Compared to the perceived stability of a LCD screen, there is no way I would ever take a chance on Plasma again. Too bad really considering the bang for the buck that they provide. But I guess that at the end of the day it’s a bit of a first world problem.

So I guess I am truly back to square one now. CCFL LCDs are all but gone and the LED LCD models aren’t just plagued by clouding and other backlight problems but are also relatively quite expensive, especially when compared to plasma. I might have to spring for a Sony 46EX503 display model. It has its fair share of problems, like an enormous input lag, but has DVB-T2 and at least you can bear to watch it.

OLED can’t arrive fast enough. Just saying.

I tried capturing part of the effect and uploaded the videos to Vimeo:

In addition to seeing what the camera is seeing, I also get a sort of green tinge or aura to or around high contrast areas. White text on a black background for instance. Especially when I pan around, just like I tried to do by moving the camera. It’s probably impossible to explain the effect to someone who can’t see it and never will. I.e. the majority of people. The TV has been adjusted to the best possible picture and has now run a good 130+ hours using break-in slides. The effect however remains.

So what is going on? Well, best I can tell, the different subpixels light up (and decay) at different speeds. Explained in more detail here. Not rocket science. But the question is why some people, like myself, are able to see this at all. Researching the topic brings me back to the term "retinal persistence" or persistence of vision (Beta or Phi?) and that most people are wired in such a way that their optic nerve "responds to changes in light at about 10 cycles per second" .

I did however not see this in any of the stores where I examined the 30-series before buying. My mistake was not play material bright enough and with high contrast. Rather I focused on animated material because I had heard of "large area flicker" effects. I thought that RBE would stand out like a sore thumb and besides, all TVs look a little wonky in stores when placed on a wall with dozens of other panels.

Knowing all of this I went back to the store where I bought the set and examined their other plasma sets, including Panasonic (G30, VT30) as well as LG (PZ570) and Samsung (7005). And I brought new high contrast material. Not only was the effect clearly visible on the store G30 (which had run for almost 1000 hours) but on the VT30 (1400 hours) as well. For the sake of reference I did try the LG and Samsung and much to my amazement, they did NOT exhibit the same effect. To the contrary, the image seemed A LOT more stable and enjoyable in addition to having little to no phosphor trails and no RBE. The LG had minute phosphor trails if truth be told (but only on fast horizontal or vertical movement as it perhaps should be), but the Samsung was eerily perfect. Having said that, I must stress this is just a crude evaluation to establish if and how Panasonic differs and if I can even use plasma based displays. The answer to the last question seems to be a resounding … maybe.

And who knows what else I’ll be able to see on the LG and Samsung once they’re set up in the living room. And they have their own quirks to be sure. LG has a nasty mirror glass panel that is terribly reflective and Samsung seemed a bit dull and exhibited a troubling vertical contrast problem most likely due to its filter. Look at it from above and the screen goes completely dark, much like if you view some LCDs from extreme angles.

So anyway, I tried contacting Panasonic and they did a good job pretending they did not understand what I was talking about. They had read about it online apparently but weren’t aware of any problem basically. Thanks for nothing.

I will try to return the set and then I’m back to square one.

After much deliberation, I got to a point where circumstances forced my hand. There was the technological dead end thanks to the surge of LED TVs and lack of widespread DVB-T2 support. Not to mention frustration that the living room never really got finished. And finally a local event that reduced the price for the 50 inch Panasonic G30 by over €110. Felt like a good idea at the time.

First impressions are mixed. Still in part stuck with SD TV channels which look bad on any TV this big, regardless of the fact that Panasonic has some of the best SD upscaling on the market. 720p HD TV broadcasts also have some compression artefacts and my highest bitrate blu-ray rips (like 20GB+ files) wouldn’t stream wirelessly to my WDTV Live. But the rips I did get streaming showed off the TV in a much better light.

