CRT, DLP, LCD, D-ILA-- Pros & Cons, for the record!!! (1 Viewer)

[Sami Kallio]

I still haven't seen any of them even match a great CRT in PQ.

 

[LaMarcus]

Me either, but they're the phenom these days and every joe 6 pack wants one, so of coarse their questions are directed towards me for my home theater expertise, and I not sure which one to suggests and for what reason. Hince the real purpose of his thread.

 

[Sami Kallio]

It's quite simple, CRT is the choice if nothing else than PQ matters. If you want convenience and are prepared to sacrifice in PQ then digital displays might suit you better.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Well, I think another pro for CRT, is the ease to set this bad boy up. I used VE to set mine up, used it set up my son's Godparents 2 year old Samsung 55 inch 4:3 CRT/RPTV, and next Saturday, I'll set up my brother-in-law's 46 inch RPTV. I'm no ISF calibrator, but when you run VE, Avia, will give you a great picture.

DLP, from my point of view, bright as hell, but fleshtones are not the best, I found them to be blurred when it came to detail.

Plasma, every joey 6 pack as stated earlier is looking to jump into this and I have to admit, I saw D-VHS on this t.v. and the picture quality is very very good. I'm pretty sure satisifaction will be had here if a plasma t.v. is purchased and it looks cool also as it saves a great deal of space.

LCD/Lcos, I haven't seen too much of these t.v.s, so can't really comment on it other than computer screens like my laptop, they look cool also, just some artifacting during pan aways.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Just think, some say analog is a dead format, but based on the pros on CRT, looks very much alive to me.

 

[Ryan Wishton]

CRT Tubes probably have the best pic of any option IMO. Not a fan of CRT rear projection. Not even in the 80's/90's when they were the hottest thing since sliced bread and people wanted those. I just personally wouldnt want one. They just never did it for me.

As for Tubes. It's just that they seem to weigh more than my car and come too small nowadays. I just dont want to deal with the weight issue anymore. Getting it in, having to get it out when moving, moving it to clean, etc. I am just sick of all that to be honest and dont want to deal with it anymore. The back surgery cost wont be worth a slight increase in pic to me.

We were used to a 32 inch CRT set which was fine. Never had anything above that. Did consider a 34 inch Sony XBR but figured it was too small. Not to mention when I went to pick it up, it was almost if not impossible by myself. The weight issue would bother me very much so as I am basically on my own when it comes to moving it.

Would like to go bigger this time too since I have never had one before too. I want a 42 inch or something around there, so the other technologies suit me better at this time. I dont want to go below 37 inches by any means. Plus HDTV just seems more life like on a bigger screen. Since this will be my first time going HDTV, I just prefer that as well.

 

[Charlie Campisi]

A friend emailed me the below explanation of the various technologies and I thought it was a pretty good description for people who are starting from the ground floor and trying to understand the tradeoffs they make when purchasing a tv that costs the same as a new car did when I was a teenager (and I'm not THAT old!) Not sure where the writeup originated, but I left the author information in to give credit, or maybe someone else can identify it. (The links didn't come through when I cut and pasted, but I can find them if anyone has a specific question.)

Top Tubes
Which high-end television is best?
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2004, at 10:38 AM PT

A widescreen, high-definition television tops America's holiday wish list this year. Too bad shopping for one is so confusing. Many gift buyers head for the store with visions of plasma screens dancing in their heads only to find another kind of flat screen, the LCD, grabbing their attention. Once they start looking around a little more, they notice an alphabet goulash of thin-screen options: DLP, D-ILA, LCoS, SXRD. What do they all mean? Which type of HDTV is best? And what about HDTV itself—is it really better than the much-cheaper EDTV?

It's enough to make you go home and cuddle up with your 10-year-old Trinitron. But don't do that. Herewith, Slate's guide through the high-def maze.

