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I'll need an upgrade for my Pioneer plasma TV too.
Mel
Quick, grab a Panasonic plasma before they quit making them. Their the only sets out there that can currently hold a candle to a Pioneer Kuro plasma in terms of black level and overall picture quality (assuming you have a Kuro, that is). The 8500 series plasma from Samsung is also an excellent set, if you want a plasma that rivals LCD brightness.
Other than that, the only way to upgrade from your Pioneer plasma is to wait for OLED to become reasonable (a few years out for sure).
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I'll need an upgrade for my Pioneer plasma TV too.
Mel
Quick, grab a Panasonic plasma before they quit making them. Their the only sets out there that can currently hold a candle to a Pioneer Kuro plasma in terms of black level and overall picture quality (assuming you have a Kuro, that is). The 8500 series plasma from Samsung is also an excellent set, if you want a plasma that rivals LCD brightness.
Personally I wouldn't touch plasma for two reasons: 1) Power consumption (up to 3 times that of LCD, and 2) reflective screen. All I ever see in my mum's plasma is the reflection of the windows, or at night, the reflection of the TV light she uses. Not much good having brilliant blacks if its all reflections.
Power consumption on the newer plasmas is much lower than older sets. Not quite as low as the lowest power consuming LCDs, but nowhere near "3 times that of LCD" on current models.
Newer Panasonic sets have screens that reject reflections.
As far as picture quality goes, the best LCDs do not come close to even lower-priced Panasonic plasmas. I was recently at one of the major film studios helping them evaluate a premium 4K LCD set - one that retails for around $15K - and all of the studio engineers were complaining about screen uniformity, poor contrast, motion lag, etc. We were all comparing it to the 1080P Panasonic plasma sitting nearby with the same picture content (native 4K, in this case downsampled to 1080P to feed the Panasonic) and everyone in the room preferred the Panasonic's picture.
There are a few situations where I would recommend an LCD, such as if the set is going to be used in a very bright room with lots of sunlight, etc, or if you have kids who are likely to leave the set on with a static display (even though current plasmas are extremely resistant to image burn-in, it is still possible to do it if you try hard enough).
Once OLED becomes affordable, though, plasma will finally be de-throned as king of flat panel PQ.
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Basil W: Re: I've auditioned many headphones priced between $100 and $1000. There is only one that I consistently consider to be just about IDEAL for all types of film music.
Some are bright and detailed, perfect for most new recordings. But they emphasize the deficiencies of older, less ideal recordings. Others are nice and smooth and soften the highs a bit, making rougher recordings tolerable, but not getting the most from newer releases or high quality re-recordings.
The one I've found to give the right balance of warmth and detail that seems to benefit any film music CD I listen to through them is the Sennheiser HD600. It's been available for many years now and sells for around $320 (if you shop around). Compared to any higher-priced phones I've used, it's a bargain. And replacement parts are readily available making it a phone that'll last. Exceptionally comfortable too.
So long as there's a high quality phone output to run them from, I recommend this phone above all others I've tried, including competitive models from AKG and Beyer Dynamic etc. I run mine through the current version of the Apogee Duet audio interface, but the phone is sensitive enough even at 300 Ohms to be powered by virtually any quality amp's headphone socket.
I also like these because they seem to complement my studio monitors nicely. Listeners with powered studio monitors I've auditioned like the Focal CMS50 or CMS65, or the Neumann KH120 (which I have), would surely appreciate the HD600.
Well, I bought the Sennheiser HD598, and except for being too warm during the hottest months of the year, the rest of the time, with a good amp, they serve the purpose well. But I rarely listen to headphones when I'm at home, so most of the time I'm either using my speakers for my new Mac in my home office or the big system in the living room. I've had a few days to get used to my big new Klipsch center speaker and 12" subwoofer (so now all 8 of the speakers there are by Klipsch), and it's remarkable. But I've noticed that when I'm playing the TV signal through the system, the subwoofer gets a real workout. The audio signal from most regular TV broadcasters is very heavy on the low frequencies.
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Posted: |
Dec 13, 2013 - 4:58 AM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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Power consumption on the newer plasmas is much lower than older sets. Not quite as low as the lowest power consuming LCDs, but nowhere near "3 times that of LCD" on current models.
Newer Panasonic sets have screens that reject reflections.
