New PC Gaming TV

[physicsiseasy]

Hello everyone,

I have been reading these forums religiously for some time and am about to buy a new tv this memorial day weekend. Somewhere around 50 inches, but my main concern is maximizing my computer's potential as that will be the sole input. I will not detail this gaming rig, but I need a tv with low input lag, no ghosting, and the best pq. My price cap is around 2000 dollars. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks.

P.S. Even after all my research, I still haven't decided between lcd and plasma.

 

[bentheman939]

The Panasonic G25 series plasmas are absolutely gorgeous; you could not imo get a better picture for anything less than $5k. I have had mine as a computer monitor for months now, and I have had no problems with burn-in which plasmas have traditionally been accused of, especially with the static task bar.

Do you want 3d?

 

[physicsiseasy]

Thanks for the response. I am still worried about IR as I do game heavily. It's impressive that you don't get any from the taskbar. Do you keep the contrast low, or run slides and do a break in period?

Also 3d would be a plus but is not needed.

 

[bentheman939]

My contrast is maxed, and I do nothing special (although I try not to leave my screen on the desktop for long periods of time when I am not using it, and I have set my screensaver to come on after ~5mins). I did do a break-in routine as described on avs forums.

I have used TVs for my PC for about 8 years now. I have gone through a Westinghouse 46" 1080p (which was great btw, forget the model #), a Samsung UN46C5000, which was a huge disappointment. Text was never sharp or distinct enough, and some colour combinations, like red on blue, looked absurd. I later found out not all panels are made by Samsung, but some are made by Chen Mai and various other suppliers, with various pixel patterns and quality.

The G25 is simply the best screen I have ever seen. There is absolutely NO ghosting in movies or games. The blacks are so black, it looks like it is unplugged in those areas. Colours are excellent.

 

[kylebisme]

I've been using a Panasonic TH-50PH9UK as my primary monitor for a few years now, and a couple of months ago I noticed a bit of uneven phosphor fading from doing little more than web browsing on it for a few months. On white or nearly white screens, there was a thin line that didn't get as bright, where IE8 has a fairly high contrast stripe under the address bar. However, having switched to Firefox 4 a couple months ago which doesn't have that same line, running a colorful screensaver overnight for a week or so, and making a point to do more gaming and movie watching, it's gone back to even. So while it is possible to get uneven phosphor fading on a plasma, it isn't an issue unless you really abuse it, and even then it doesn't take much to correct the problem.

 

[TheUnk]

The Panasonic ST30 is basically the G25 without THX, and so it's less expensive for the same quality, just no THX video settings. It's cinema setting is really close to reference though.

 

[skace]

My Panny has a feature where it will autodim if left on the same screen too long. This is different from say, a screensaver, that depends on mouse/keyboard movement. This works off the actual image not changing. They are nearly impossible to cause any sort of IR damage to these days. I leave mine running the same screen for many, many hours sometimes.

 

[kylebisme]

My Panny has a feature where it will autodim if left on the same screen too long.

Yeah, mine has that too. I turned it off right away though because having it dim in the middle of reading a website or such is annoying.