Choosing a television

[jphegers]

Could anyone assist with a few question in connection with the choice of television sets.
1) witch is best, Plasma or LCD/LED
2) choosing between 100 Hz or 200Hz (motion plus/true motion) is there a vast difference between the two?

[GreyWolf]

If you can afford a full HD LED, then go for it. Otherwise Full HD LCD > HD Ready LED.

Forget 200Hz, unless you are going to be watching 3D movies (with the 3D glasses).

[Jonboy]

Could anyone assist with a few question in connection with the choice of television sets.
1) witch is best, Plasma or LCD/LED
2) choosing between 100 Hz or 200Hz (motion plus/true motion) is there a vast difference between the two?

Went through all of this myself in Dec. Plasma gives slightly better quality but can effectively be binned when plasma display gives notice (which is normally around 5 years).

There isn't much difference between the low-end LCD / LED's that we see in the shops, essentially the LED's we see for less than R10k are LCD's which are lit from the sides rather than the back, which allows them to be thinner.

There's not much noticeable difference between 60Hz and 100Hz except when watching sports, so the difference between 100Hz and 200Hz I don't believe will be perceptible to the human eye.

[IcePick88]

I think game is running a special for a 40" Full HD LED for R8000! Samsung nogal!

FHD LED > FHD LCD > HDR LCD

Brand depends from person to person.

Samsung has horrible interfaces/software. I prefer Sony there.
Samsung has better screen quality from what I've seen, but not much better than a Sony.

So Sony or Samsung for me.

[ryanrich]

A good quality Full HD Plasma is still best IMO. Otherwise 100Hz 1080p LED. Samsung has always been my personal favourite but Sony has some nice screens as well.

[IcePick88]

A good quality Full HD Plasma is still best IMO. Otherwise 100Hz 1080p LED. Samsung has always been my personal favourite but Sony has some nice screens as well.

Well, I watched the exact same Blu Ray movie on a plasma and LCD and the quality was very much in favor of the LCD. The plasma showed the picture with very fine blotches all over. Made for horrible viewing.

But I don't know enough about LCD's and Plasma's to make a better argument.


My best answer: Bigger is better. Full HD. Finish and klaar.

[ryanrich]

Which Plasma was it? Watch a Blu-ray movie on a high end Pioneer set designed for home entertainment. Really amazing! Extremely expensive though, and I'm not sure but I think Pioneer is out of the Plasma game now...

naughty will have some good input in this thread, he's the HiFi and TV expert round these parts...

[jphegers]

thanks for all your inputs will wait and see in anticipation to hear from naughty.

[KALSTER]

Nice explanation here:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/lcd-vs-l ... lasma.html

If you are worried about the lifetime of Plasma TV's, here is a quote from another site:

"Probably, the greatest myth about plasma displays is that they only last two to three years. The truth is that present day plasma display panels have an expected half-lifetime of anything between 60,000hrs and 100,000hrs, which is substantially more than that of a traditional CRT TV. Well, even if expected plasma panel life were just 50,000hrs, at 7 hours a day, 365 days a year - this corresponds to almost 20 years of use! This means that most probable, the electronics inside the TV will fail before the display panel itself."

[jphegers]

Thanks Kalster for that info. which of the two screens are more durable and more child proof in case of a accidental bump?

[StarBound]

None. Both will break if you accidently knock them over. Best is to keep it out of bump reach and just use the remote.

I have the UA4C5000 Samsung FHD LED. This may sound weird but I think I prefer the 32" LG FHD LCD I had mainly because I am sitting relatively close to the screen so blocks and pixilation becomes noticable when viewing things that are not full hd.

LED vs LCD vs Plasma. All depending on the money you wish to spend. Just take note that motion flow and those 100hz/200hz screens are NOT 3D TVs! You need to make sure they say they are 3D tvs because what they do is they take your 50/60hz and refresh fast on the screen itself but it cant take the 120hz input needed for 3D.

If your looking for a proper 120hz LED then I suggest samsung or sony but the ua4c5000 is only a 60hz screen. 120hz is around R15-18k and 3D screens start at around R22k.

