Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: plasma, hdtv, panasonic, samsung, lg | Themes: Home Theater, Display Panels and Monitors
Plasma TV is still here.
With the recent demise of Pioneer’s HDTV business (which means the extinction of some of the best plasma TVs ever) and the announcement that Vizio will be ditching the technology to concentrate solely on LCD, many were spelling doom for the display technology.
In fact, recent iSuppli research data shows that LCD TV sales still managed to increase despite the recession. Where is plasma in all this? According to answers given to HD Guru by LG Electronics, Panasonic and Samsung, plasma TVs are still going strong.
“Plasma will continue to be a viable technology for flat-panel displays in the near- to mid-term future. Plasma continues to be the technology of choice for home theater enthusiasts, sports fans and consumers desiring a larger screen size,” said Tim Alessi, Director of Product Development, LG Electronics USA. “In 2009, we estimate that plasma will account for more than 40 percent of the 50-inch and larger screen size sales. That unit volume will probably continue for at least the next 3 ~ 4 years.
Fan of Panasonic plasmas? Bob Perry, executive vice president for Panasonic Consumer Electronics, said, “We believe both technologies offer unique benefits and performance characteristics, and will be produced in high-quantity for years to come. Plasma is clearly not on the way out, the future is bright and growing, and fortunately, consumers research and buy what they like, what their neighbors own, and what makes sense to them from a value perspective.”
Samsung, a company known for its high-quality LCD HDTVs but does make a few plasmas, even chimed in supporting the technology.
“Plasma is an important part of the Flat Panel industry, representing approximately 30% of the 40”+ market and 50% of the 50”+ market,” said John Revie, senior vice president of visual display marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “For 2009, Samsung is introducing six new high performance Plasma TVs that feature better picture quality, slimmer and lighter design as well as advanced connectivity to content.”
While six new plasmas is definitely fewer than the number of LCDs that Samsung plans to roll out. 2009 will surely see more new LCD products than plasmas, but given the public responses in support of new plasma TVs from these three manufacturers, fans of the technology will still be able to buy the displays they want for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps LG’s Alessi said it best with, “The most tangible thing we do to deal with the rumors of plasma’s demise is to keep introducing new and improved products each year, which we expect to continue to do for the foreseeable future.”
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I will always buy plasma.
Plasma > LCD
I own both and hands down Plasma has a better display irregardless of being slightly less sharp. It's well known that LCD is less expensive to produce than Plasma. But both are going out the door... OLED is definitely on the right path. Better color, faster response, and for all the greenies lower energy consumption.
Never bought plasma. My 52" LCD was half the weight of equivalent plasma. Weight was an important aspect in my purchase decision.
50% of 50"+ market, what has the rest, DLP?
Walking into a store to buy a TV, two things will determine what I buy (assuming I already know what size I need): Price and Picture quality, in that order. If plasma meets my needs, I'll buy it, but if DLP or LCD meets them better, well, I don't have any loyalty either way.
Plasma suffered from a lot of (deserved) bad press in the early days. Its always hard to shake that stigma even if the hardware, quality, and price have improved.
If only plasma didn't have that damn image retention problem I'd buy one. I use my computer as a television as well so that's a huge issue
@ Myrdek
Read this
@ hellwig
Buying a TV in a big box store, Best Buy, Walmart, etc. and judging picture quality on the floor is a bad idea. The display units are cranked up to torch mode and high color. Only LCDs can pull that off. When this done to a plasma the color and picture get washed out. But the real test is in a home environment. Current plasmas will look better than LCD.
@ Myrdek
The link didn't show...
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/f [...] ma-tv.html
More accurate colours, better motion, less input lag, much better blacks. They now rarely suffer from image retention. Plasmas offer many advantages over LCD. Their only negative would be power consumption.
Unfortunately when in a department store with terrible lighting, people seem to buy the brightest displays, which are always LCDs. Combine that with sales people who would rather not, or can't explan why Plasmas advantages.
Not to mention that LCD's are cheaper to produce and therefore offer better profit margins.
