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Can LCD (LED) simulate plasma ?

post #1 of 168
1/19/10 at 1:55pm
Thread Starter 
For some time I am looking around for a flatscreen tv. Plasma gives the best image, i think. Good "blacks" and good greyscales! It gives to me a very natural image.
Most LCD (LED) i find unreal, too much contrast, bright image, although "whites" can be good.

The technology of, especially LED tv's, is much newer and mechanically better, i think. I have read many stories about buzzing plasma's, broken screens, burnt in logos etc. also with the expensive plasma's. Furthermore are plasma's much heavier and last less long. I think hanging a plasma from a wall causes many mechanical problems because of the weight.

My question: Can i calibrate a LED tv the way that it simulates a plasma ? For instance by using less contrast, readjusting the colours, and the greyscales ? I like this especially with documentaries and movies.
And if yes: which tv can do this best ?
I am considering to buy a 46" or 50 ".

Thank you.
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post #2 of 168
1/20/10 at 7:47am
I think you have some misconceptions about these technologies.

In the early days of plasma some of the problems you describe did exist. Issues with burn in and lifespan have been addressed and are on par with LCD now. Plasmas still use more energy than LCDs on average, but the difference is small depending on your viewing habits.

The weight thing doesn't really make sense. Plasma televisions are designed with a frame and support structure suitable to their weight. If hung incorrectly the set could come crashing down, which might affect it's performance, but that's about it.

Finally, the notion of calibrating an LCD to mimic a plasma is kind of a non-sequitur. It's kind of like trying to calibrate your VCR to be like a DVD player.

It sounds like what you ought to do is buy a plasma. I mean, if you want a set that acts like a plasma, why not get a plasma?
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post #3 of 168
1/20/10 at 9:59pm
There is no way to "calibrate' an LCD to create plasma's natural motion. The LCD crowd is on the 3rd or 4th iteration to solve that problem and 240hz does not cut it in my eyes. And when you factor in the off angle viewing issues wiht LCDs there is no way to make an LCD mimic a plasma.
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post #4 of 168
1/20/10 at 10:23pm
Ditto


and one of the biggest issues with LCDs is the poor grayscale uniformity, which hinders calibration accuracy (especially single point calibration). However, IPS based panels do have superior uniformity and viewing angles compared to VA. So wait for the the Neo-LCD from Panasonic to see if it's possible mimic PDP.



PS: Panel lifespan doesn't just depends on the panel. Even if the panel can last for 10 years, the rest of the components may not. So it's a meaningless facto tbh.
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post #5 of 168
1/20/10 at 11:08pm
Wrong question anyways. LCDs have much more natural images than do Plasmas.

What Plasma's simulate well, as did CRT televisions in the decades before plasma technology, is the appearance of film images. Plasmas and CRTs both flash images of short duration onto the viewing screen, the same way that film flashes images via the shutter of the film projector.

The other thing that plasma panels offer is the same comforting spectrum of light that you have always seen on a CRT screen, because both technologies utilize glowing phosphors to produce light. (The CRT excites them to glow with an electron beam in a vacuum, the Plasma by passing an electric current through the ionized gas of the plasma "cell" that comprises a pixel.)

What an LCD display does better than either Plasma or CRT is simulate the real world. Images of real objects are continuous, not discrete flashes of light such as you get from Film/Plasma/CRT. An LCD is a "sample and hold" display, where the image is continuously illuminated by the LCD backlight (flourescent or LED)(which incidentally is closer to real daylight colors) and continuously displayed, changing as a new video frame is clocked into the frame buffer. The higher the frame rate, the better the simulation of the real world you see on the LCD panel. Modern LCDs that offer screen refresh rates of 120Hz or 240Hz are such good simulations of reality that they are criticized as being "too real" or "realer than real" (which is entirely mistaken, and actually means "realer than I ever saw on film, or on a CRT TV, or on a Plasma TV"). This happens because most of us grew up watching film source material on CRTs, a distinctly "unreal" image.