For 32" LCD HD ready your looking at R3400. 42" LCD FHD = R4400. LCD 40" R6k-R7k. LED 40" R9k-12k.

For what are you going to use it? PC, PS3, Xbox 360?

[naughty]

Hi John

right now is a great time to be buying a TV in SA for one reason - almost all manufacturers will be releasing new models very soon ie around June/July - so all the older models are now going dirt cheap

as an example my dealer has been selling 46" (yes thats a fourty six inch) LCD from samsung at R8599 and he is selling around 10 per day of those at the moment

he will also be doing a samsung full HD 50" plasma at R8999 when the stock arrives (its the same one that Dion wired is selling at R9999 on special currently)

i really reckon plasma gives you a way better picture - its always going to be smoother and picture quality better plus you dont get the problem of response time anomalies ie no motion blur especially in sport and thats the one thing that irritates me hence why im personally using a 50" plasma and even when i replace im going to stick to that cheap 50" plasma i can now get

either format is okay but with technology moving on so fast nowadays i reckon you will be replacing these things at a rate of around every three years or so - so IMHO you need to buy the cheapest possible item you can so you dont waste cash when it comes to replacement time. There is absolutely no way that you can futureproof with these purchases because soon you will get a higher refresh rate and then after that you will get 3D becoming cheaper and then 3D with no glasses etc

the explanation given above of LED was actually incorrect - all lighting in tv's is backlighting - the only difference between LCD and LED right now is that LCD is backlit with cold cathode tubes whilst LED uses strips of LED and in theory this is all fine but for the moment when one LED lights up then the entire strip lights up so its advantages on paper will only really materialise when they can control it to a level that only the required LED's light up when needed - for now though it does use less power and is thinner and lighter

about the higher refresh rates - it depends on the content - with the demo stuff you will see the difference but that content was created in a way that there is a difference - when watching a real movie or TV it all makes such a minimal difference you should rather save the money knowing that you will upgrade in a few years anyway

the thing thats R30k now will drop to R10k in two years from now - so if you buy the item thats R10k now - you will still buy two more of the better versions in two years from now and still spend the same total - so IMHO dont stress about features that will improve the experience by 2% only for around three times the price - just buy the cheap item (look for specials like my dealer is giving i mean its crazy that a 46" LCD that was R35k when it was introduced 2 years ago is now R8599) then theres those 55" LED's which were R55k when they were introduced a couple of months ago can ow be had at around R30k and will soon be had at closer to R20k

my honest advice is that these things are changing every 6 months and they get cheaper very quickly so going for the latest technology and being an early adopter means that in the long run you get shafted and to be honest most of the newer features you wont even use because your source is not capable of using those features ie out TV system isnt advanced enough and you wont be changing your blu-ray player every 6 months to update to every latest thing so really even a three year old design that you get at less than R10k will do the job for at least three years more - then when you do have an improved video source unit three years on the current R30k to R40k TV is going to be R10k by then so you can smile and upgrade and move the old model to your kids room as a huge PC monitor/playstation screen

as for 3D - its not a thing im seriously into because there already are units of those 3D without glasses available - but with limited viewing angles - so thats also going to improve over time - in 3 years from now you will have 3D without any additional glasses with a wider viewing angle available so you only worry about 3D at that time - right now theres only around 30 movies available on 3D blu-ray anyway of which you will probably only want to own around 3 or 4 - the rest of the time you will be using the set as a conventional HD unit and my argument is for 3 or 4 movies ...... why bother - it only lands up being a show-off conversation piece for when the have-not relatives visit and is not useful for anything else

Watch a Blu-ray movie on a high end Pioneer set designed for home entertainment. Really amazing! Extremely expensive though, and I'm not sure but I think Pioneer is out of the Plasma game now...

yes the pioneer KURO was absolutely the best TV unit that your money could buy and that was even better than most 3D LED Tv's that you pay R80k to R100k for right now because the picture quality was unmatched in every respect - but Pioneer has left the plasma/TV market ...... and their engineers have moved over to Panasonic - so currently Panasonic make the best plasma's you can get (still not in the same league as the Pioneer KURO's though)

i regret not waiting the three months longer i would have had to wait for A 50" KURO for R3k extra when i bought my current Samsung plasma (around three years ago) - it wasnt the extra cash that was a problem - it was using the 54cm CRT for three months longer