As far as picture quality goes, the best LCDs do not come close to even lower-priced Panasonic plasmas. I was recently at one of the major film studios helping them evaluate a premium 4K LCD set - one that retails for around $15K - and all of the studio engineers were complaining about screen uniformity, poor contrast, motion lag, etc. We were all comparing it to the 1080P Panasonic plasma sitting nearby with the same picture content (native 4K, in this case downsampled to 1080P to feed the Panasonic) and everyone in the room preferred the Panasonic's picture.
John, I'm sure what you say is true of the very latest and greatest technology. However, my experience with the more prosaic technology, the kind most of us buy at the local budget department store, is somewhat different. First, I've never noticed a better picture on a plasma than on an LCD. We have 3 42" sets here, 1 Samsung plasma, 1 Samsung LED and 1 LG LCD. Oddly perhaps the best picture to my eyes, very noticeably so, is the LG. I have no explanation for that, but it's hard to deny. Of the other two, I can detect no superiority; they rank about even. The plasma as I say is terribly reflective. I put a power consumption meter on all the sets and found the lCDs consume about 100 watts continuously, while the plasma fluctuates according to what's on the screen from around 180 to 320 watts, but mostly in the high range unless it's a long night scene. I'm not disputing what you're saying, only that it's not yet part of the common or garden variety experience.
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John, I'm sure what you say is true of the very latest and greatest technology. However, my experience with the more prosaic technology, the kind most of us buy at the local budget department store, is somewhat different. First, I've never noticed a better picture on a plasma than on an LCD. We have 3 42" sets here, 1 Samsung plasma, 1 Samsung LED and 1 LG LCD. Oddly perhaps the best picture to my eyes, very noticeably so, is the LG. I have no explanation for that, but it's hard to deny. Of the other two, I can detect no superiority; they rank about even. The plasma as I say is terribly reflective. I put a power consumption meter on all the sets and found the lCDs consume about 100 watts continuously, while the plasma fluctuates according to what's on the screen from around 180 to 320 watts, but mostly in the high range unless it's a long night scene. I'm not disputing what you're saying, only that it's not yet part of the common or garden variety experience.
I appreciate your comments.
What you say could very well be true, as I have no idea of the models of each set, how they are calibrated, etc. It's also very possible that an old plasma won't look as good as a newer LCD. However, the fact is that plasma has had a pronounced edge over LCD for quite a while now, comparing apples to apples in terms of screen size, resolution, etc.
Most people are taken in by LCD's higher brightness. When you go into a Best Buy or Walmart, the LCD pictures stand out because they are so much brighter than plasma. However, that kind of peak brightness comes at a cost - screen uniformity, blown out highlights, poor black level performance, etc (not to mention motion lag problems that LCD has to jump through all kinds of hoops to address - witness "120" and "240" hz displays). When you set an LCD and plasma side by side and take the time to even do a basic calibration and equalize the brightness / contrast settings, a good plasma (like those from Panasonic and Samsung) will outperform just about any LCD in terms of contrast, screen uniformity, color accuracy, motion resolution, shadow detail reproduction, and depth / dimensionality.
FWIW, I consult for a home theater manufacturer and part of my job is analyzing displays critically. I also attend CES and CEDIA every year (CES is the biggest consumer electronics show in the world, and CEDIA is the biggest home theater show in the world) in order to keep up on emerging display technologies. I also sat on the CEA's 4K Naming Committee where we collectively decided to name the emerging video standard "Ultra HD."
OLED will surpass plasma in terms of picture quality, but until we start seeing flat (rather than curved) OLED displays and the prices start coming down, plasma is still the best game in town.
As I said previously, I still recommend LCD sets to those that will install them in a very bright room (where the LCD's peak brightness helps overcome washout from the sun and other light sources) or if they have kids who might leave static images up on the display for extended periods of time.
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I was recently at one of the major film studios helping them evaluate a premium 4K LCD set - one that retails for around $15K - and all of the studio engineers were complaining about screen uniformity, poor contrast, motion lag, etc.
Once OLED becomes affordable, though, plasma will finally be de-throned as king of flat panel PQ.
In general I think 4k is a bilking of the consumer, there is not any perceptible difference at an average viewing distance on an average screen size.
The life cycle of the OLED is not at all a sure thing, and the costs are really extreme for quite a while.
