Plasma TV + Regular Cable?

[SweetErika]

Does anyone have a plasma (NOT LCD) tv, but regular (not digital or satellite, just the 'basic expanded' 70 channels or so) cable?

We're thinking of getting a plasma (hopefully the price will continue to drop!), but read they can look worse than regular TVs with regular cable.

So, I want to know if this is the case from people with first-hand experience with this setup, or if it's just something image-quality snobs think they notice.

And, I guess while we're on the subject of plasmas, do you have any tips on buying or specific recommendations/warnings about brands and such? I don't think we've had a thread on flatscreen TVs since they became more popular and affordable.

Thanks in advance!

 

[albertaboy]

If you are going to get a better TV, get the Better feed. HDTV is tremendous, particularly sports and nature shows.

 

[SweetErika]

If you are going to get a better TV, get the Better feed. HDTV is tremendous, particularly sports and nature shows.

We might at some point, but I don't think we're going to for now because we just set up a MythTV box that won't work with a digital or satellite box. There are some other reasons I want to stick with regular cable for now, too, so that's what we're going to do unless I hear the quality is significantly worse than with our conventional TV (the quality is just fine for us, BTW, but it looks like our TV is starting to go, so we might as well get something that will be more flexible in the future and will save space now).

 

[robertearl]

The picture will not be worse than you have now. It will look a little better but the difference between normal and HD is very large. If you are within about 80 miles of the broadcast antenna of your local tv stations, you can just use a small outdoor UHF antenna and pick up the locals in HD. That is free and the difference will be amazing.

A couple of manufactures have quit making plasmas as of this year and are all going to LCD or OLELCD. You might be able to get a better deal on the plasma since they are trying to get rid of the old stock.

All of the new TV's have multiple inputs. You could still have your MythTV hooked up to one input and the UHF up to another. The recording of the TV programs will not be in HD but while you are home , you could watch it live in HD while Mythtv is recording something else.

 

[SweetErika]

The picture will not be worse than you have now. It will look a little better but the difference between normal and HD is very large. If you are within about 80 miles of the broadcast antenna of your local tv stations, you can just use a small outdoor UHF antenna and pick up the locals in HD. That is free and the difference will be amazing.

That's great news and a good idea about the local networks. Thanks, Robert!

A couple of manufactures have quit making plasmas as of this year and are all going to LCD or OLELCD. You might be able to get a better deal on the plasma since they are trying to get rid of the old stock.

Even in the 40" and larger sizes? We've looked at the LCDs vs. the plasmas, and the plasmas seem much clearer. If they're going to OLELCD, are plasmas going to be a thing of the past soon, and would we be better off waiting to get an LCD or OELCD? (Do they have more benefits?)

 

[albertaboy]

We have both and the difference in startling between the plasma (better)and the LCD. The big difference is how fast the screen reloads the image, virtually all cable is and will be broadcast in Digital format and the plasma screen reloads the image dramatically faster resulting in better image and less "digital" noise in the picture.

We have a panasonic plasma and it is fantastic, watching nature shows or sports on a regular TV or the lcd is almost painful after living with the plasma for a couple of years.

 

[robertearl]

That's great news and a good idea about the local networks. Thanks, Robert!

Even in the 40" and larger sizes? We've looked at the LCDs vs. the plasmas, and the plasmas seem much clearer. If they're going to OLELCD, are plasmas going to be a thing of the past soon, and would we be better off waiting to get an LCD or OELCD? (Do they have more benefits?)

Sony and Pioneer are going to quit making plasmas this year. They were just selling a lot more LCD's than plasmas. Then newer LCD's are very good and so are the plasmas. I don't think you will go wrong with either one. In the store one might look better than the other but when you get it home, you don't have anything to compare it to. Just find a good deal on one with the features you want that you like the looks of. Unless you are just a very serious video nut, you will be happy with almost any of the name brands. By the way. the porn actresses are not quit as good looking up close in HD, but if you are not looking at their face you will not notice.

 

[SleepOnStealth]

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[SweetErika]

As a complete knowledge junkie and all around geek this is something definitely I know a little something about. The worse then regular tv look you are describing is technically true. The easiest way to describe this is the television is able to render way more then the tv station sends. Long story short, the broadcast is being sent in vhs quality while you're in DVD mode - in layman's terms . Because before we were all watching a crappy signal on a crappy tv and it looked fine, but when you watch the same signal on a HDTV it looks like a VHS tape.. the youtube of yesterday if you will .

So, you actually have a plasma and have watched it with regular cable?

Now as for the plasma TV itself the reason it is so cheap is because the average lifespan of a plasma tv is 200 working hours due to a recent study (plus if you leave an image on screen for more then 20 mins it permanently burns it in to the tv (ie: pausing a movie for dinner)... which is why the are hocking them off left and right for cheap.

So, if I watch 2 hours of TV a day, my plasma will be dead in about 3 months is what you're claiming, correct?

With all due respect, I'd like to see where you're getting your info because it doesn't seem like you have any idea what you're talking about based on the numbers you're throwing out and what I've read and heard from reliable sources.

Panasonic, Samsung and others boast lifespans on the current plasmas of 60,000 hours. Most plasmas are expected to last 12-55 years, NOT 3 months. Link Hubby was just looking at the manual for a 42" plasma at Costco and the expected life was 100,000 hours.

As for the burning the image into the screen, that's an old problem that's no longer an issue because the newer TVs turn themselves off and have screensavers.