How much should you spend? Count on $1,500 at the very least—for the more exotic technologies, expect to spend much more. Samsung does make a 27-inch HD model powered by an old-fashioned picture tube (more about this later) for $700. But, except in very small rooms, the picture is too small and too dim to make much of an impact.

What about EDTV? No. EDTVs (enhanced-definition televisions) may seem like a bargain, but they're a waste. High-definition has two special qualities. First, HD broadcasts are usually in widescreen; on a widescreen television, the image fills the entire screen (no horizontal black bars on the top and bottom). Second, an HD image consists of 1,080 horizontal lines (or 720 lines that get scanned twice as fast) compared with standard TV's 480 lines. More lines mean a more detailed, cohesive, and color-saturated image. An EDTV receives high-def signals, but it displays them in standard definition. You get the wide screen, but not the extraordinary detail. In fact, because the screen is bigger than an ordinary television yet displays the same number of lines, the picture can sometimes be fuzzy, craggly—just bad.

Plasma: Plasma televisions are everyone's dream ticket—flat, bright, and the niftiest-looking piece of furniture in the history of consumer electronics. Two-and-a-half years ago, I predicted that by now plasma's bugs would be vanquished and the prices slashed. Well, plasmas are cheaper and better, but they're not yet trouble-free or particularly cheap. Any plasma worth owning will set you back at least $5,000 retail—a really good one will cost you double that.

Plasmas have two inherent advantages and one inherent flaw. The advantages: First, they give off a staggering amount of light, so the image looks clear even in uncurtained daylight. Second, you can watch plasmas from any angle and the picture remains just as sharp—a distinct advantage if you watch television with lots of friends.

The flaw: "burn-in." If you spend a lot of time watching a channel with an on-screen logo (or a news crawl), the logo's outlines will brand a permanent shadow on that area of the screen. If you watch a lot of non-HD programs, which have square images, the vertical black bars on both sides of your widescreen will burn in, too. There are ways to minimize this risk (click here) but no way to eliminate it.
One thing to keep in mind when you're blown away by a plasma screen in an electronics store showroom is the Finding Nemo factor. HD tape loops with lots of bright lights and bold colors—nature documentaries, football games, space capsules orbiting the Earth, and especially digital cartoons like Finding Nemo—make almost any plasma TV look fabulous. Plasmas have more trouble presenting complex colors, especially in dimly lit scenes. They also have a tendency to make black look like dark gray.

The latest models are getting better at compensating for plasma's weaknesses. (For a technical explanation, click here.) At a trade show a couple months ago, I stood in front of a 43-inch Pioneer Elite PRO-920HD for 20 minutes watching a DVD of Spider-Man, a movie with lots of very dark scenes. The detail, the contrasts, the gradations of gray, and the distinctions between objects and shadows were all superb. I found nothing to complain about except the price: $10,500. (It's possible to find it now for as little as $7,000.) The 42-inch Panasonic TH-42PX25, at $5,500 (on sale at Amazon for $3,800), is impressive, too. But on most plasmas cheaper than $5,000, Finding Nemo will look great; Spider-Man and many other live-action DVDs and non-HD television shows will not.

LCD: LCD (liquid-crystal display) flat panels have one big advantage over plasmas: no burn-in. Otherwise, there's little to be said for them. Inch for inch, they're more expensive than plasmas. They make black colors look even lighter gray than plasmas. Fast-moving objects tend to look blurry and jumpy. They're also prone to the "screen-door effect"—you can sometimes see the gridlines that separate each pixel. Sony's 46-inch Qualia 005 LCD panel, due out this spring, is stunningly vivid; it makes all other LCDs, and most plasmas, look like mush. The price, though, will be about $12,000.

