yeah... what he said

 

LCDs are slashing prices, and bigger sets are being produced right now. Sony quit the Plasma market because they strongly believe that the LCD market will increase 4 times by 2008.

Plasmas are power-suckers and run hot. With LCD prices coming down quick, and display quality increasing, it will be a tough competitor against Plasma. Assuming they both come with similar specs in the future, the consumer might decide buying the lighter version which uses less power.

 

You can't try to apply any logical analysis to Sony's moves... they change their minds daily.

While Sony dropped plasma, other big players have invested heavily into it.

Plasmas are power suckers, run hot, and are heavy. But so were CRTs... yet only recently has their market dominance been eclipsed... and even today many video philes still swear by them.

Ignoring their physical limitations (which most people won't notice and or care about as the display is stuck up on their wall), they simply LOOK better. Thus that DO care about the guys are much more likely to be swayed by the nitty gritty details that make a Plasma better, the construction, which many feel is superior to LCD's smoke and mirror show.

As fast as LCD prices are dropping, so are Plasmas. There's no indication that large format LCD's will be available at competitive prices to that of Plasma anytime soon.

Moral of the story is, there's little meat to back up the theory that LCD will eclipse Plasma.

Again, were the planets to align and everything fell into place for this to happen... we would be far enough along for a new technology to eclipse both.

Just look at the DLP/LCD war, they're already feeling the pressure from new and coming technologies. Sony, like in your example, already dumped their flavor of the month 3LCD for SXRD.

There's a dozen or more display technologies in the pipeline that promise to deliver above and beyond ALL exisiting technologies. Will it happen? I have no idea. However, it's much more likely then the disappearance of Plasma at the hands of LCD.

 

It's a great sign. New technology which eliminates the color wheel which means DLPs will be even better then they are now!!

 

OK, keep in mind these are for a 50" DLP, not sure how they'll look on other sizes. I'm going to give you two sets of numbers.... the first set is the settings I got off of AVSForum.com. The second set is what I'm currently using. As mentioned before, you may not like either of them... but they should be a good starting point.

Cinema Mode
Contrast - 85
Bright - 55
Sharp - 40
Color - 65
Tint - 50 (unchanged)



Cinema Mode
Contrast - 85
Bright - 56
Sharp - 60
Color - 65
Tint - 50 (unchanged)


Personally I love these settings, but you may not, so feel free to toy around

 

Well I hooked up the HDMI cable and saw no noticeable improvement on the HD stuff. I think the SD stuff looks a little better. The component cable isn't going to waste though. I slapped that on my DVD player and I see a slight improvement over the SVideo cable I was using.

BTW, sending 480P or 480i from my player looks the same. I have an HK DVD101

 

Thanks...I'll give this a shot tonight...

 

Yea, but not a good sign for us currently color wheel owners. So the question is did they change because the technology was there or did they change because they foresaw a problem?

 

I believe the hi-end DLP projectors have been running without a color wheel for awhile. My guess is that the cost to produce has gone down on the technology.

 

The problem is 1.) a color wheel is a moving part, which means it can fail... and 2.) people have hyped the "rainbow effect" and this eliminates the issue... securing DLP as, arguably, THE display technology.

 

Yea, thats what I mentioned a few posts ago. Similar to a hard disk, I'm assuming the wheel spins at a pretty high RPM. Oh well, thats what the warranty is for.

 

Well I know that I've never seen the rainbow... so I love my Sammy DLP even if the light engine is being replaced with LED

 

Samsung 56" DL HDTV now $1900 shipped from amazon

 

They're clearin them out... making room for the 2006 1080p DLP's

 

Here's a 5% coupon code CECUSTAPPRCT
Good until 2/13/06 (according to deals2buy.com)

 

Must....wait....till...basement....is....finished. ..

 

price lowered, $1850 after coupon, shipped. God damn, I paid 2150 just 3 weeks ago

 

Look on the bright side, the stuff gets cheaper every day.

 

Damn... it's soooooo tempting to get one for the bonus room. But I have to relax and look at the bigger picture (hehe, nice pun ) here and wait for the projector.

Must. Not. Visit. Amazon's website......

 

yeah but I'm watching on a shitty 27" tube tv (36" Toshiba Cinema Series is stuck in the basement.)

 

you.... spend..... way.... tooo..... much..... money

 

hahaha. Yes and no. It's not like I have all this money laying around, I just come up with it. I sell stuff I don't need anymore (like rims/tires from the TL or house stuff we don't want anymore) then I have this money sitting here and I want to buy another TV.

It's a sickness. TV's are like crack to me. I need help....

 

Yeah but at some point you had the money to buy those things. And what's worse, you're selling them at a loss.

 

Judging by the size of his house I'd say he can afford it.

 

I think he sells drugs.

 

Sad part is he didn't pay a whole lot more than I paid for my townhouse.

 

You must have had one hell of a yard sale to build that pool.

 

Trust me, I feel your pain.

 

Who says I'm selling anything at a loss?

 

haha, no, that was budgeted for

Plus we sold some kidneys...

 

Do what we did.... sell, take your profit and run

 

hehe, I wish.

But our neighbors think I'm in the mafia b/c I'm italian and we're from NY. Now... you've seen me... the only mafia I could be in is the "I'm short and look more Irish then Italian mafia"

 

Yeah you look about as Italian as me.

 

FYI, I went to Best Buy today and they took an additional $210 off the price. They did it as a price match even though it wasn't an exact match. So, even though I would have paid about $250 less through TV Authority, I'm happy. I still get to keep the financing through 2009 (which I wouldn't have through TVA), I'll get about $70-$75 in Reward Zone certificates, plus I also have a mail-in rebate for a $100 NFLShop.com gift card..... so all in all I got a deal pretty close to TVA... so I'm happy with what they gave me

 

So I bought the S&V disc and its pretty simple to follow. I couldn't push my contrast as high as they showed in the demo but I prefer that is not so intense anyway. My color & hues were perfect at dead center so not much calibration needed.

 

I need to get off my ass and pick that up. Soon...

 

A guy at work just told me that if I get a wide screen plasma tv - that most of my regular channels will have black box all the way around it....I never thought much about it, but is that true? Only if the channel is in High Def will it fill the screen?

 

Yes and no. Regular channels are 4:3... a wide screen TV is 16:9, so, if you didn't configure anything that would be true.

Most cable/SAT boxes can have their Aspect Ratio configured... so all I did was configure my box to stretch 4:3 content. So, on both of my widescreen TVs I have the 4:3 set to stretch, and now ALL of my regular channels are full screen.

 

You will get black bars on the left and right. You will also get black bars on the top/bottom if the program would normally show those top/bottom bars on a regular TV.

On a plasma this can be a problem because of image retention issues.

However, plasmas have stretch modes in which they can fill the screen. This is where not all plasmas are created equal. Some have really good stretch modes and some have crappy stretch modes. What you want is a stretch mode that doesn't make the image look too strange. You can't avoid an image with odd characteristics when you stretch it but there is definitely a good and bad way to do it.

If you don't want to stretch a 4:3 picture then I suggest you find a plasma that can throw up grey bars instead of black. That will help avoid image retention issues. A 4:3 picture with bars will look better than something that is stretched IMO.

BTW the black bars happen on all 16:9 TVs, not just plasma.