This specific set passed most of the initial tests I could think of. Buzzing was acceptable, but noticeable in bright scenes with the volume muted. Fans were quiet enough. Didn’t see any of the fabled plasma flicker. No dead or stuck pixels that I could see. No color or brightness inconsistencies. Image looks great even in THX mode with colors, contrast and brightness muted. Not the sort of punch in the face you get from LCDs but a soft yet detailed and enjoyable picture. Reflections were also not as bad as I had feared. The G30 obviously is not the worst plasma in this department but I had heard a lot of complaints so I feared the worst. I however found that in a living room setting with dimmed lights and no windows directly behind the TV there was no issue whatsoever. In fact, my old, and equally flat CRT glass screen reflected a lot more. The speakers are also sort of OK for a flat screen TV.

It’s also nice to finally have HDMI ports (and plenty of them unlike cheaper LG plasmas).

The downsides that immediately come to mind are, predictably, phosphor lag / trailing / ghosting and posterization. The former is a little hard to figure out, perhaps I am seeing more of a rainbow effect? Not sure, will have to break the TV in and investigate. Can’t quite reproduce it either.  It’s like if I focus on a point and then move my eyes, or tilt my head, squint or alter some other parameter or lose focus for a split second and experience a green outline / halo all over the screen even during a static scene. Or perhaps it’s the scene itself with a specific mix of bright and dark areas. Not super annoying, but startling and odd. Could also be like with posterization, i.e. something that is reinforced with SD or highly compressed material. So, basically, more grain and less macro blocks will improve posterization tremendously. I should also add that I’ve done very little about the image settings besides activate THX.

Also, on a side note, the built-in EPG is extremely bland, and the tuner is disconnected as soon as the EPG is activated. Changing channels is also a tad slow, but the quality of the tuner image seems otherwise beyond question. Signal reception is very strong.

Built-in "smart TV" functions are sort of rudimentary but this is a non-issue for me. I’m pretty much back to building a new HTPC anyway. Sick of all the underpowered streamer bullshit.

So overall, coming from a smallish CRT, I’d rate the TV as potentially very good but weird and pending a final verdict.

• The updated IM+ multi-im app now supports the MSN protocol. So either MS changed their mind, required more extensive testing or there was some miscommunication somewhere. So perhaps MS is better than Apple after all.
• The Omnia 7 network problems seems to have been fixed, maybe. Samsung Sweden is now accepting phones to be sent in for what seems like a radio firmware upgrade. They will provide a replacement phone allegedly during the upgrade which might take days or weeks. I did inquire and they do in fact upgrade imported handsets as well, including the German 16 GB version. Also, the Omnia 7 Ebay price has gone down another ten euro since last I checked.
• App deployment has actually picked up a bit since last I looked. Major milestone releases like Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies have shown that WP7 is a serious platform that can get the job done and has the support of app developers.
• Warez, even though relatively hard to find and limited in selection, is also present for the platform. I guess my Google skills just failed me last time. Of course, side loading  apps requires some sort of jailbreak but it would seem that even the Mango beta has been beaten in this regard (and for the Omnia 7 no less). So from what I can tell, installing hacked / pirated xpa files is quite possible.

The point of course is that WP7 just got a hell of a lot more attractive. We’ll see what happens. There are a lot more WP7 devices coming this fall and I am of course curious to see the specs and whether or not they will further impact the price of the 1st generation devices.

Addendum 2011-08-17: I’m going to have to recant once more. The upcoming IM+ version 1.4 once again drops MSN support at the behest of Microsoft. The Omnia 7 remains broken or at the very least crippled. The "fix" may have worked in part but handset is still wobbly (and Samsung support seems to have messed up the OS or settings). And no apps of any importance have been forthcoming in the past month. And quite a few games have been dropped from the marketplace due to expiring licenses (no warning, no refunds). That just about sums it up. I’m back to being unenthusiastic about the platform.

I don’t have very many filters but being able to store and carry them in a practical and snug way is a big plus. Pouch is only able to hold up to 6 x 82 mm filters though so it’s probably a no-go for the Sigma 150-500 but on the other hand I don’t have a single filter for that lens.

Surely it must be a temporary fluke based on T-Mobile overstocking or some such but it nevertheless got me thinking. Could WP7 be the next big thing and could I make a killing by getting a first generation WP7 device while it lasts? Or will the OS bomb? Will second generation devices (from Nokia) blow even the Omnia 7 out of the water?