I tend to agree with you on both counts 
The visible benefit of 4K comes when you sit within 2 picture heights of the screen. Let's think about that for a minute. For a person with a 60" flat panel - which has a picture height of approximately 30" - they would need to sit CLOSER than 5 feet from the screen in order to see the picture improvement. And that assumes that the 4K content being watched is rock steady and in perfect focus (even slight focus problems in the original 4K footage will destroy the additional picture detail that 4K affords).
Right now the "powers that be" in the consumer and commercial video worlds (plus the movie studios) are trying to figure out exactly what the next video format will be. Right now we have a "label" - Ultra HD, or UHD - but have only defined that so far as "having a resolution of at least 3840 x 2160." The current thinking is that UHD will offer more benefits than simply 4K resolution. The movie studios are pushing for higher color bit depth (10 or 12 bit) plus accommodations for High Dynamic Range (HDR) video and higher frame rates. Both of these will allow for more visible to the human eye improvements than 4K by itself.
If anyone is interested in this technical stuff - and where exactly commercial cinema and home theater is headed - should take a moment to read this paper from Movielabs, which is a joint venture between Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony Pictures, Universal and Warner Brothers:
http://www.movielabs.com/ngvideo/MovieLabs%20Specification%20for%20Next%20Generation%20Video%20v1.0.pdf
The long and short of it is that NOTHING has been decided yet in terms of the successor format to Blu-ray, or even HDTV, other than the resolution being a minimum of 3840 x 2160. This work is currently being done and it will probably be some time before we have a new set of standards, and the new standards will most likely allow for picture quality improvements far more visible than that of 4K resolution.
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Posted: |
Dec 17, 2013 - 1:09 AM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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Most people are taken in by LCD's higher brightness. When you go into a Best Buy or Walmart, the LCD pictures stand out because they are so much brighter than plasma. However, that kind of peak brightness comes at a cost - screen uniformity, blown out highlights, poor black level performance, etc (not to mention motion lag problems that LCD has to jump through all kinds of hoops to address - witness "120" and "240" hz displays). When you set an LCD and plasma side by side and take the time to even do a basic calibration and equalize the brightness / contrast settings, a good plasma (like those from Panasonic and Samsung) will outperform just about any LCD in terms of contrast, screen uniformity, color accuracy, motion resolution, shadow detail reproduction, and depth / dimensionality.
John, I certainly bow to your superior technical knowledge and vastly greater experience, but as the average man-in-the-street (and I'm nothing if not average), I have to say that some of your comments don't entirely match with my experience.
Firstly, I've never noticed LCD's higher brightness. If I ever noticed such a thing, I would assume one or the other set was mistuned. When I've perused sets in the stores, I could never percieve any difference in picture quality between LCD and Plasma, in terms of brightness or anything else. Hell, not even the black levels people keep talking about. Am I blind? Don't think so; I had an eye test quite recently. I've read forums where poster after poster claims, like yourself, that plasma is 'clearly' superior. Well, it ain't clear to me, and from the comments I've overheard in shops, it's not too clear to many others either.
Mind, I'm not contradicting you, just pointing out that what may seem obvious to those in the game who spend a lot of time studying these things may be insignificant or unnoticeable to the ordinary person. I'm quite fussy about picture quality (I carry my audiophile standards over from sound to video here), and I take some time to get the picture as natural as possible, with no exaggerated colour or contrast. Visitors to my home will often remark on the naturalness of the picture. The problems you mention with regard to LCD--"screen uniformity, blown out highlights, poor black level performance, etc (not to mention motion lag problems that LCD has to jump through all kinds of hoops to address"--mean nothing to me in real terms. I don't know if it's ever been done, but I would love to see a survey where Average Joes and Jills were lined up in front of medium level LCDs and Plasmas and asked for their opinion. I honestly believe it would come done to brand, setting up and just plain old personal preference before Plasma v. LCD.
Again, not contradicting you. Just trying to put the perspective of the man in the street.
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John, I certainly bow to your superior technical knowledge and vastly greater experience, but as the average man-in-the-street (and I'm nothing if not average), I have to say that some of your comments don't entirely match with my experience.
