TV picture comparisons - CRT vs Plasma (component) vs Plasma (HDMI)
 

I posted some pics a while back when I upgraded my 32" CRT to a 50" plasma. At that time the same DVD player fed both, via scart for the CRT and component for the plasma. I've now upgraded the old DVD player for an upscaling HDMI DVD-R/HDD/FV Sony RDR-HXD970, so, here's the pics for further analysis.

Same images used from R1 LOTR FOTR & ROTK. T

Sony KV32FQ75 fed Pioneer DVD656A via RGB scart

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ony_LOTR_1.jpg

Panasonic TH50PX60 fed with Pioneer DVD656A via component

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ana_LOTR_1.jpg

Panasonic TH50PX60 fed with Sony RDR-HXD970 via HDMI @ 720p - he camera has changed from a 5mp compact to a Canon 350D hence the hue change and slight overexposure.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...boy/HDMI_2.jpg

CRT detail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...R_1_Detail.jpg

Pana component detail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...R_1_Detail.jpg

Pana HDMI detail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...I_detail_1.jpg

Different image.....

Sony CRT

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ony_LOTR_3.jpg

Pana component

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ana_LOTR_3.jpg

Pana HDMI

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...boy/HDMI_1.jpg

Sony detail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...R_3_Detail.jpg

Pana component detail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...R_3_Detail.jpg

Pana HDMI detail

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...I_detail_2.jpg

Discuss....

We have had this thread in the past have we not ?

Hmm, jurys out on the motion smoothness during slow panning ;)

As I said at the top of my post, I posted some pics a while back but have now moved to an upscaling HDMI player and there are a couple of people who expressed an interest in how it may improve things. I couldn't find the old thread, so just started a new one.

I get a perfect pic from my Panny 32" TV fed via HDMI from HD box

Chip

Panasonic wins again then? :D

Panny :D I am feeding my 50PZ70 with the Tosh EP-30 & its immense. Along with feeding it with downloaded HD movies. I downloaded Transformers 1080p & it was f**kin immense :D:D:D

i have to say, when my good woman was watching LOTR on my xbox, upscaled to 720p i was compleatly stunned with the quality on my samsung plasma.

i was so impressed i went and put my contact lenses in so i could sit back and soak everything up, the detail was amazing, the old arguments over crt having a better picture are redundant, no contest.

plasma vs lcd

no idea on this one, not checked a recent lcd screen to see how good they are, but when i bought my plasma i tested it with the samsung lcd right next to it and prefered the plasma.

i was under the impression that plasma was getting "phased" out as lcd was cheaper ?

Not suprising when the Panny is brand new HD and the Sony is at least 7 years old SD...

The picture we get on our nearly 4 year old 42" Sony plasma is so good that I dont see any point in changing to HDMI so far.

Les

Woooooooooooooooooshhhhhhhhhhh

I have to say, I havent really spent any time looking at TV's of late, but I still have this belief that CRT still has a better picture than LCD/Plasma especially where panning/motion/fast action is concerned

I do see a lot of Plasmas/LCD's though with my job, and we currently have sat in the office a nice 60" screen waiting to go out on site, but even all the ones we have sold still dont seem that impressive with picture quality compared to CRT

We do a lot of video conferencing and I am told that the HD video conferencing we now do is outstanding quality

A mate of mine bought some 700 quid plasma samsung and invited me round to have look, well I've just been round his house and laughed lots.


I think he might be boxing it back up tomorrow and shoving back up curry's arse.

i dont know the differences in crt or plasma or what not, but i know that currys have a got a 50" LG tv that looks the bollocks and is clear as crystal

although at work a bloke who works for panasonic came in and was telling me about (duno how we got onto the subject) the newest thing within the year is ultra thin plasma TV's , about 1-2 inches in thickness? alot slimmer than plasma screens out now

I think you mean OLED. Which is going to hit this year - And you can have screen measured in millimetre thicknesses, not inches. Plus contrast ratios of over 1,000,000 :1

Cours eit will be prohibitively expensive to start with, but it will come down as production ramps up.