There is however a strong case against jumping the bandwagon. Aside from the uncertainties of being a early adopter, there are some seriously dark clouds on the horizon. Leaving aside the possibility that the entire platform will fail to gain momentum and get dropped, here are a couple of gripes I’ve found:

• App development has been slow. Sure, compared to iOS and Android back in the day, development is quite good. But many developers seem hesitant about the platform, even though they already have multiple platform clients out. Just the fact that Angry Birds, which is due next week, took a year or so to port isn’t boding well. There could possibly be a problem with how MS restricts developer options also, in terms of what layers of the phone are accessible.
• Microsoft sets the rules. Kind of like with Apple. Remember when Apple banned VOIP programs that used the 3G band instead of Wifi? Microsoft just banned apps that use the MSN protocol! So the upcoming IM+ app that would have finally added a multi IM solution will now ship without MSN support. How crazy isn’t that? Of course, clever hackers could change all this but when? A year from now? You can’t even find the apps you want in the Zune marketplace, so how likely is it you will find them elsewhere?
• No serious jailbreaking. Developers seem to have been bribed or intimidated by Microsoft.
• No warez community, which is probably due to the lack a stable and supported jailbreak mechanism. If you think I’m going to fork over ten bucks per app you are sorely mistaken. Apps are free as far as I am concerned.
• Major update ("Mango") is still months away. We could use … something, anything, right now. But we are caught in a chicken or the egg paradox where hardware manufacturers wont lift a finger until the update is out the door. And with no new handsets, no hype, and no attraction for app developers.

And adding insult to injury, the sleekest of the WP7 devices, the Omnia 7, like some of Samsung’s other recent high-end models such as the Galaxy S2, has a problem with my specific carrier. Seems to be due to their Edge network and 2G – 3G switching. It has been months and a solution does not seem to be imminent. Also, there is the banding issues with the screen on some of the devices, like the Omnia 7.

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.

It’s a bottomless project in many ways. I need a LCD / Plasma TV to enable HD x264 playback and hooking up a proper HDMI media player. I’d also like to be able to watch the terrestrial HD transmissions that started November 1 2010. As for the computers I need a new monitor for Workstation 2. Workstation 1 needs two monitors for starters. And I have no idea where to begin and no real references.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent days if not weeks investigating technologies, reviews, opinions and specific models but I’m none the wiser. I’m just not getting the answers I want. And it seems there are no perfect flat panel displays. Just plenty of excuses and compromises.

The problem with flat panel computer displays, and I’ve been over this before obviously, is that they lack the snappiness of CRT displays. And both TN, VA and IPS have their unique quirks and image defects. Mostly bleeding, glow and other irregularities. Many also have coil whine, though this is a common problem with all flat panel displays, not just monitors. There is also the issue of the native resolution. Needless to say you are bound to this resolution. You can’t lower your resolution, at least not without one form of penalty or another, to compensate for a demanding application or game. Or indeed to compensate for bad eyesight (though this is not applicable in my case). And changing the Windows font size opens up an entirely different can of worms. I’m still looking at the Dell 2209WA, which offers an acceptable comprise between price and image quality. Though it’s not a gaming monitor by a long shot, it seems to work well enough.

As for workstation 2, I’ve been considering the new Benq BL2400PT, 1920×1080 MVA panel, but I’m still not convinced that full HD resolution is right even for office work. I also have the option of keeping one reasonably new 19” diamondtron CRT in case flat panels don’t work for gaming. I have no idea obviously since I’ve never owned one and never played games on one, let alone the specific models mentioned above.