I worked at a big name electronics store and I was told not to tell people about Plasmas advantages unless the customer was close to buying one. Pretty much the only Plasmas that were sold, were to people who have researched on their own and had already made up their minds.
Everyone else always bought LCD because they look brighter in the store, and side by side, people think the brighter display has a nicer picture.
We were told to encourage this because it confirms their initial impression and often lead to a quick sale. If we told them otherwise, they'd get confused, and leave without buying anything.
I couldn't deal with misleading people, and quit.
The good Plasmas are better for gaming than the best LCDs. Even the 240hz LED displays. So many people have been told the opposite, by authorized reps. It's shameful.
@audioee
Thanks for the link, I had read reviews of the best Plasma saying they had improved a lot but while their good enough for console gaming their not for pc.
Better plasma cell technology effectively prevents images from getting permanently burned into a screen with normal use. While modern plasmas do experience image retention when something stays on the screen for hours on end, simply changing the station is usually enough to wash out the ghosting within a few seconds.
I do leave my computer screen on for hours on end sometimes and sometimes I can play a game for 10 hours non-stop and every game has something static. I would end up ruining the screen with that kind of use
If they could ever get the price down, LaserTV will be a better choice.
I'm glad I'm not the only one correcting plasma misconceptions. Power consumption, image retention, and all those problems are a part of plasma history. The damage (in the average consumers opinion) is done and will take years to rectify, meanwhile the hacks at all the big box stores will continue to misinform everyone that asks for advice/'expertise' (and sometimes when they don't). Oh yeah, and don't forget to buy the Monster cables with that.
it isn't always about the quality but about something else that people prefer having even though quality may not be there.
if you look at video games for instance, i would prefer resident evil 4 controllers with wii graphics as compared to having resident evil 5 classic dual analog and super graphics.
i believe lcd's use less energy, is lighter, and cheaper then plasmas which is probably the reason why lcd's are prefered then plasmas.
Aren't LCDs more reliable and last longer? Wouldn't I want that out of a huge investment like a big screen TV?
Competition is always good... hopefully Plasma stays around to keep the LCD guys pushing to improve. If Plasma died out years ago then we'd probably be watching washed out early gen LCD tech because they'd never have had to try to keep up.
Yeah the big thing I think is price and power consumption. I can get a 32 inch sharp here in Japan that is rated at 66 kw/h. That's less than some light bulbs. The 37-42 inch models about double that though, but still not that bad.
I can't help it...when I think of laser TV...I have this image in my mind of a lasers tracking your head and following it beaming the image directly into your eyeballs.
Someone walks across the room carrying laundry...you quick turn on the laser TV on some horror flick and it blasts the images into their eyes and catches them off guard.
Commercial: "Laser...it beams the TV goodness into yer mellon."
On a more serious note laser and oled sound like the way to go at this point in general, esp for someone who's going to use it for their computer.
OLED is definitely on the right path. Better color, faster response, and for all the greenies lower energy consumption.
Too bad they havent worked a way around the very limited life in OLED panels as opposed to Plasma and LCD!
"irregardless" - starryman; this is why he is confused and audioee is right on the mark
"irregardless" - starryman; this is why he is confused and audioee is right on the mark
Deja vu with the title?
Realistically speaking both technologies will last all the way until oled or something else takes over. I can't imagine panasonic just dropping everything at this point in the game. Plus, plasmas are definitely better. As another poster pointed out, salespersons are taught to sell lcd's because of better commission for them and the store. High cost plasmas lost out in terms of this. And about power, that new
standard pixels and uses less power I'd buy lcd any day over plasma unless somehow my job demanded it from me.
Sorry, but I think this article is big bull shit (and I only read the first 25%).
Plasma is going to die; that's a fact.
EU is banning the sales of plasma soon; the price of plasma is higher than of LCD, the resolution is grainier, the power requirements are higher than LCD's.
If you look even USA is starting to switch from conventional lightbulbs to energy saving (green energy) light bulbs.