Rear-projection televisions: So far we've talked only about flat panels. There are also thin-screen HDTVs that are about a foot deep (and that deep only at the center of the set). RPTVs don't get half the buzz of the flat panels, but they're considerably cheaper and, in many ways, better. The most popular rear-projection sets use LCD technology that's similar to the flat-panel versions. The difference: Rather than emitting light, these televisions get their light from a projector behind the screen. Sony's 42-inch KF42-WE610 Grand Wega, which costs less than $2,500, isn't bad at all. Blacks aren't quite black and the screen door is sometimes visible, but these flaws are less pronounced than on the flat panels.

Often better still are rear-projection TVs that use DLP (digital light processing) technology. Samsung's 50-inch HLP-5063W, retailing for $3,500 and often discounted, is an excellent buy. Blacks are black, colors are natural, contrasts are subtle. Another great thing about the DLP sets is that there's no wear or deterioration. Spend a couple hundred dollars for a new bulb every few years, and it's like you've got a brand new television. DLP's main drawback is that it uses a "color wheel" to project the full color spectrum. In scenes with fast movement, you can sometimes see a "rainbow effect" (colors blurring into one another). Some people are bothered by this; others barely notice it.

The most promising thin-screen rear-projection sets use still-newer technologies based on LCoS (liquid-crystal-on-silicon) chips. JVC has a variation called D-ILA (Direct-Drive Image Light Amplification); Sony's is called SXRD (Silicon X-tal [Crystal] Reflective Display). The principle here is similar to DLP, except the pixels are packed more densely. Since there's less space between pixels, light gets absorbed more efficiently, which creates a richer and more seamless image—no screen doors or rainbows. And, like the DLPs, they never wear out.

JVC's D-ILA—the 52-inch HD-52Z575 and 61-inch HD-61Z575, which retail for $4,500 and $5,500 respectively—are both startling. Among new-tech TVs, they're surpassed only by Sony's 70-inch (!) Qualia 006 SXRD. At $10,000, the Qualia 006 (you might also see it called the XBR1000) might seem a bit pricey, but given its size and quality, it really isn't. (Smaller, and presumably cheaper, models should be out in a year or so.)

The blacks aren't quite as black as those of very good DLPs, and the image gets a bit dim if you watch from way to the side (though less so than with other rear-projection televisions). But once those problems get fixed, LCoS, D-ILA, and SXRD could render plasma obsolete. (For more on DLP and LCoS technology, click here.)

Really big screens: If you need a picture that's 6-feet to 10-feet wide, or even larger, then you need a front projector. Front projectors beam light onto a screen that can either be pulled down from the ceiling or set up and taken away. Most of these projectors are fairly compact—some of the LCD and DLP models could fit in your palm—and they can all be hung from a ceiling, attached to a back wall, or set up on a table. Sony makes a very good high-def LCD projector for $3,000. Samsung's superb DLP projector—one of the best high-end televisions of any sort—costs $12,000. JVC's D-ILA projector costs about $13,000, and Sony's SXRD model costs as much as $30,000. Good screens cost from $500 on up.

The drawback of all front projectors is that you have to use them in the dark. Outside light interferes with the projector's lamp, making the image look faded. This may soon change. Sony has developed a black screen equipped with a filter that reflects the projector's light and disperses light from windows and room lamps. (For a photograph of the effect, click here.) Sony hasn't set a release date or a price for its black screen, but it might transform the entire marketplace. You could watch movies or high-def broadcasts on a very big screen in a normal living room, with the lights on, and not have a television taking up any space at all.

The old picture tube: Don't forget about the cathode-ray picture tube—for color fidelity, contrasts, detail, and black blacks, the stalwart old tube still beats the newfangled microchips. Cathode-ray-tube front projectors are extremely expensive (over $25,000) and hard to set up. CRT rear projectors are enormous and clunky. CRT "direct-view" televisions (a high-def version of the kind of set you've had for decades) can't put out enough light to sustain a widescreen image larger than 34 inches diagonally. However, if you have lots of space, Sony and Toshiba sell rear-projection CRT sets with huge screens—51 inches and more—for $1,500 to $2,000 or so. If a 34-inch direct-view TV is big enough, Sony's direct-view XBR910 (also $1,500-$2,000), is a gem—maybe the best TV on the market.