Buying a TV might seem like a more straightforward affair. Unless you game on your TV (I do not). But here we have a problem of source material. You’ve got your download x264 HD movies and TV series, sure, but most of the time you’re watching broadcasts anyway. And up until now, it has been difficult to get HD broadcasts. Since November 1 they do in fact exist, but there is a monumental problem that I almost overlooked – DVB-T2. Turns out there are only a handful of brand new TV sets with DVB-T2 and so far only three DVB-T2 boxes exist. All of them hilariously overpriced. I’m either looking for a built-in box or a cheap stand-alone equivalent. I was kind of hoping to do away with the discrete box (plus an extra remote and the loss of a HDMI port!). But all of that seems impossible now. Discrete boxes will take months to appear, and for TVs with built-in boxes to appear, and arrive at the position where most best bang for the buck TVs are today, will take even longer, even if DVB-T2 is adopted this very instant (and it isn’t!). So, for a TV like the LG 50PK350N (the currently recommended model, introduced in March this year) to get updated and go through its lifecycle could very well take another year. Great.

And then there is the issue of interference. DVB-T2 increases the bitrate considerably and is most likely a lot more sensitive to various forms of interference. I have that problem sometimes with SD mpeg2 DVB-T, especially during the winter, when the audio drops and crackles endlessly. Could be a box issue, Samsung DVB boxes are complete shit, but I’m not keen on finding out how well DVB-T2 will play.

And about digital media players, the other reason for getting a HD TV, will we ever see a device truly fill that roll? I have my doubts. Google TV seems to be an internet scam that will not play your painstakingly collected local content except for sending it to a DLNA. Or some such. Most new players, like Google TV, in fact seem to emphasise online media which is a real shame. The Boxee box seemed interesting, up until the point where I installed the software that is supposed to power the thing and it crashed on the FIRST anime mkv video I tried. Amateurs! Given the price of a Boxee and the fact that the software isn’t exactly new it should be flawless. But I guess they didn’t prioritize getting local media to play.

The Popcorn hour is too expensive and unprofessional for my taste, and might not work well with wireless (not fast enough to stream HD), but has been around for a long time and might be available second hand. I’ve also looked at the Western Digital TV Live HD, which is a much cheaper but still competent alternative. But all in all it’s hard to replace a dedicated HTPC. Not keen on building that again though. This time I want a simple, compact, cheap and fanless solution. HTPCs in my opinion are either horribly expensive, bulky and / or noisy. I mean, you can’t even get a mainboard for the price of a WD TV Live, and setting up a cheap and efficient Atom-based system will still not play HD flash video. So what is the point then?

All in all, for one reason or another, flat panels seem as distant as ever.

Impressions of the 5230: Great value. One sixth or so of the price of an Iphone 3GS. No powerhouse or multimedia wonder though. And applications can be dodgy.

Caveats when compared to most smart phones, like its bigger brother the 5800 include the lack of WLAN, stereo speakers, front facing camera, autofocus and a decent camera. Also, Nokia should have kept the stylus from the 5800.

It should also be noted that none of Nokia’s current HVGA phones have any sort of graphics acceleration whatsoever. As is painfully evident over at GLBenchmark. The only HVGA Nokia phone that makes any sort of impression is the upcoming N8. Their older QVGA phones are obviously useless and the current HVGA phones, like the 5230, 5800, N97 and X6 can only muster about 70 frames (using only the CPU) whereas the N8 does 905 frames, iPhone 4 1016 frames and most of the new and upcoming Samsung phones manage 1400 – 1600 frames.

One other drawback of the 5230 specifically is its lacklustre home screen. So far anyway it hasn’t been given the widget enabled screen of the 5800 and N97. You can make things a little nicer by running widgetizer but in the end you’re still going to waste that big beautiful touch screen.

And on a side note, the file system is completely nonsensical. If you decide to add files manually, there is no hint as to where to place them. And all your music and videos will show up on your ring tone selection screen. Just like ring tones will show up in the native mp3 player. There are a number of workarounds, but neither is altogether successful.

On the plus side we have free turn-by-turn navigation via Ovi maps and the apparently free Nokia Mail which checks up to ten email accounts and delivers the result to your phone at regular intervals.

Custom firmwares and hacking are ever expanding fields. I quickly found that hacking the phone was all but inevitable. Signing applications yourself is just too much work. Plus, using custom firmwares enables enables a few system hacks that would otherwise be impossible as long as the OS is running. Overall the modding community is fairly active and helpful.