Well, I watched the exact same Blu Ray movie on a plasma and LCD and the quality was very much in favor of the LCD. The plasma showed the picture with very fine blotches all over. Made for horrible viewing

this shows the importance of calibrating your set properly - there was thread somewhere in the forum where guys were saying it isnt important and the picture should be right out of the box - well i say bollocks to that - im pretty confident i could take a cheap R10k set and calibrate it to look better than any R80k flagship model with factory settings - ive never seen plasma have a bad picture unless it was adjusted poorly and in all reality good plasma looks way better than good LCD but interestingly enough a good CRT with high res and a good enough refresh rate and if its made to accept a 16:9 ratio instead of 4:3 will slaughter the plasma too - so in terms of picture quality CRT still has the best image quality - it was only the refresh rates with flicker and the large depths due to the electron gun nature of CRT which caused its demise but in terms of picture quality the older technologies were way better than the newer ones which are all a matter of compromises in quality just to have a wafer thin screen with relatively no flicker

naughty will have some good input in this thread, he's the HiFi and TV expert round these parts...

thanks for that vote of confidence - but its not a matter of being an expert cos i dont consider myself to be ..... its more a matter of being an informed consumer and i didnt leave it to relying on sales people information and found out things for myself rather which is why im confident in what i know as far as any electronic goods go - this way if i make a mistake its me who caused me to make the mistake rather than misinformation from someone else

[jphegers]

Thanks StarBound and Naughty for for the great info.
To answer your question StarBound , i will mainly use the TV for mainly watching sport, not really a movie fan and the set will be next to my PC so will occasionally watch some music dvd's from my PC.
Another question is, is image burn not a problem with plasma TV's?
And lastly seeing that we are going to change to digital transmission by 2013????? are there any talks yet of the Television manufacturers bringing out sets that wont require set top boxes when broadcasts change to digital transmission,and should one then rather wait for those sets to appear on the market?

[Prime]

regarding set top boxes :

well we are moving to Digital Terestrial Video Broadcasting. The Theory is that any modern units should support it out the box.

What I don't know is whether those set top boxes are decoders (like DSTV ) or simply converters.

[jphegers]

regarding set top boxes :

well we are moving to Digital Terestrial Video Broadcasting. The Theory is that any modern units should support it out the box.

What I don't know is whether those set top boxes are decoders (like DSTV ) or simply converters.

I did write to Go Digital in this regard and received this reply from them:
The South African Digital Set Top Box\Digital Tuner requirements are unique.
Currently there are no compliant IDTV’s (Digital TV) available in the SA market that is guaranteed to work due to these unique requirements, which would not be built into TV sets – no matter how advanced they are. (Any STB or IDTV will have to comply to the Digital Dzonga conformance scheme). There most likely will be some form of control mechanism in place preventing non-conforming Set Top Boxes or IDTV’s from receiving the signal.

[jphegers]

Sorry did also receive this reply from Go Digital if it will help.

You do not need a high definition (HD) TV, LCD TV or Plasma TV to receive DTT. Note, that no television on the market will be able to receive the Digital TV channels without the STB (Set Top Box). A TV that is ‘digital ready’ or ‘HD ready’ does not mean that it can receive the digital TV broadcasting without a STB.

[naughty]

Thanks StarBound and Naughty for for the great info.
To answer your question StarBound , i will mainly use the TV for mainly watching sport, not really a movie fan and the set will be next to my PC so will occasionally watch some music dvd's from my PC.

mainly for sport then plasma has to be your answer - with LCD the issue is that when it pans across a crowd it becomes so blurry that my eyes start to water and i really want to throw a cricket ball at the screen - theres absolutely no blur with plasma unless there was motion blur at the recording camera - this means with HD sport broadcasts from DSTV you generally get good results

Another question is, is image burn not a problem with plasma TV's?

it was initially a huge issue - but with modern plasma's ie the ones you can buy new now its less of an issue because most of them come with preventative measures and tools to cure it if it does land up happening - so it is still possible but less of an issue than it used to be in the past


