Plasma TV or LCD TV with a PC

[imported_Aelius]

I'm looking to upgrade my "experience" with my PC. Since I'm going balls to the wall with my built from scratch AMD system I'm putting togeather in a month or so I'm also looking to upgrade the way things look.

I have done a little bit of reading and research and only found a few useful items.

1. LCD TVs last twice as long as Plasma TVs. (60,000 hours vs 30,000 hours before death)

2. Plasma TVs cost aprox half the ammount per square inch as an LCD TV.

3. Its next to impossible to find either Plasma TVs or LCD TVs in proper 1024X768 resolution and 16X9 aspect ration (Widescreen) without robbing a bank first since any brand name start at around $3,500 and it goes up from there even at the 20ish inch size. My maxed out PC won't cost that much unless I would add phase change. Crazy.

4. There are 1280X768 resolution widescreen TVs in the high teens to low twenty inches within my budget limit, which is going to be no more than $2,000 Canadian. Might consider dropping a tiny bit more on one to get exactly what I want if its close to my limit. Either way I'm not sure if this type of resolution would work well with a PC that tries to push out 1024X768. I know I can use PowerStrip to force the proper resolution but I wonder if thats going to look lame or am I wrong?

Anyone have any ideas or experience with any brand name TVs that are any good or know which one would most likely give the best image quality with a PC? I would be using DVI through an ATI X800XT PE.

Any comment would be appreciated. I sure as heck don't know much about this subject, I only started looking into it today and won't be able to purchase a TV anyway for probably another six months but its still good to know what to look forward to.

Edit: Added to point 4.

 

[OdiN]

Why not just get a widescreen LCD monitor? You would be hard pressed to find one in 16x9, but it would be better than getting a plasma/LCD TV to use your computer on IMO.

Also, plasma displays have rather grainy images and the technology just isn't as good as it needs to be yet.

Sony makes widescreen 23" LCD for about 2500 I think. Apple also has their Cinema Displays.

 

[imported_Aelius]

Plasma doesn't ghost, LCD does. LCD TV's don't ghost anywhere near as badly as the computer LCDs do, from what I read. So I'm not willing to blow two grand on a computer LCD that will ghost.

Image quality varies greatly from TV to TV. I seen ones that are pretty high. They aren't quite up there with normal CRTs, that's true but some have comparable image quality.

 

[OdiN]

I don't know about ghosting on the Sony, but I'm pretty sure the Apple display is high quality and wouldn't have that problem. I know both of my Dell 2001FP 20.1" LCD's don't ghost when playing movies or games. Well...I suppose they do some, but so little that it can't be seen.

 

[Nebor]

Last I heard, the Sony 23" and the Apple 23" use the same panel.

Samsung makes a revised 243t that's 24.3", it's very nice. Ghosting should be minimal as long as you get new versions of all these monitors. While that's easy with the Samsung because they changed the model name, it's difficult with the Apple, because they just changed the panel and shipped out new monitors.

 

[someone16]

What are your primary uses for the computer? For 2000 canadian (if you have the space) I'd use one of those new projectors. Quality on the projectors is pretty good IMO.

Think you can try 19" LCD? Compared to the LCD TV's they are loads cheaper.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Keep in mind that 30000 hours is still a long time.

If you leave the monitor on for 24 hour a day, that's 3.5 years. If you leave it on for 4 hours a day, then it is more than 20 years. Depending on your usage, 30000 might not be an issue.

However, what might be an issue is the graininess of Plasma screens. I think they are very nice for TV's, becaue you are sitting relatively far away and are looking @ fluid backgrounds, but for a monitor, where you are much closer and where you are looking at a single color background in many cases, I think the graininess would be more of a concern.

Definitely check some out in person to see if you can live with that.

-D'oh!

 

[imported_Aelius]

I found the perfect LCD.

Formac Gallery 2010 Platinum

http://www.formac.com/p_bin/index_uk.html?cid=solutions_displays_gallery2010

The only real issue with it is that its very sensitive to power usage so it will stop working or not boot up at all if our PSU is plugged into a cheap powerstrip. A UPS is a must, or you gota plug the PSU into the wall jack, and that's not an option in my view.

Outside of that I cannot find a better display.

Plus its price is really low. $999 US (or less if on sale) vs $1299 US for the Apple one. The Apple Cinema Display is actually a Formac display.

The Gallery line is the new version. It has 50% higher contrast, better brightness, a way better dead pixel warranty (2 pixels anywhere), plus it has a DVI version so you do not need to purchase an adapter.

Its a picture perfect LCD that also improves on reducing ghosting further than the Apple Cinema one.

Finally, found what I was looking for.

Now to actually find one in Canada..... hmmm...

 

[matrixwalker2002]

get a LCD Monitor, like the sony widescreen 23" one the other guys are talking about, and if u want, since it has a spare VGA port, if u wanna turn the monitor into an HDTV, just get the Nextvision N6 off of buy.com for just $172, it's a great box and handles everything from RF to component, (yes, component), and the fact that the monitor has a spare DVI port also, u can hook up an HDTV box to that DVI port (provided u get a TV DVI to PC DVI adapter, they're the same thing, but they use different pins)

besides, plasma monitors will be prone to burn in, LCD's won't.