What is the Best HDTV to Buy Today?

[MrBoylan]

A reader writes in asking what flat panel HDTV he should buy today: LED? LCD? Plasma? The answer might surprise you.

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[Daylightdon]

Already bought the "V10"

Just waiting for your review!!!

[MrBoylan]

Already bought the "V10"

Just waiting for your review!!!

Other priorities lately. Sorry. Will get to it eventually.

And my recommendation to buy the G10 or G15 doesn't mean the V10 isn't better (it is). Only that the cash outlay for the incremental improvement from the G10 to the V10 isn't as easy to justify as say, the improvement from the S1 to the G10, or the G10 over any comparably priced LCD set.

I hope you are enjoying your set, yes? Mine is hooked up to an OPPO BD-P83 Blu-ray player which is also pretty sweet (and fast!).

-CB

[Daylightdon]

Damn the priorities, (oh! that was torpedos!!! Sorry!), Full speed ahead!!!

Yes, the V10 is SUPER!!!

[OzzieBloke]

1 more week, and I'll be enjoying V10 goodness as well.

First time I've ever bought a plasma panel on the first week of availability.

I'm becoming such a consumer whore...

[zeilda]

I am big fan of lcd Tv i will prefer LCD over plasma............

[MrBoylan]

I am big fan of lcd Tv i will prefer LCD over plasma............

Why? What is it about LCD TV that you think is better than plasma?

-CB

[zeilda]

I have heard that Plasmas suffer from screen burn-in, an affliction not commonly associated with LCDs. Screen burn in occurs when an image is left too long on a screen, resulting in a ghost of that image "burned in". LCDs also tend to consume less power than plasma screens, with some of the newer "Eco" LCD panels able to use half of the power than equivalent plasmas, with the trade-off being lower brightness

[MrBoylan]

I have heard that Plasmas suffer from screen burn-in, an affliction not commonly associated with LCDs. Screen burn in occurs when an image is left too long on a screen, resulting in a ghost of that image "burned in". LCDs also tend to consume less power than plasma screens, with some of the newer "Eco" LCD panels able to use half of the power than equivalent plasmas, with the trade-off being lower brightness

With modern plasma TVs, burn-in is virtually unheard of. All of the good ones have anti image retention software built in which prevents burn in. If you run your image super hot in one of the overly bright modes like "Vivid" (which is a bad idea, not only for TV life but for image quality), then you can get some temporary image retention where a ghost image may appear on the screen for a few seconds or even a minute or more, but even this is much less common than it was in the first few generations of plasma technology, and it's a temporary condition.

For me, the image uniformity problems (uneven backlighting), contrast issues (which are better on LED-backlit LCD TVs with local dimming, but still not perfect) and motion blur of LCD (which is improved with 120 Hz and 240 Hz processing, but these processing modes typically introduce a new set of issues) - these all contribute to produce a picture on the best LCD TVs that still doesn't quite match the best plasmas.

LCD technology has come a long way in the past couple of years -- current high end models really do look excellent -- but then plasma isn't exactly standing still either.

-CB

[ertoil]

Best LCD right now in Europe is the Philips 40-46PFL 9704

I suppose best Plasma are the Pioneer 500A and the 42V10 on Panasonic