Why would anyone buy a $700+ TV that's only expected to last 3 months and will burn the image on the screen after 20 minutes? Why would any manufacturer put their name on a product like that? Wouldn't that kind of unreliability be all over the news? Don't most of the better manufacturers offer like a 1-year warranty on the TV's, and wouldn't they be out of business if their products were dying after a few months? <--- Questions a critical thinker asks when they hear wacky numbers/statements.

 

[SleepOnStealth]

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[albertaboy]

I currently own a 62in LCD 1080P, I had a plasma (one of the original plasmas, i'm sure the lifespan has improved some.. but not nearly enough)before I had to return it because of ...wait for it...TADA! it died after about 2 weeks of use. I had regular cable at the time and have since upgraded. While you are correct they are working on technologies to improve plasma burn-in by using methods to color change pixels so that they are undetectable by the human eye you have to be very sure of what you are buying off the shelf and how long it's been there (ie: what generation of technology it is using against these burn ins)

And to answer all these questions in order:
Why would anyone buy a $700+ TV that's only expected to last 3 months and will burn the image on the screen after 20 minutes? Why would any manufacturer put their name on a product like that? Wouldn't that kind of unreliability be all over the news? Don't most of the better manufacturers offer like a 1-year warranty on the TV's, and wouldn't they be out of business if their products were dying after a few months?


Answer: Good question why would anyone buy them when you can get a decent sized LCD for the same price and twice the reliability, brightness and efficiency. They put their name on a product to sell it .. whether it works great or not (See: Windows Vista). The unreliability was all over the news... a long time ago. They even did a report about it on our local stations here so *shrugs* You are correct, most manufacturers do put a warranty on their product, half the time people don't fill them out.. but never the less. Hence, if you do your research they are offering them a way lower prices then all other HDTV's to get them off the shelves and out of the factory and reducing or eliminating entirely in some cases the production of plasmas.

So take my advice or don't. I offered you a simple explanation in layman's terms of what was going on with the picture quality, and the suggestion to avoid a plasma because of it's shady past and dying future if you are serious about switching to a hi def tv.

I call bullshit on your claims.

We have had a 37" panasonic viera plasma screen TV over out fireplace for almost three years. My wife works from home and often it's on to news etc 18 hours a day. It has to have at least 7500(probably more) hours on it and it is as good as the day we bought it. We also have a branch new LCD TV in our bedroom and they are not comparable in picture quality. WE have HD boxes in both rooms. In Canada, there are a limilted # of HD channels so we regularly watch regular TV onboth and again they are not close in picture quality. The fact that Sony isn't making Plasma anymore is meaningless, the company has bet on the wrong technology over and over again think Beta.


If you like sports or nature shows the difference between Plasma and LCD of comparable quality is like the difference between HD and regular TV.

Sweet Erica,
Take a look at the Panasonic Viera plasma TV, we love ours and it is an excellent product.

 

[Weird Harold]

We're thinking of getting a plasma (hopefully the price will continue to drop!), but read they can look worse than regular TVs with regular cable.

I don't know if the problem has been fixed, but first genertion HD TV sets had a problem with "speckling" when converting an analog NTSC input signal -- similar to the kind of pixelation you can get when resizing images. But the technology for the necessary processer speed and capacity to do better conversions is now available, so I don't see any reason for a brand-name, middle of the cost spectrum HD TV should still be subject to "speckling."

I don't have any direct experience with Plasma TVs, but I do have a lot of experience with electronics in general, and can say that the maunafctureers number for MYBF -- Mean Time Between Failures -- and projections of service life are misleading. Gettting any electronic device past the first hundred hours without a catastrophic failure generally means that it's going to last as long as you care to keep operating it (as long as it doesn't have any moving parts.)

Plasma TVs are a technology that is subject to a higher failure rate during that "burn-in period" but lasts virtually forever once it gets past the burn-in. LCD and LED technolgies tend to have shorter burn-in periods and last even longer once they're past the burn-in. Consequently, I'm not surprised that plasma's have a reputation for more early failures than LCD or LED, but it's NOT necessarily an indictment of their overall reliability as a class.

 

[SleepOnStealth]

Account is being deleted.
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[albertaboy]

*cough* Speaking of bullshit... just stand infront of one plasma and one LCD at any Best Buy and see which looks better... This person obviously doesn't know what they are talking about.

The LCD looks great in slow moving things like a sitcom. Try watching a hockey game or golf. In watching golf on the plasma when they go close on the ball in the air you can actually see it spinning, the LCD looks sick by comparison. Even when the hockey game is being broadcast by the lousy US networks you can see the puck at high speed, not so with LCD.

There's a reason in the stores they show slow moving things like aquariums and gently panning garden shots on LCD screens, becuse if they showed sports, nobody would ever buy one.

I spent months looking at both when we bought plasma and not enough time when we bought the LCD for our bedroom. They are simply not comparable and you simply don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

 

[kindashy]

I am not going into LCD vs Plasma debate because I already decided to buy Plasma.

Erica, whichever tv you get, you might want to get one with built in digital receiver this way you will get local channels in high definition. The high definition format that your local stations are using is called ATSC so when you shop look for ATSC Tuner on the list of features. Also we should be getting coupons from the government for converter boxes, I think two coupons per household so that you would have two free converters that will convert HDTV signal to analog for the older tv sets.

As far as getting out of plasma manufacturing. Sony also stopped making trinitron tubes. That does not mean they are bad product.

If you decide on plasma tv, the top makers are Panasonic, Samsung, Pioneer. It has been already mentioned that Pioneer is out of making plasma. Me? I will get Samsung because I want to be able to hook up computer to it, compatible Panasonic models do not have this feature built in.