Applications: There are a quite a few good applications for the platform. Almost everything you need is there. For instance: Ovi maps / Google maps / Garmin (discontinued?), Foreca Weather, Truecaller, Skype, Nimbuzz, Fring, Sports Tracker / Endomondo, Opera / Skyfire, Nokia mail, Gravity, Quick Office, Adobe Reader, PowerMP3, Quickmark barcode reader etc etc. The most useful app so far has without a doubt been Sports Tracker.

Warez: Warez is quite abundant, even if a select few applications remain without a viable crack. Some are obviously hopeless since they rely on a central server. But you’d be surprised by what you can find. Most notorious sites include: OPDA, Noeman, Symbiantalk, Nokiasoftware and Dotsis.

Bypassing Ovi Store: Why waste your monthly quota if you don’t have to? There is a simple trick for downloading software directly to your PC and then use the software suite to install them. Just change your browser user agent!

PC software suite: There are actually two to choose from. The "Ovi Suite" and the "PC suite". The former is very sleek but bulky and buggy and might in time replace the latter. Both offer easy and fast backup and editing of calendar and messages.

Games: Good games are scarce and sluggish thanks to the lack of acceleration. They are also held back by the somewhat unresponsive touch screen which is otherwise quite competent. I hope you like solitaire because you’ll be playing it a lot! There are a few others like MicroPool, MicroMaze, Airport, Sky Force Reloaded, Gears etc, but overall games are a mix of sad Java games and games that don’t run or don’t run very well. I’ve probably installed a hundred games or so and removed eighty of them.

As for the future, I’ve pretty much canned the idea of getting a used 5800. I think the N8, once it sinks well below its RRP, and IF software development ramps up, could be an alternative. But Symbian has an uphill battle here, and backward compatibility is questionable. Symbian may have a big heritage of applications, however most of them are sucky old 2005 versions that especially in the case of games can’t do full screen or aren’t even touch screen enabled. Meanwhile Android is a rising star, and Samsung is encouraging Bada development, plus Microsoft is about to join the match again. Could be a hard sell for Nokia to convince developers to code for Symbian^3. On the other hand, there is said to be 300.000 QT developers that may or may not code for the platform. And Symbian sold a rather mindboggling 27 million devices in Q2 2010. So while it has a miniscule market share in the US, the rumours of its demise may be exaggerated somewhat by American snot-nosed iphone kiddies. Just think about it, Blackberry and Windows Mobile still hold considerable chunks of the market there. Have you ever heard something as ludicrous.

Obviously, if at all possible, I’d like to jump on the Android bandwagon. But it’s all a question of cost … and the state of the warez scene. Android is just now coming into full bloom so we’ll have to see where it ends up.

The model for the macro clamp is of course the Wimberley Plamp and the FM Photography McClamp. They both utilize flexible arms made out of a product called Loc Line (or a cheaper knockoff perhaps). Turns out Loc Line is one of the most useful products I’ve never heard of. It can be found in applications ranging from industrial coolant distribution to complicated aquarium setups and inside some stuffed animals. And the DIY applications seem endless [1|2|3|4|5|6|7].

Everything about it is great – except for the fact that I can’t seem to find it. There is only one company in the whole country that I’ve found selling Loc Line (original) and they charge maybe 2-3 times the US price. And imports are out of the question this time, even if RDG Tools could work. Instead I’m currently looking into knockoffs available locally. Luna apparently has them and I hope my local hardware store is able to get it for me. If the price is right of course.

This could solve so many problems with macro photo like stabilizing moving object or getting the right background at the right distance. Or holding up small reflectors.

And btw. Here is an alternative design using something called Kwiktwist (a product I’ve had even less luck locating).

Addendum: This DIY is dead in the water already. Prices in Sweden were crazy across the board. And buying from RDG wouldn’t work since they didn’t have all the parts and sizes. As for importing from the US, shipping alone would be $34. Kind of what I wanted to spend on this entire project. That would mean that two three feet 3/4 inch arms with the correct parts would come to a total of about $100 including shipping. $90 maybe if I moved to 1/2 inch. Unacceptable for something you’d use a handful of times per year.