Compelling reason NOT to go plasma?

[nova]

Been on the look out for a while now (Sony GWIII dying), and have been looking at 50" or so LCD's. Today was really the first time I considered a plasma. Looking at a couple in the store, I was really much more impressed by the picture of the Samsung PN50A450 (720P 50" plasma) over the LN46A650 (1080P 120Hz 46" LCD) and other Panasonic, Toshiba and Sony LCD's.

I may just save myself $1000 and go with a plasma,... any compelling reasons not to?

[tonyvdb]

Really the only issues with plasma is they dont like the heat so if your room is warm in the summer this will shorten its lifespan. Plasma's also tend to have more of an issue with dead pixels at an early stage (less than 3 years).
On the plus side they have great contrast and work well in bright locations.

[DS-21]

Also, aren't plasmas a whole bunch worse in terms of energy efficiency than LCD's? Even if the economics might skew towards plasma in some cases, there are issues of social responsibility to consider as well...

[lcaillo]

tonyvdb wrote:

Really the only issues with plasma is they dont like the heat so if your room is warm in the summer this will shorten its lifespan. Plasma's also tend to have more of an issue with dead pixels at an early stage (less than 3 years).
On the plus side they have great contrast and work well in bright locations.

PDPs do generate more heat and are somewhat less efficient, and anytime you have more heat, you need more effective cooling systems and semiconductors are more likely to have shorter lifespans. I have seen more failures in high current drive circuits in PDPs than the lower current circuits in LCDs. I have not seen environmental effects on PDPs, however. I have also not seen the problem with dead pixels as more common in PDPs.

LCDs actually have greater peak white output and lower glare so they actually work quite a bit better in bright locations.

PDPs have the dissadvantages of phosphor wear and potential for burn-in, higher power consumption (both are mitigated by proper calibration to a large degree), potentially higher failures due to higher current devices, and fewer OEMs.

[SteveCallas]

Screen reflections is by far their biggest issue in my opinion - once you go LCD, it's very hard to watch anything with a reflective screen. Susceptibility to burn-in during the display's first several hundred hours is another issue, especially if you watch a fair amount of non-stretched SD content. Pixel fill rate is an issue that bothers me a bit - if you look closely at a plasma vs an LCD, the pixels are more rounded off on a plasma, creating more black space between pixels. Lastly, to my eyes at least, a plasma picture just doesn't "pop" as much as that from a LCD.

[blaser]

An LCD projector can look very good as well

[thxgoon]

In my experience a lot of the plasma problems are overblown. Unless you live in a really reflective environment you're not likely to notice the reflections. Any plasma today has anti glare coatings that will make it much less reflective than your current wega tube. Burn in is an issue as someone mentioned if you're watching a lot of SD content with the bars on the sides but now most plasmas use a grey bar that approximates an average luminocity and greatly reduces the chances of it. Burn in occurs as a process and goes away with time so if it begins to happen you can catch it early on and take steps to eliminate it. From experience with plasmas though, this is really a non issue. As far as life span, it's been a few years but I remember Panasonic rating their plasma sets at 60,000 hours until half life. Meaning that after 60,000 hours of continuous average use it would be half as bright as the day you bought it which is a pretty long time! IMHO I like the picture of plasma over LCD. LCD's are bright and they do 'pop' but I think this gives them an artificial quality. Plamsa appear to have better greyscaling and do a better job at reproducing subtle hues in colors to me anyways. Good luck, let us know what you decide to do. I don't think you can go wrong either way.

[nova]

Well, I do have a bright room with seven windows so reflection would be an issue. Dunno, the plasma looks much more reflective than my current wega screen, it's a rear projection LCD not a tube (KF-50WE610) . I also liked what I saw from the plasma, very little pixelization that I could see. Looking at the LCD and plasma side by side, leaves blowing in the wind on the LCD looked very square, while the same scene on the plasma looked very realistic.