Battleangel | Personal

Not much to report since last time. Still in CRT hell (or is it?). The new LCD monitor we involuntarily got two months ago seems to be working ok. But I don’t use that workstation much and I haven’t spent any quality gaming time on this display. Preliminary testing suggested that gameplay felt choppy / laggy / blurry though I don’t know why or if I was just looking too hard.

I’ve also stopped pining for the 2010 line of LG Plasma TVs. I did some research and asked around and found some startling deficiencies. Plus the 2011 line is just about to launch and even if it does have the same issues, it will have built-in DVB-T2 across the board. And that is worth a lot to me. Possibly enough the warrant the difference in price even. Standalone DVB-T2 boxes have not been very forthcoming and the buggy models that do exist are about $200 at the time of writing this. I figure the 2010 line has on average dropped $300 or so in six to nine months. Plus there is the added benefit of not using up an extra HDMI or having to deal with an extra remote.

There are however issues with Plasma TVs that I had never even considered. I had heard of burn-in / image retention (IR), reflection glare, power consumption issues and all that other basic stuff but it didn’t end there.

• "Large area flicker" – For lack of a better word. It could be a real deal breaker if you watch a lot of animation. I.e. a plasma may not be able to produce large chunks of the same color in a stable fashion. At least as long as that color is a result of dithering (i.e. not 100% black, white, R, G or B).
• "Line bleed" – Much more noticeable than originally thought. For one it can make plasma unsuitable for gaming or casual couch surfing. But on the other hand, this effect seems to vary A LOT even within the same product line. (EXAMPLE)
• "Rainbow effect" – Some people claim not to see this. Most noticeable in rolling credits (white on black) or in black and white movies when moving your eyes rapidly across the screen.
• "Dancing pixels"
• "Rising blacks"  – Panasonic only "feature"?
• "Floating blacks" – Again mostly thought of as a Panasonic issue, but some Google-fu reveals that this may be present on LG plasmas as well.
• "Buzzing" – Another thing that may vary a lot.
• "Radio frequency interference" – Don’t know how much of an issue this is anymore but I am not comfortable with any device that pollutes the airwaves or electrical grid.

Edit: Thought of a few more things to look out for …

• "Ghosting" or phosphor lag – The equivalent of the ghosting on regular LCDs. Objects moving fast on the screen will get an afterimage that appears as a shadow. Intolerable when gaming on an LCD monitor. Unclear how this would appear on a Plasma. As is evident from tests on my IPS LCD the problem isn’t just a trailing shadow but more general motion blur as well. Even though you don’t play games in the same way on a TV
• "Dirty Screen Effect" / "Banding" – Not much to say about this. Some say all Plasmas have this. But I’ve also seen some real horror stories. Would be great if I could get some idea on how a baseline DSE should look.

Now, after all of this you have to ask yourself why I and so many others are still even considering Plasma. It’s quite simple really. Size, price and PQ. A 50 inch LCD even with worse PQ would probably be twice as much. And LCDs (particularly these nefarious edge-lit LEDs) have their specific problems.

I guess we can only wait and see. Aside from the 2011 line handling of the issues above, there is the ominous 3D creep that we’ve been seeing this past year. And the addition of "Smart TV". Both will probably have a very negative impact on price and have fairly limited value. 3D is a useless fraud. Especially the active 3D. And "Smart TV" might be useful, but only if it gets spotless support and constant updates. Thankfully, there seems to be a 3D-less line of LG Plasmas at least.