And lastly seeing that we are going to change to digital transmission by 2013????? are there any talks yet of the Television manufacturers bringing out sets that wont require set top boxes when broadcasts change to digital transmission,and should one then rather wait for those sets to appear on the market?

there were some DVB-T compatible sets released recently but then SA decided to jump onto DVB-T2 rather - and those sets are not available anywhere yet - you will probably wait another two to three years before they are widely available - and considering that set-top-boxes are going to be subsidised they will probably be rather cheap as opposed to spending R2k like you do for a DSTV HD decoder you will probably pay around 500 bucks for the terrestrial set-top-box and that isnt a huge trainsmash - so i wouldnt even look at this as a factor

there are a few things you need to look at which will decide the issue for you

1) are you buying it to have the latest and greatest toy and the show-off value - if so 200HZ LED with 3D capability is your answer

2) is the weight of it an issue ie are you mounting on a delicate wall which could probably not hold a lot of weight or do you have a delicate AV rack which is made of glass - then some form of LCD will be lighter

3) is power usage an issue ie are you struggling to keep your light bill down - if so then forget plasma cos it uses approximately 40% more electricity

4) how big a room are you putting it into - this is very important - because this determines the size you buy - too big and it will look grainy and terrible with SD broadcasts - so in a small room you will want a smaller TV - in a larger room you want a larger TV and as it gets larger plasma is better - at 32" and 40" LCD is more than acceptable but as you get bigger the better picture quality of plasma is better but for proper HD content mainly ie get the size wrong and SD content will look just as bad in both

5) what sources you are going to plug in - HD DSTV will look good in most TV's - if you are going to use it for TV only then i would seriously suggest an HD ready only because the closer you are to the sources native resolution the better the picture looks and for TV even the HD is 720p only so a 720p TV will look way better than a full HD doing some scaling to play at its full resolution

if you are going to watch lots of Blu-ray or do lots of high res gaming from your PC then the full HD will be better - plasma still give way better picture quality to me than LCD but this also depends on certain conditions eg lighting

6) so we come to the rooms lighting conditions - if the room is bright and always has a lot of ambient lighting around it then LCD is the better solution because plasma will have lots of glare - but if you always watch in darker conditions with lower ambient lighting then plasma is going to give you a great experience with pin sharp picture quality and a slightly more 3 dimensional effect than LCD and this is a natural effect rather than the contrived effects of the gimmicky 3D with glasses where you still have lots of 2d things that look further away from each other in terms of depth (no matter how impressive it seems its still cartoonish to me .... and i will be the last one to say that it doesnt look impressive though cos it truly does but lack of content makes it unviable and hellishly expensive to own right now .... expensive because you buy a TV for the three movies you will want to own in 3D out of the 30 or so that exist)

7) the technical things like contrast ratios and refresh rates etc are a minefield because each one does improve things - the thing you have to look at though is that if it doubles the price of the TV how much will it improve as a percentage ie if it improves the experience by 2% then does that justify you spending R20k as opposed to R8599 especially when you consider that in two years time you have to relook the situation because of DVB-T2 and then potentially 3D without glasses and then even the advent of quadHD ie this year at CES they introduced sets that have a 2160p resolution .... sure it is (US)$50k right now but in two years time it will probably reach down to R50k in our currency and everything HD will be redundant then as well

the above are the things i look at when deciding upon a TV and my honest advice is look for the biggest set you can stand in your room whether its plasma or LCD (whichever you like based on the answers to the above) then find the cheapest one you can buy cos its going to probably only be used for around 3 years (4 years at the most) before you have to go out and buy the next "big" thing .... in this instance the cheapest doesnt mean that you are a cheapskate - imagine your rich cousins face in two years time when you tell him that his R100k TV cannot play the quadHD content of your R2k quadHD blu-ray player and its not compatible with the PS4 so his kid cant even use it as a bedroom monitor so rather spend R8k to R10k now and the same amount on a better TV in two to 3 years time cos trust me you will get 200HZ LED with 3D capability in 55" sizes for R10k to R15k (the flagship samsung one like that is around R87k now AFAIK) in two years time and the high end guys will be buying 80" quadHD 2160p sets for R50k to R60k at that stage

[jphegers]

sorry omitted to post their other reply.