Nowadays in the 21st Century, much of the material we display on our video displays is pure digital, it either never was a film because it was captured on tape or created in an animation studio, or it passed through a "digital intermediate", because editing and visual effects are much cheaper than the optical film effects and film editing. Such digital movies for my taste look better on LCD than on either CRT or Plasma.

So decide if you want to select a Plasma display that has the comforting appearance of the TVs you grew up with, and is a better film display. The other option is a high refresh rate LCD which for my taste is considerably better for animated movies, movies captured on videotape, and movies that had Digital Intermediates in post-production.
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post #6 of 168
1/21/10 at 4:09am
What a great post, Gary. I completely agree with everything you said. There's a similar story with sharpness where they call blurrier image "softer and more natural". Since when real world isn't perfectly sharp?

People don't really get it and they'll expect CRT like picture in 50 years...

I wonder how does OLED look in comparison with LCD in everything you mentioned...
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post #7 of 168
1/21/10 at 6:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary McCoy View Post

Wrong question anyways. LCDs have much more natural images than do Plasmas.

What Plasma's simulate well, as did CRT televisions in the decades before plasma technology, is the appearance of film images. Plasmas and CRTs both flash images of short duration onto the viewing screen, the same way that film flashes images via the shutter of the film projector.

The other thing that plasma panels offer is the same comforting spectrum of light that you have always seen on a CRT screen, because both technologies utilize glowing phosphors to produce light. (The CRT excites them to glow with an electron beam in a vacuum, the Plasma by passing an electric current through the ionized gas of the plasma "cell" that comprises a pixel.)

What an LCD display does better than either Plasma or CRT is simulate the real world. Images of real objects are continuous, not discrete flashes of light such as you get from Film/Plasma/CRT. An LCD is a "sample and hold" display, where the image is continuously illuminated by the LCD backlight (flourescent or LED)(which incidentally is closer to real daylight colors) and continuously displayed, changing as a new video frame is clocked into the frame buffer. The higher the frame rate, the better the simulation of the real world you see on the LCD panel. Modern LCDs that offer screen refresh rates of 120Hz or 240Hz are such good simulations of reality that they are criticized as being "too real" or "realer than real" (which is entirely mistaken, and actually means "realer than I ever saw on film, or on a CRT TV, or on a Plasma TV"). This happens because most of us grew up watching film source material on CRTs, a distinctly "unreal" image.

Nowadays in the 21st Century, much of the material we display on our video displays is pure digital, it either never was a film because it was captured on tape or created in an animation studio, or it passed through a "digital intermediate", because editing and visual effects are much cheaper than the optical film effects and film editing. Such digital movies for my taste look better on LCD than on either CRT or Plasma.

So decide if you want to select a Plasma display that has the comforting appearance of the TVs you grew up with, and is a better film display. The other option is a high refresh rate LCD which for my taste is considerably better for animated movies, movies captured on videotape, and movies that had Digital Intermediates in post-production.

I think there's a disconnect between theory and reality here. First of all, unless something is filmed at 240 fps, it's not really going to take advantage of what a 240Hz display is capable of.

More importantly though, our perceptions are limited. If you watch a super-high speed film of something, like a hummingbird in flight, you see things happening that you never knew were there. That's because it's happening too fast for us to detect. That doesn't mean that filming a hummingbird at less than 10,000 fps creates a less faithful representation of the bird, because we can't see that (at real time speed) anyway.

I always think of stop-motion animation. It always looks jerky, no matter how many adjustments they cram into every second. Why is that? Because presenting of blur of movement is more akin to what we actually see, and you can't do taht with stop-motion (although I've always thought they could use post-processing software to do it); we don't see discrete, clear images jumping from one place to the next.
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post #8 of 168
1/21/10 at 6:38am
....except that there is an exact correlation between what I said and the images that you see on flat panels and in theaters. You can watch a large calibrated Kuro Plasma in the dark and you will eventually reach a point where you accept what you are seeing as an excellant simulation of film, especially if viewing 24Hz material at 72Hz or 96Hz. But I have never felt that I was looking at the real world when viewing a Plasma display - and in a commercial theater, I notice the same effect - film always looks like film, a digital projection of a digital movie looks realer than film.