OLED is supposedly cheaper to produce than LED is now...

Yes: keep up Stephen!

Its interesting to see the dfference: I hadnt expected there to be such a noticable difference between component and DVI/HDMI...

Perhaps now wold be a good tie to ditch my component-only upscaling Toshiba DVD player and buy an HD DVD (now very cheap, to play my old school DVDs on)?

Simon

That certainly isnt reflected in retail prices - The actual process may be cheaper ( i doubt it though), but you have to pay for all that development/factories.

Apparantly Sony can only produce 2000 OLED sets a month at the moment - which economies of scale means that they will be very expensive.

Last I saw, an 11" OLED screen was around $2000.

I think the component looks better.

Motion blur on plasma's is ancient history. It was never caused by the display, but by the processors feeding it the signal. Those processors are now well up to the job, and when using a digital only signal they have very little to do anyway.
Motion blur has always been an issue with LCD due to how it works. The electrical signal has to effect a physical change in the liquid crystal which takes time. A minute amount of time, but when your dealing with light, minute amounts of time count greatly. I don't like the picture rendition on them and although I have a very good Philips 32" in the bedroom, I wouldn't consider one for my primary movie replay system.

GC8, personally I wouldn't bother with an HD-DVD player. As you well know the technology has lost the war and is now redundant and working its period of notice. There are plenty of HDMI equipped upscaling players for very little money, so save the rest for a BluRay player. I'm holding out, like I did with DVD until the region lock-outs and other controls have been beaten out of it. I believe the AV geeks in the know buy US machines which for whatever reason come enabled for region A,B & C (US, Jap, EU).

As for OLED, again, I'll sit and wait until it's affordable. My Pany blows my socks off so there's no need to waste cash there yet. In 5 years the plasma may become the bedroom TV, but I want lots more use out of it first.

I'll add more images to this thread when I get LOTR on BluRay :cool:

I have a LG 42" 1080p and the component o/p of Sky HD is superior to HDMI. I've been accused of not being able to setup a TV (:D) but I'm afraid the 'digital from source to panel is best ' brigade appear to loose sight of the fact that there's probably as many digital conversions going on through the link to make an anti DAC argument seem fairly pointless.

The factors in processing, circuit quality and artifact supression / handling are so varied that I tire of the detailed arguments. There's only a lucky few who can audition several source and cable combos in their home before taking the plunge. The rest of us have to rely on posts like this to be able to make some informed judgement. So thanks mate, I do enjoy a good resolution / cable debate.....:D

Corradoboy and I have spent many hours enjoying auditioning various Hi-Fi, speaker and cable combos and at the end of the day we never did agree fully. It simply comes down to personal preference at the end of the day.

What I will say to finish is that 1080p is a must to get the best from Sky HD and Bluray... anything less will mean the various scaling and deinterlacing / interlacing needed to fit will invariably add artifacts (notice I didn't comment on the resolution :D)

Edited to add:

The HDMI definitely seems to suit your combo mate. Natural and the resolution looks well.

Yes, but was the film any good ?


I had a mate who back in the eighties spent every penny on Hi Fi, he then demoed it to us using an 80's Rod Stewart Cd, i.e. horrifc but it was the best quality cd he had.

We all used to enjoy films in Black and White, on portable CRT's and even god forbid in the cinema.

As for going round and laughing at somebodies £700 tv, why, how bad could it be to justify such hillarity, I suspect you mate was happy with it until you started on it.

Choose the size that suits, read "some" reviews, haggle take it home and watch it. Dont go on AV forums - ever, its full of people ready to have a fist fight over Panasonic v Sony.

It amazes me, the analysis tv's get, I suspect some people spend less effort on their relationships with people than they do on justifying their choice of tv.