One last suggestion: Whatever kind of HDTV you buy, spend another $300 to get it calibrated properly. The settings from the factory—for color, contrast, and so forth—are almost always wrong. You can do some tweaking yourself using a test DVD. But for the fine points, you need a specialist—preferably one certified by the Imaging Science Foundation. Otherwise, it's like buying a Steinway without bothering to get it tuned.

Fred Kaplan, Slate's "War Stories" columnist, also writes about home theater for The Perfect Vision and other publications.

Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.

 

[Ryan Wishton]

I dont agree with everything this guy says.

I can see defensive ED owners on this one. I would agree with them. You only lose about 10% of the HD image quality on an EDTV. Important for Videophiles and Home Theater junkies, but not to the average person.

He basically makes ED's to sound like junk which simply isnt true.

This is a pretty good article on this.

http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/p...efinition.html

For the avid DVD and standard watcher with no intention or not much or even medium interest on HDTV, they are perfect. Both forms look a little better on these for the most part because of the native resolution. Plus they dont look half bad for HD either.

If you read the Consumer Reports review (just one source I know) on ED's and HD's, the Sony EDTV outperformed many of the other HD's in image quality on an HD signal.

http://www.consumerreports.org/main/...=1102604518338

A quality Panasonic or Sony EDTV for example will outperform every unknown cheaper HDTV around. Resolution is important, but it isnt everything.

He also forgets to mention that no HDTV today displays true HDTV resolution to the max.

He says no burn in on LCD's. They are very resistant to burn in, but it still happens. Multiple people at AVS have reported burn in on their LCD's. So dont be surprised if you go on vacation with your LCD on a static image to come home and find burn in.

P.S. Of course something $10,000+ should and most likely will be better. Why shouldnt it be? Reality Check. Most people would never spend money like that on a TV. It really is a joke when you can buy a small car for that.

But, this guy makes it seem if you want anything good, you must pay thousands upon thousands of dollars. With the rapid changes in technology and rapid yearly price decreases, I would never advise someone to pay that unless money was no concern. I sure wouldnt take out financing or a home equity loan like some do.

 

[Sami Kallio]

Huh? You might want to e-mail your friend back and tell him to do some more research.

 

[ChrisWiggles]

They are that expensive, new that is. But the market is ridiculously small in the HT world, the only significant market left is really the simulation market.

But used, oh boy, you can get insanely nice CRT FP used for ridiculously cheap, if you want the absolute best PQ possible, and a ridiculous steal, used CRT is the place to look.

 

[Sami Kallio]

$25k and up, yes the expensive models are. I just watched a movie projected with my friends 8" Sony graphics projector and its MSRP was below $25k. Fabulous picture and it wasn't even finetuned yet. Could probably had for $5k or less used. There are projectors much less expensive than that (or have they stopped making the less expensive models now?).

I have Seleco SVP-350 CRT, £3,778 MSRP. Could be had used for $1500-2000. Although it's only 480i it still kicks the snot out of the digital projectors in its price range. I wouldn't pay MSRP anymore but I wouldn't trade it in for a $1500 digital projector either (as I did the comparison just recently, not wanting to do another CRT install in my new house).

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Sami, there really is not a new market existing anymore for crts. You can get them new, but again, very very expensive. this is why used CRT is an incredible bargain, i can attest as I have two high-end 8inchers that are near the best, for less than 3K for the both of em.

 

[Kwang Suh]

How does an LCD screen get burn in? There's no phosphors.

 

[Grace]

sony kdf-60wf655 LCD vs samsung hlp6163w DLP?

i can get either for 2900 shipped online

advice?

 

[ChrisWiggles]

LCD doesn't burn in.

There can be some temporary retention, but displaying moving images will make it go away. IT's not burn in, there's no phosphors.