With my LCD properly adjusted I sometimes experience the optical illusion that I am looking through a pane of glass with another world on the other side, complete with depth and colors. Which I think is great, because my goal is a convincing depiction of reality, not a convincing depiction of a film theater. A good simulation of film is also a worthy goal, just not the one I choose to pursue.

With 120Hz and 240Hz refresh, the frames in between the source frames are interpolated frames. This makes no difference in the end, although some people make an entirely theoretical argument that interpolated frames "are not real", they do in fact enhance the simulation of reality by increasing the discrete display frame rate to 120Hz or 240Hz, smoothing motion as they do so. When I turn off frame interpolation on my Samsung (which they call "Auto Motion Plus"), the display (which is always at 120Hz refresh) falls into 5:5 when fed 24Hz source, and the result is the jerky strobing look of film - which is simply not my personal preference for viewing.

Once you have made the mental adjustment required to accept frame interpolation in the images you view, you tend to prefer 60Hz video source over 30Hz video source and 24Hz source - and the other thing that LCDs excell at is live sports broadcasts, because of this reason. 720p60 broadcasts can be at either 30Hz or 60Hz, 1080i60 broadcasts are at 30Hz frame rate (although sometimes the odd/even fields come from different video frames that ARE at 60Hz). It is only now with the advent of 3D displays that we are starting to see a few rare displays that will accept and display faster input frame rates than 60Hz anyways. 99+% of all HDTVs in use max out at 60Hz input, only frame interpolation gets you to a faster output frame rate.
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post #9 of 168
1/21/10 at 6:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryko1000 View Post

What a great post, Gary. I completely agree with everything you said. There's a similar story with sharpness where they call blurrier image "softer and more natural". Since when real world isn't perfectly sharp?

People don't really get it and they'll expect CRT like picture in 50 years...

I wonder how does OLED look in comparison with LCD in everything you mentioned...


The real world is not digitally edge enhanced. When I look at a tree outside I don't see ringing or other artifacts as I do on a display with its sharpness set too high. Many plasmas and LCDs are capable of an accurate, natural level of sharpness from normal viewing distances.
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post #10 of 168
1/21/10 at 7:00am
Your goal when viewing your video display is a matter of preference. Some of us prefer the more convincing color rendition of flourescent or LED backlighting, which is closer to real daylight than the phosphor glows of Plasma and CRT displays. Some of us prefer faster frame rates than the 24Hz of film, especially when not viewing in total darkness. These are all viewer preferences, there is no right or wrong here.

"Digital Enhancement" is something that occurs in movie post-production, in DVD and Blu-Ray mastering, and in the video processor of your particular display (relative to the display settings you also choose to select). The argument that Plasma images are superior simply because there may be one less video enhancement technique in use on a Plasma rather than an LCD is very weak anyways - and not one I have ever accepted. I know what I like and I can see what I like on my LCD.

By the way, I prefer images without edge enhancement on Plasmas or LCDs. But sometimes you have no choice, I have seen edge enhancement applied to live broadcasts. When other artifacts exist in the image such as interlacing artifacts, chroma bugs, scaling artifacts, etc., they exist in both Plasma and LCD displays. Frame interpolation artifacts exist only if you are choosing to use frame interpolation when viewing.
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post #11 of 168
1/21/10 at 7:30am
When i watch tv(sony 40inch XBR5 lcd)it is often as if im looking at real people,i have seen several plasma's they not offer this kind of realism.
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post #12 of 168
1/21/10 at 7:46am
Some people think everything should be shot of video. What ever..... I guess the words subtlety and nuance don't enter their vocabulary. If you like the look fine, crank up the settings and make everything look like video. Just don't expect me to.