You do not need a high definition (HD) TV, LCD TV or Plasma TV to receive DTT. Note, that no television on the market will be able to receive the Digital TV channels without the STB (Set Top Box). A TV that is ‘digital ready’ or ‘HD ready’ does not mean that it can receive the digital TV broadcasting without a STB.

[naughty]

regarding set top boxes :

well we are moving to Digital Terestrial Video Broadcasting. The Theory is that any modern units should support it out the box.

What I don't know is whether those set top boxes are decoders (like DSTV ) or simply converters.

as has been stated in the post above this no TV will support terrestrial digital broadcasting out of the box

some sets were available in the format of the initial testing that was occurring but that format has now been shelved in favour of a newer format which will take s closer to what the rest of the world is doing so it was a good decision but now the changeover will occur over a longer time period

no TV's currently exist with tuners available for that format that we will be using so you wont get them for while yet but im pretty confident that they will be available closer to the deadline dates - either way the set-top-boxes are not going to be uber-expensive from what ive been told from people in the know ie TV manufacturer reps - so its not even close to being a deciding factor right now - the theory is that you will be able to use that set-top-box to make an analog TV compatible with digital as well anyway so you wont need to throw away your CRT but you can throw away the bunny aerials etc cos with the CRT you will still be able to view it as well as you can view SD DSTV right now

[jphegers]

4) how big a room are you putting it into - this is very important - because this determines the size you buy - too big and it will look grainy and terrible with SD broadcasts - so in a small room you will want a smaller TV - in a larger room you want a larger TV and as it gets larger plasma is better - at 32" and 40" LCD is more than acceptable but as you get bigger the better picture quality of plasma is better but for proper HD content mainly ie get the size wrong and SD content will look just as bad in both
Thank for all your tips Naughty, one more question, is there a simple rule to go by that one can work by ,say for a distance of 3 meters away from the set you need "x" size screen and for 4 meters "y" size e cetera?

[naughty]

4) how big a room are you putting it into - this is very important - because this determines the size you buy - too big and it will look grainy and terrible with SD broadcasts - so in a small room you will want a smaller TV - in a larger room you want a larger TV and as it gets larger plasma is better - at 32" and 40" LCD is more than acceptable but as you get bigger the better picture quality of plasma is better but for proper HD content mainly ie get the size wrong and SD content will look just as bad in both


Thank for all your tips Naughty, one more question, is there a simple rule to go by that one can work by ,say for a distance of 3 meters away from the set you need "x" size screen and for 4 meters "y" size e cetera?

you can use the THX recommendations that can be found here

http://www.thx.com/consumer/home-entert ... tv-set-up/

but beware - this is for full HD content thus when they say 3,5 feet away and thats only around 1 metre away this is for an immersive experience with full HD sources

read this as well - but it just makes things a lot more confusing but maybe you might make more headway with this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HD ... g_distance

remember though manufacturers will recommend a larger viewing distance as to not scare away customers since they want to sell more TV's whilst THX wants you to experience a cinema quality viewing experience - so you need to create your own compromise between all the recommendations

since TV here is still very much an SD experience you need to be a bit further away than the THX figures suggest - so i would add around a metre to the THX recommendations just to account for this and make it into a more all round viewing experience without having to worry about all of those different recommendations in wiki

Having said that though i wish my TV was larger than the 50" that i have cos at my viewing distance THX recommends 80" but a TV of that size is going to put a huge dent in my pocket and even a full HD capable projector with a 3 metre diagonal motorized and remote controlled screen would be way cheaper

[jphegers]

A million thanks Naughty for the time spent in assisting and informing me you have been of great help.

[naughty]

A million thanks Naughty for the time spent in assisting and informing me you have been of great help.

no problems - glad to help in any way i can and i sincerely hope that you enjoy whatever you decide to get

[KALSTER]

I vote to sticky this thread?

[Sojourn]

I bought a HDtv afew months before LED's were released.
Kicked myself, but the thing is mounted, it works, moved on.