LCD/Plasma TV Recommendations

[rb1234]

Hi All,

I'll hopefully be moving into a new apartment in HK in the middle of June. One of the first things I would like to do is buy myself a decent TV. Does anyone have any recommendations on which plasma or LCDs are supposed to be the best ?

Also if anyone can tell me what the main differences are between the two that would be useful. The only thing I know at the moment is that Plasma TV's can suffer from burnout if the same image is present on the screen for a long time.

In the past, I've always had a CRT type TV and have always bought Sony as I thought they consistently had the best and sharpest picture. From what I know, Sony are not the best in the Plasma/LCD market althought their new Bravia range does look pretty nice !

Any help appreciated,

Thanks
Rick

[phooey]

LCD's have better picture definition but you can get a bigger screen with a plasma. Some of the plasma screen you see trace lines on fast moving objects, like a football for example. The biggest down side for a plamsa in my view is the short life span. you can only expect them to work properly for around 4 years. Hope this helps.

[Katanga]

LCD's will be more expensive.

Plasma technology has moved on and you will find that a lot of the latest models take care of the "burn" issue. I bought a Hitachi 6mths ago and it has a snazzy feature to prevent burnout.

Try the link below for a buying guide:

http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/

[Sand]

Some of the plasma screen you see trace lines on fast moving objects, like a football for example.

I thought this was more prevalent on LCDs

I have an Hitachi 42PD7800TA.
Excellent colour, picture definition and a reasonable price.

[KnowItAll]

been pretty happy with our phillips lcd set. Look for a newer model with ambilight .. yes, it does make a difference.

We have a few dozen model reviewed on our of our US based sites...

http://www.devlib.org/resources/gadgets/hdtv/

[cendrillon]

I bought a 37" BENQ LCD and am really happy with it. It's a relatively unknown brand in the home electronics market, but they make excellent PC monitors which is why I went with them.

I've been super happy with it so far. It cost me $12,800 HKD, about $1600 USD.

Don't make the mistake of buying too big a screen, since you'll be sitting pretty close in HK, and if the screen is too big you'll see artifacts in the image due to the upscaling of the TV image. Probably 40" is the biggest you should go.

Oh yeah, I heard rumours that Sharp LCDs are about to drop considerably in price, from $30,000 down to $14,000 or so.

Good luck!

[cendrillon]

Oh yeah, minimum specs I would go for are resolution of 1360x768 (768i mode) and 16ms refresh rate. Make sure it has a digital input too (either HDMI or DVI). Don't consider anything without either this resolution or digital inputs.

[discobay]

What are recommendations for contrast ratio?

[Max]

For a Plasma,...a 10,000:1 is the current maxim.