but everything is still natural and defined.

While the plasma (here yet another pedantic observation may *possibly* not have the most homogeneous colours across the panel (slight, subtle patches, LIKELY from dust etc. inside the panel, something which I heard can be common in mass-produced panels and you also only would see it in pans across a homogenous coloured areas when you really look for it), it doesn't have what the old Samsung had. This set had a ca. 6" wide horizontal "band" almost 70% across the screen which you saw in certain, dark scenes (again, if you looked for it...) which annoyed me at times [especially back then when I got the set and paid a fortune for it]. Ok you see I am silly since I am looking for "imperfections" (I shouldn't really) which almost any set/brand has to some extent.

 

[flexy]

There is a fair amount of 4k. Lots on Amazon prime and Netflix.

As said 4K is all nice and great, and I could've gotten a Hisense 50" 4K UHD for the same price. On AVSForum they praise this 4K Hisense as really being a bargain. €600+s/h for a 50" 4k with all shenanigans like smart TV, LAN etc.. is incredible seeing I paid €1500 for the same size 720p plasma in 2008. Crazy how prices have dropped.

BUT: I think 4K would be entirely silly in our case since we're sitting almost 4m from the set!! 4K would be great for folks like gamers etc. where the set is much closer, but we wouldn't likely even see a difference. Heck, 1080p is already a massive improvement over shitty 720p

 

[Zivic]

As said 4K is all nice and great, and I could've gotten a Hisense 50" 4K UHD for the same price. On AVSForum they praise this 4K Hisense as really being a bargain. €600+s/h for a 50" 4k with all shenanigans like smart TV, LAN etc.. is incredible seeing I paid €1500 for the same size 720p plasma in 2008. Crazy how prices have dropped.

BUT: I think 4K would be entirely silly in our case since we're sitting almost 4m from the set!! 4K would be great for folks like gamers etc. where the set is much closer, but we wouldn't likely even see a difference. Heck, 1080p is already a massive improvement over shitty 720p

Resolution is only one factor. 1080p really isnt that big a a step up from 720p... That said 4k by itself isn't that big a step either. Dolby Vision and HDR is what makes these new displays worth getting. And again, a decent amount of content available.

The plasma purchase wasn't a bad decision at all considering you get what you pay for in a sub grand LCD panel you were considering. If one is buying LCD, you basically have to buy a Z9 Sony if you want picture quality