That´s no wonder. It´s simply not true anymore that a Plasma has better picture quality than an LCD. If you read the reviews in different test magazines you will see that the picture quality of the best LCD-TVs are equal to (or even better than) the best Plasma-TVs. Of course LCDs have their drawbacks - but so have the Plasmas - and quite a lot of them! Some differences between the two systems will be a matter of personal taste, but the black levels of good LCD´s (local-dimming) nowadays are as good as on the Plasmas. Saying something else is just a myth. OLEDs will certainly have an even better picture Quality, but at the moment it is rather unclear for how long the better quality will last or if there will be problems after some time due to the aging of the panel...only time will tell.
You make some valid points, re: OLED, and the fact that plasmas are not perfect and have drawbacks. I also agree that some of this comes down to personal preference (my friend Russell's wife prefers LCD because she just plain loves the extra brightness). However, I beg to differ regarding your statement about what test magazines and those in the pro video / post production industry have to say about this subject.
As I mentioned previously, I was at one of the major film studios helping evaluate 4K video using a $15,000 Samsung 4K reference LCD monitor. One of the tests we did was to put up images side by side on the LCD set - one side being a 4K screen grab and the other a 1080P screen grab taken from the same 4K master. One of the most frustrating things about the test was that screen uniformity on the LCD set was so poor that what appeared to be the better picture depended on what side of the set you were standing closer to. In other words, if you were standing to the right, the right side image looked better. If you were standing to the left, the left side image looked better. The reason was because the screen brightness and contrast varied so much that the image directly in front of you always looked best. The only way to judge the image accurately was to stand dead center. And even then, everyone in the room thought the 1080P plasma looked better than even pure 4K material on the LCD set. And some of the guys in the room are the guys who help write the standards for the whole digital cinema industry (in fact, one of them was a major contributor to the MovieLabs paper I linked to previously).
One of the problems with product reviews is that the reviewer usually has only the set being evaluated in their "lab" (in most cases, actually the reviewer's home) and does not have a reference set to compare to. It's interesting that when they do, it's often a Pioneer Kuro plasma that they use as the reference. It has only been with the release of Panasonic and Samsung's plasma sets in 2013 that most reviewers have felt that the Pioneer's picture has been bested.
The best and most reliable to ascertain the validity of picture quality claims is to do blind shootouts with various sets calibrated to look their best. I've been involved with several of these and plasma invariably comes out on top. But rather than take my word for it, check out the Value Electronics shootout from 2013 (you can also look up their shootouts from previous years). This shootout was attended by Rob Sabin of Sound and Vision and Home Theater Magazine. Here is Rob's statement and a link to the full results:
Let me get one thing out of the way first. We have been tracking the development of LCDs at Home Theater for years now, and have been excited by the promise we’ve seen for the category. In particular, the models with full-array local-dimming LED backlights, notably the hyper-expensive Sharp Elites (now rumored to be on hold pending possible release of new 4K models), and last year’s top-of-the-line Sony HX950 XBR, seemed to suggest that it is possible to get state-of-the-art, Kuro plasma-like picture quality from an LCD. But this year’s LCDs at the Shootout paled by comparison to the plasmas. It wasn’t even close, a fact reflected in the rankings.
http://www.soundandvision.com/content/value-electronics-hdtv-shootout-and-then-there-were-three
Geoff Morrison, Sound and Vision:
The performance of the TC-P60ST60 that Panasonic sent me(and I’m skipping ahead a bit) is as good as, if not better than, last year’s VT50, while its price is essentially the same as last year’s ST50. Back then, I said that the VT50 was one of the best-looking TVs I’d ever seen. Now that same level of performance can be found in Panasonic’s mid-range plasmas.
http://www.soundandvision.com/content/test-report-panasonic-tc-p60st60-3d-plasma-hdtv
Dave Katzmaier, C-Net, November 2013:
Best picture quality we've ever reviewed - Panasonic TC-PZT60 series - Panasonic's ultimate plasma TV is the best-performing television we've ever tested. The midlevel price and outstanding quality of the Panasonic TC-PST60 series make it our strongest TV recommendation ever:
http://reviews.cnet.com/best-tvs-picture-quality/
Geoff Morrison, C-Net, 720P plasma vs. 4K LCD:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57599449-221/budget-tv-resolution-rumble-720p-plasma-vs-4k-led-lcd/
There's more - lots more - but I've already hijacked this thread enough with video talk
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