Input lag wars!, post your input lag results of your LCD display here for reference - Page 54

all can be valid concerns but really are not on most plasmas as big of an issue as many make them out to be.

you've ran the gamut of LCD's out there today pretty much so i would give a panasonic or samsung plasma a shot

notes on them are this

rising blacks and with it more rapid IR is potentially a problem with Panasonic's

buzzing is a common problem on Samsung's

avoid LG's they lag too much and are sub par compared to panny and samsung anyways.

if you can find a pioneer they are the best and really do not suffer from anything mentioned above without serious abuse and they have low lag.

i only personally have experience with two panasonic plasmas both 2009 models, we have a 50X1 and a buddy of mine has a 50S14.

both have black risen and have increased IR as the major noticeable result, 2010 models do not have this happen as bad as 2009 models did and both of us are 100% happy with our purchases and game on both of them. we experience IR quite often but not from games but using and asus o!play on it (black background with bright white text menus = rapid IR) however as fast as that IR occurs its gone in the same short amount of time once you watch something moving or run the IR remover built into the TV so its really not all that bad, plus its only really visible on an all black screen at night time, when watching TV its very rarely notable before its reduced to the point of non existence on even black screens.

as for floating blacks and flickering whites, yes both happen but no they are not as commonly seen as you might think, you really have to be on the look out for either one to see it and this something that does effect all plasma's due to the way they work.

buzzing can happen on panasonics but it takes an all white screen with really jacked up picture settings to make it happen and even then the only way you hear it is if the room is dead quiet, its so low of a buzz that any ambient sound will drown it out easily.

pioneer saw they had to exit the market because the competition (panasonic, samsung and LG) were quickly heading to produce cheap plasmas, to counter it they had formed an alliance with Panasonic to use their PDP's in cheaper models to stay in business because people that wanted high quality plasma's had often already bought pioneers and the market was shrinking for them. then the first recession started to take hold and pioneer smartly bailed on plasma and sold most of their technology to panasonic.

from what i understand from hearing a former head of pioneer talk about panasonic's black rise issue late last year is panasonic had the plans from pioneer on how to produce very dark blacks and extend the life of PDP's to very long times.

how it works is pretty simple

plasma phosphors like CRT phosphors wear rapidly when new and then level off in wear rate as they age to the point they wear very little over long periods of time.

when a panel is brand new it does not require much drive voltage to function properly and the lower you can run the drive voltage the better the blacks are or MLL (min light luminance) but as the phosphors age the drive voltage needs to rise accordingly in order to maintain a properly functioning PDP.

pioneer implemented the same rise in their sets but he said they studied it for many years before they started to actually do this and that is why only the very latest Pioneer models were so awesome.

he speculated that panasonic leaned about this technique from pioneer but did not have all of the information on how to properly implement it in such a short amount of time. they likely in their own not so realistic house tests determined more rapid voltage rises that occurred before they should have with real world use and the result is that normally used plasma's get too much voltage rise at set times for the amount of wear they have actually had on the PDP. keep in mind that the wear of a PDP cannot be internally measured by the TV. it takes external devices/tests to determine this and predicting wear based on on time numbers is inaccurate.

so with all this being said panasonic has already said they changed the way the rise happens in 2010 model's and granted i have not really looked hard into it i've yet to see any uproar about 2010 models like there was about the 2009 models once this was discovered so its safe to say that they at the very least do not suffer from this issue in the way the 2009 model's did.

its also worth stating that even the risen 2009 model's will eventually wear in and work like they were new, the problem is between 1000-3000 hours of use approximately they suffer from increased IR and worse black levels. after the phosphor wear settles they will operate closer to when they were brand new than when they were at 1000 hours.