Comparison of 2 HD tv (LCD vs Plasma again)

[anamosity]

I am not looking at price, but at which one would be the best overall.

I want to keep it at 46". I already have a Mits Projection 65" and its way to big for me.

I am also wondering about the overall effect of using a power strip to turn the unit off when not in use. Not that it would be a lot, but in the summer months I can go without even turning the TV on for weeks at a time.

I will be watching HD programming, Xbox 360 and Blue ray.
Please advise if I forgot anything.

Samsung 46" LCD
http://www.vanns.com/shop/serv...46a650?s_c=site_search

Panasonic 46" Plasma
http://www.vanns.com/shop/serv...6pz85u?s_c=site_search

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

personally, i am a panasonic guy. i had to use their warranty service to fix a dead HDMI port and it was excellent.
my tv is in room without windows and movies look amazing.

there really isn't a need to turn off the unit with a power strip because it draws like less than 1w in standby. but if you must, there's no issue with that either- i believe the unit retains settings.

 

[vi edit]

I had a 42" LG Plasma crap out on me. I replaced it under the BB PSP with the same Samsung LCD you are looking at.

When it comes to movies and HD based television content, I heavily preferred the picture of the Plasma.

When it comes to games I like the lack of image retention of the LCD. The scaler on the Samsung is much better when it comes to SD material. It won't make a bad signal look good, but it doesn't make "ok" signals look worse. The plasma wasn't too good in that regard.

Overall I probably would have been happier going with a plasma, but not to the point that I would return the TV. The Samsung also has some questionable build quality issues with the ToC bezel. It was a penny pinching effort and it's coming back to bite them.

 

[anamosity]

Thanks for the replies. I placed my order for the panny after reading a few reviews. Looks like it should be a great tv. $1399 OTD.
Not sure if I got a great deal, but I know its a decent deal being its local and a free wall mount.

 

[Koing]

It depends on what you like.

I like plasma screen over LCD and rear projection. Some guys love rear projection but it isn't for me.

Koing

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: anamosity
Thanks for the replies. I placed my order for the panny after reading a few reviews. Looks like it should be a great tv. $1399 OTD.
Not sure if I got a great deal, but I know its a decent deal being its local and a free wall mount.

Congrats on the purchase! That's an awesome TV, and I'm sure you'll be very pleased with it. Spend some time over at avsforum reading about calibrating your TV and possibly breaking it in. Breaking in a plasma quickly, but evenly, ages the phosphors of the TV in an effort to prevent burn-in and IR. I broke in my plasma for 200 hours before using it normally (I watched 1-2 hours of full-screen content every day during that time), but I'm really anal about that sort of thing and didn't want to have to worry about burn-in. I've never even seen IR on the set, so it was probably overkill. However, it didn't cost anything other than some hassle and electricity, and I'd do it all over again if I were buying a new set now.

Here's the link for break-in info for your TV. It also shows how to go into the service menu and check the number of hours the TV has been on. This checks to make sure it's a new set and not a display or return. There's also a link to a break-in DVD that you run.

Even if you don't break in your TV, at least look through that thread for some picture settings for it. TVs ship in dynamic or "torch" mode, so it will be blazingly bright and have poor black levels, poor contrast ratio, and very inaccurate colors. It will also age the set more quickly, promote IR/burn-in, and use more (possibly double) electricity. If you want to go a step further, you can get a calibration DVD/BD or get the set professionally calibrated. I'm very pleased with the settings from avsforum, so I've just stuck with those.

 

[anamosity]

Thanks for the link, I will certainly give it a look and try out the info posted there.