 

[Ryan Wishton]

Image Retention, Burn in, whatever it may really be. I really dont know the definition. If it stays on the screen and doesnt ever go away, it's called damaged to me.

Basicallym I would just advise anyone looking to make a purchase to do plenty of research to decide whats best for them. Thats the point really.

Each has pros/cons. No way around that. Nothing is perfect.

People believe this cant happen, but it does. Not often, but it does. Why would the very people who own them make such stories up? Unless all of them are lying? But, why would they? To gain what exactly?

Image Retention goes away many times, which is true. But, there are a section of folks who have reported it never did.

Who cares what it's called really? The average person is just going to see the damage and be extremely pissed off. They will then say, you told me these things couldnt ever happen. Will the fine folks who gave them this info be buying them a replacement as well? I think not. They will just say too bad. You must have done something wrong.

Do a google search, read reviews, go to AVS. The info is there. I dont see why people would make it up after paying ridiculous amounts of money?

Basically, the whole point is before making such a purchase, never listen to just one source, no matter what it is. Be sure to do plenty and plenty of research. Things are not always as they appear and the average Best Buy salesman is as insightful as a wet cod.

Remember. They are trained to sell extended warranties, not to know the product. Believe me, I once overlooked some of these people. Many times people with no experience pulled from the streets. No one with tons of expertise would work for such scab wages.

P.S. Friendly Tip: Extended Warranties are generally ripoffs and terrible investments. I know from doing them. It's how these stores make a good chunk of their money. Thats why they are such assholes about selling them and will do or say anything to get you to buy one. Some of the lies I have heard are absolutely classic actually. Get a good credit card and go through their program instead. Always read the fine print as well.

Toodles.

 

[Bobby-m]

If you do get burn in on a LCD can't you just replace the small color panels inside the projector?? (newbi so don't know the name) .
:b

I don’t think it cost much and can be done with little effort.

 

[Andrew Grall]

That's just the point. Image retention is rare, and it DOES go away... The only cases of "burn-in" on LCD's were NOT on RP-LCD sets if I recall correctly. And in any of the cases where any damage did occur, it was under extremely abusive conditions. You literally have to TRY to ruin it.

 

[Grace]

wrong..you don't have to TRY to ruin it..esp if using it as a monitor and your windows desktop icons are static - and you don't use a screensaver.

i have read of instances where ppl leave a reverse negative of the burn in picture or leave a white background for an ext period of time to remove 'image retention'

however this is not a sure thing nor guaranteed by any means. so there is no absolute answer.

in short, your mileage may vary - and no one bears any resp for recommended methods of fixing it but YOU =)

 

[ChrisWiggles]

Folks!

Phosphor based devices, such as CRT based displays (CRT direct view monitors, or CRT-based RPTVs, CRT front projectors), and plasmas, will wear over time as the phosphors are driven to emit light.

Non-phosphor based displays, such as LCD, DLP, LCOS will not suffer this problem long-term. LCD can suffer from temporary image retention, I've seen this on LCD monitors run 24-7, and it looks like burn in. But displaying a changed image for a little while, a minute or so, usually makes this go away.

There is an entire thread dedicated to the burn-in issue for phosphor displays:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=105385



First, it sounds like you typoed, and meant to say LCD, and not CRT. A CRT display burns in the phosphors in the actual tube. in a direct view, this is pretty much the bulk of the entire set. in an RPTV, individual guns need to be replaced, but in either case this is at the cost of minimally at least a few hundred dollars, plus labor. it can extend to thousands sometimes for replacing tubes.

I've never read about permanent burn-in on LCDs, but I suppose it may be possible over very very long term permanent use. In which case the user is probably accepting of this happening with such abusive use of the display for some specialized purpose. i cannot envision any even remotely normal home use to cause permanent damage to non-phosphor based displays like DLP, LCD, LCos.