Point is our expectations are far higher now, knowing and understanding technology that can transform lives. Why settle on something that's just OK? Sure, some people do, but the people who push the limits and strive for 'better' are the ones giving us HD.

You'll find CD's and DVD discs are now on their way out. Broadband speeds will become capable of realtime HD downloads that will be multicast to your media center. Sky & Cable HD will simply play HD complete content on demand, so there'll be no need to buy a spinning disk... This is progress....

And yes, we'll probably sit back and laugh at the time when 1080p was the norm as we're sitting in our hologram room.... 'Computer, play the saved Angelina Jolie and Jessica Simpson come round for dinner, please' :D

SkyHD isn't broadcast in 1080p though, only 720p ?

Sky HD is broadcast in options of 720p & 1080i (probably 1080i all the time now). It's unlikely 1080p will be used for quite some time due to bandwidth issues.

720p is (in most respects) better than 1080i, especially for resolving movement, but a 1080p panel will take the 1080 interlaced res and progressively scan it... Thus giving you a good res for the larger panels and close up viewing.

:luxhello::luxhello::luxhello:

I'm definitely with you on this, when we recently bought a 32" LCD for our kitchen we went into some shops, looked at loads of tellies and bought the one we liked the look of best (picture and casing) that fulfilled our criteria for the best price we could find.

I did a fair bit of research before by looking at threads on here and the AV forums etc and printed out reams of stuff to take with us on our search but came to the conclusion that we really only use the telly for watching crap anyway and, on the odd occasion we do use it for a film I normally fall asleep :lol1:

Anyway why waste my time watching telly when I could be reading all the arguing on forums over what is best? It's far more entertaining ;) :D

I fully appreciate where you're coming from. My Mum's TV goes on at about 8am so that GMTV can talk to her like she's a child. Then she watches all sorts of stuff about antiques, decorating, selling houses, wimmin griping, Ozzy teenagers (strangely interesting :norty: ), 70's cop drama's, a variety of quizzes, dour Londoners, scruffy northerners and anything else which can teach you nothing. From 8pm to midnight a VCR records one channel whilst she watches the other (bless her, she only thinks there's four, and BBC2 and C4 are for young people :lol1: ), and at midnight she catches up with the recorded stuff :cuckoo: Through all this, she'd be happy with a 12" B&W portable.

On the other hand, I switch on for Grand Designs, Property Ladder (although seriously getting repeatedly tedious now, along with Relocation), natural history, science and serious documentaries, along with some satire and decent comedy (getting hard to find :rolleyes: ) which may amass to less than 8 hours a week. However, if there are no such programs on and I fancy cabbaging in front of the box with a glass or 7, then a decent movie, played in superb clarity, with stupendous 7.1 DD-EX/DTS-ES surround sound will both entertain and impress me no end.
YES ! All 3 LOTR movies are fantasy film making masterpieces which I can watch over and over. This enjoyment is helped no end by the awesome quality of the DVD transfer and superb audio tracks, replayed beautifully on my equipment :D

An important point. Absolutely no need spending loads on HiDef if you're happy with normal Freeview or terrestrial. But to others, if you're big on film watching or music listening, it's only right to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your setup...

I didn't even see your lips move mate.... :thumb:

On the contrary, I can't cope with poor quality and god forbid would ever watch daytime telly (Corradoboy :nono: :eek:) but think that all this is a completely subjective thing. What one person views as awesome, the next will think is sh1te as these threads on forums prove. You can go on and on about it until you're blue in the face by which time the latest technology will have already rendered the subject of your argument completely obsolete :D

I just wanted a new telly ASAP that would work with Sky HD so that I could sit and watch the news whilst I ate my brekkie and did some surfing :D

I just bought the one that stood out for me in terms of picture and looks at the time :thumb: There is always something better/more advanced just around the corner but I got fed up looking and comparing and reading contradicting reports about which was best and went for what stood out for me and fitted my budget.