Why Plasma TVs Are Dying

[boju]

Im favor of Plasma.

I've tried LCD tvs before and peripheral lag is damaging.

Hail Plasma for its 0.2ms response time. Even quicker than a pc monitor...

Those buying LCD TVs would be unroad worthy.

 

[wiyosaya]

I bought a 50" LG Plasma Last November for $600, and as far as I am concerned, no LCD/LED set can compare to it because of plasma's inherent emissive nature, wider color gamut, and superior black to white ratios, i.e., contrast.

As I see it, this article focuses on the market aspects of LCD/LED, and it is missing a large portion of the story as that, IMHO, involves future technological advances. One of those advances is already starting to appear on the market. It is OLED.

Last January at CES Panasonic showed a 56", 4K OLED set that was manufactured using a technology that prints the display. Panasonic has also announced that they will be bringing similar OLED sets to the market in 2015. Power consumption on OLEDs is considerably less than that of plasma and is also less than that of LCD/LED sets.

In addition, OLED has a wider color gamut than plasma while maintaining plasma's emissive advantage.

While the decrease in market for plasma sets is part of the equation, it makes no sense to continue to pump money into an antiquated technology as doing so would only divert funds from Panasonic's stated path to OLED.

So I think this article lacks consideration of the fact that Panasonic has publicly stated their intention to move towards mass marketing of OLED sets. OLED sets from LG and Samsung can already be had if you have a big enough bank account. Reviews of those sets uniformly agree that they produce the best TV pictures so far in the history of TV. If Panasonic were to skip OLED, I think it would be a major mistake as OLED has already moved from the laboratory to the commercial market place.

 

[Thorfkin]

That's a shame. I prefer Plasma over LCD. I use currently a 58 inch Panasonic Viera Plasma TV in my home theater setup. I was hoping some day to replace it with a 70+ inch model but that won't likely happen if Panasonic discontinues Plasma production.

 

[hixbot]

LCD sell better than plasma because that's what most big box vendors suggest to their customers. They do this because the margins are better (they make more money) selling LCD.
Also big box vendors always set their display models to the brightest settings, and LCD are capable of higher brightness. Brighter always looks better in a department store. Of course your living room is a different story, but most consumers don't do any research.

 

[Arton]

LCD use less power? True, but when it comes to picture, nothing beats the naturalness of a plasma. Are LED/LCD screens clear and sharp? Very. but for me the picture is so fake, not natural. It's like one of these computer generated photos. Clear, very. Natural, never. Have both at home and can make comparisons. I have a 6 year old 50 inch Pioneer plasma and a 12 months old 55 inchToshiba smart LED. Although the Pioneer is now old technology, it beats the Toshiba by miles. Pity Pioneer stopped producing TVs, but I heard they are making a comeback in some Scandinavian countries. Maybe just testing the waters

 

[Tom Osborne]

A scientific study on human behaviour and decision making put 8 actors in a room with one genuine volunteer. The volunteer didn't know the other 8 people were actors and had been told to answer a series of questions INCORRECTLY e.g 2+2=5 , capital of France is Madrid etc...Initially the volunteer was incredulous at the wildly inaccurate replies but before long discarded what he knew to be right and started to answer the questions in line with the actors in order to be 'one of the gang'.
You can't help but feel that something similar has happened with plasma Vs. LED purchasing decisions on a huge scale.

 

[andsoitgoes]

If I could darken my entire living room, there's nothing that would keep me from a plasma. I purchased a 50" plasma a few years back for a few hundred dollars. The picture was astonishingly amazing, and the ratings for the tv seemed to state it was far from the best example of plasma TVs as a whole.

I did have burn in issues, running my ps3 for a short time left some significant temporary burn in that lasted the better part of a day. As I have kids, and I tend to be forgetful, I knew either due to me or my kids, something would happen and I'd be stuck with some terrible, permanent burn in.

But even removing those issues, the comments about the screen being a mirror are so incredibly true. I am home primarily during the day, and it was impossible to watch anything at all. I never realized just how bright my rooms actually was, and I was surprised as this wasn't an issue with my tube tv.

So back it went and I got a 3D LED/LCD TV for the family. It was passive, so no expensive glasses that can break. It was 5" longer and came with a free 3d player, and while I paid about twice the price, I did get more from a quantity standpoint.

Motion, however, is absolutely terrible on this set, and if I had the money I'd change to something else. At the time, I couldn't have picked a plasma and the higher refresh rate TVs were way out of my price range.

Really, though, so much of this is a moot point. The next upgrade for me will likely be whatever comes after 4, possible even after 8. I sit about 10+ feet from the TV, so unless I bought an 80+" TV (which would work thanks to the design of the house, it's about the only thing they did right) an upgrade wouldn't mean much.

And, beyond that, my main movie collection is criterion films and classics. How much better will 12 Angry Men, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai and The Seventh Seal REALLY look?

I understand films like Gravity, Avengers and such are made with ultra high resolutions in mind, and I'll be sad that I won't be able to experiencing them with the current tech, but those films make up so little of my movie watching, which does make me an anomaly, I'm sure.