plasma vs. wega at circuit city (1 Viewer)

[lee.b]

Can someone help reconcile this for me:

Today I was gawking at tvs at circuit city. The tv that I am shooting for for my next, wega hs500 (actually I would like the 600), was next to the wall of plasma sets. A larger panasonic and smaller hitachi or something.

Circuit city had some looped hd signal playing on all tvs. Going back and forth with my eyes, I noticed a much improved picture on the several thousand dollar plasma sets, vs. the $1500 for the hd wega.

My question: If both are hd sets, why is the plasma picture so much better..so much more 'film' like? Is it because plasma is that much better, or because circuit city saves their best signals for their wall mounted plasma sets. That is, the wega was getting a degraded/split signal..while the plasma was, perhaps getting its own dedicated signal.

I'm wondering if I just answered my own question, now that I remember that 'every' tv there had the same content loop, synchronized exactly. I guess different signals isn't an option? So...is the plasma just really that much better? And why? Thanks in advance.

Also, anyone here work at c.c that can shed light on the 'splitting' going on there.

 

[Adil M]

The splitting is done equally. They don't give any preference to any tv. At our CC I setup the Grand Wega b/c I really like the TV and I hooked up a Panny Cp72 and a HD VCR Jvc to it, but the same signal gets split and amplified to each tv. It all goes through some real crummy, but industrial grade wiring.
Most people see an improvement at home... or at least that's what I tell them .

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I assume the Wega's a CRT direct-view given your recent posts.

Anyway, as have been pointed out before, especially by Michael TLV, the CRT direct-views cannot take all that much advantage of the horizontal resolution of HD images. Michael suggested ~750x1080i for one slightly older(?) Sony Wega, but they probably all are similar. Meanwhile, the Panny HD plasma you probably saw does 1024x768p (42") or maybe even 1366x768p (50") w/out any geometry/convergence issues whatsoever and w/out interlaced artifacts.

Since you apparently like a very sharp/crisp looking picture, that's exactly where the plasma's strengths lie, and the progressive image gives you that film-like look instead of the interlaced video look. But of course, those plasmas will cost 3.5 to 6x as much as the Sony Wega.

Even if you only saw a Panny ED plasma that downconverts to 852x480p, you might still like it better due to the lack of geometry/convergence issues and interlaced artifacts. The horizontal resolution is probably higher than the Sony Wega while the 480p might look close enough to 1080i on some material.

AND if they actually kept the signal digital going into the plasmas, then that would also eliminate any analog noise that most other HDTVs are subjected to.

_Man_

 

[lee.b]

Man-Fai...well, then that explains it. I guess I'll just say that plasma, then, seems not be just a gimmicky 4" deep HD decorating statement, but (as far as I've seen) a standard for displaying hd content. Filmlike you say, that's exactly what it looked like..even though I argued here that hdtv's 'appear' to be more clear than cinema shown movies.

Maybe If my local theater showed the equivalent of plasma on the 'big screen', I'd be more wowed. Perhaps this is what the new D-Theater thing is all about.

But I just have to say, when the right material is shown on the plasma, it is absolutely stunning when compared to HD on everything else. Thanks for the info.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

But plasmas do have their own flaws as others have pointed out. You may find those flaws much more acceptable than others or even hardly noticeable at all. For others, those flaws might be too distracting.

Personally, I do like what I've seen from good plasma displays, but they are just way too expensive for my blood. Maybe they'll become quite affordable by the time I'm ready to upgrade from my recently bought RPTV. Might very well coincide w/ when HD-DVD also becomes an affordable reality...

_Man_