I see LCD, and OLED being the future. Plasma is going down. Sure it still gets sold, but as more and more manufacturers stop supporting these devices, less and less people want to buy it, because if they do, they might lose support to their TV if it breaks down in the future.
I keep a computer and ps3 on my plasma, sometimes for over 10 hours at a go, never have issues with burn in, just make sure to enable the "screen saver" so it shifts pixels. Newer plasmas (last few years) have very little trouble with burn in.
There are no concrete studies showing LCD having longer life/reliability than Plasma. Both have brightness halflife's due to the CFL backlights, the lcd and plasma parts don't degrade at any measurable level over the expected life of the display.
Trouble is the new LED based displays have horrible color accuracy, but 98% of the public don't know better or just can't see the difference.
Plasma all the way for me. For larger displays, organic LCD projectors, which blend benefits of both.
Here is what I get when I do a search for "plasma television burn-in computer use" for the past year...
http://www.thebestplasmatv.com/gui [...] v-burn-in/
http://www.1staudiovisual.co.uk/ca [...] -a-15.html
http://www.hdtv.ca/plasma_lcd_proj [...] sma_tv.php
Plasma TVs should not be used exclusively as computer monitors. No matter how great a plasma TV is at resisting burn-in, if you use it mostly as a computer monitor you will get permanent burn-in. This happens because it will always display the same thing in certain areas (like the taskbar of your operatig system). Another reason why using it as a computer monitor is bad has to do with the fact that windows have white backgrounds, wearing up the pixels at maximum speed compared to other areas like the titlebars, taskbar, menubars, etc. If however you just want to use it a few hours a day as a computer monitor and you also watch movies and TV, in other words you mix the content, it won’t be a problem.
LCD monitors display static images from computer or VGA sources extremely well, with full color detail, no flicker, and no screen burn-in. Moreover, the number of pixels per square inch on an LCD display is typically higher than other display technologies, so LCD monitors are especially good at displaying large amounts of data - like you would find on an Excel spreadsheet for example - with exceptional clarity and precision. For the same reasons, LCDs will also be a slightly better template for video gaming.
Plasma technology has increased anti burn in tactics as well as computer and static signal handling. There are still issues with each depending very much on the model and manufacturer. For example, most EDTV plasma televisions do not handle a computer input well and product a very jaggy image when viewing static images from same. Users may want to consider an commercial version plasma display if their application calls for a lot of computer use.
Didn't find a single link that said plasma was a good idea for pc use
The only reason I'm considering an LCD for my future tv is because I've seen image retention on both of my father's plasmas. He had no long term burn in, but I'd do some Wii or pc gaming on my screen. He does none of that, so I figure I'm at a higher risk of burn.
Aside from this ONE deterrent, I'd buy plasma in a heart beat.
I can see plasma being useful for UHDTV...
LCDs are a superior technology. Why? burn-in ... even the best Plasmas are vulnerable to it... and while some might argue that dark colours perform better on a Plasma, this is rapidly changing with advancing LCD technology.
The very title of this article suggests that the Plasma technology isn't doing as good as it once was -- and for good reason... LCDs are not what they once were, and I think there's going to be a cutoff point where the Plasma technology will stop making advancements and LCDs will continue to push forward.
If only plasma didn't have that damn image retention problem I'd buy one. I use my computer as a television as well so that's a huge issue
Stated in a previous post... I own both LCD and Plasma. I left my house with the plasma and DVD menu screen on for about a day (yep... completely knucklheaded). Came back home and nearly sh@@$!@T IN MY PANTS. I was completely ready for the DVD menu to be burned into the screen. I saw a little ghosting when I switched to different inputs. Then turned it off for a minute and turned it back on. Good as new. My plasma display was bought 3 yrs ago.
Both technoligies are great, but I believe OLED will be the future (I saw the new samsungs at Fry's and all I can say is ZOMFG). At some point we will get to a point where the human eye won't notice any differences.
another thing to consider other then "...lcd's use less energy, is lighter, and cheaper..." is the reliability. look at the post from previous posters who commented about typical problems found in plasma as opposed to lcds.