The simple fact is that LCD displays are full of artifacts that are not there in real life. The manufactures try to cover it up with crap like 240 hz, but it's just an attempt to cover the formats shortcomings. The fact that some people like the fake look of motion on an LCD is besides the point. People like all kinds of things that are not real. To me the "Video look" of LCD spells "cheap' to me. Video has always been second rate technology to film. It has it's place, but I'm not going to watch a movie and pay big bucks to see some flat video images.
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post #13 of 168
1/21/10 at 7:47am
I have never felt that there is an important inherent difference in the "naturaless" of different display backlighting. Any display with full white balance adjustability should render any variances moot.

And yes, I realize that edge enhancement is built into some material. You could find endless complaints relating to such practices in the Blu-Ray forum. I have no desire to apply it on the display level.
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post #14 of 168
1/21/10 at 8:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary McCoy View Post

Wrong question anyways. LCDs have much more natural images than do Plasmas.

What Plasma's simulate well, as did CRT televisions in the decades before plasma technology, is the appearance of film images. Plasmas and CRTs both flash images of short duration onto the viewing screen, the same way that film flashes images via the shutter of the film projector.

The other thing that plasma panels offer is the same comforting spectrum of light that you have always seen on a CRT screen, because both technologies utilize glowing phosphors to produce light. (The CRT excites them to glow with an electron beam in a vacuum, the Plasma by passing an electric current through the ionized gas of the plasma "cell" that comprises a pixel.)

What an LCD display does better than either Plasma or CRT is simulate the real world. Images of real objects are continuous, not discrete flashes of light such as you get from Film/Plasma/CRT. An LCD is a "sample and hold" display, where the image is continuously illuminated by the LCD backlight (flourescent or LED)(which incidentally is closer to real daylight colors) and continuously displayed, changing as a new video frame is clocked into the frame buffer. The higher the frame rate, the better the simulation of the real world you see on the LCD panel. Modern LCDs that offer screen refresh rates of 120Hz or 240Hz are such good simulations of reality that they are criticized as being "too real" or "realer than real" (which is entirely mistaken, and actually means "realer than I ever saw on film, or on a CRT TV, or on a Plasma TV"). This happens because most of us grew up watching film source material on CRTs, a distinctly "unreal" image.

Nowadays in the 21st Century, much of the material we display on our video displays is pure digital, it either never was a film because it was captured on tape or created in an animation studio, or it passed through a "digital intermediate", because editing and visual effects are much cheaper than the optical film effects and film editing. Such digital movies for my taste look better on LCD than on either CRT or Plasma.

So decide if you want to select a Plasma display that has the comforting appearance of the TVs you grew up with, and is a better film display. The other option is a high refresh rate LCD which for my taste is considerably better for animated movies, movies captured on videotape, and movies that had Digital Intermediates in post-production.

I completely understand as I also prefer the motion appearance of an LCD, but here's the problem.

We don't have sources above 60p (excluding gaming) and 60p has frame latency of 16.7ms, which is too long.

MCFI helps but it's not perfect.

So to increase motion resolution, manufactures are now simulating a feature that is inherent to PDP and CRT (black period).
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post #15 of 168
1/21/10 at 8:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt L View Post

Some people think everything should be shot of video. What ever..... I guess the words subtlety and nuance don't enter their vocabulary. If you like the look fine, crank up the settings and make everything look like video. Just don't expect me to.

The simple fact is that LCD displays are full of artifacts that are not there in real life. The manufactures try to cover it up with crap like 240 hz, but it's just an attempt to cover the formats shortcomings. The fact that some people like the fake look of motion on an LCD is besides the point. People like all kinds of things that are not real. To me the "Video look" of LCD spells "cheap' to me. Video has always been second rate technology to film. It has it's place, but I'm not going to watch a movie and pay big bucks to see some flat video images.

The XBR5 has depth.
When i see a face on my tv and it looks like a real persons face it
can't be fakelooking.
Its clear to me that you never owned a high-end Sony lcd.

The 'realism look' is where its all going,50 years from now there will
only be 'realism look' tv's.
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post #16 of 168
1/21/10 at 8:29am
The entire concept of realism is entirely subjective to the user.

However, providing both types have excellent black, white and grayscale uniformity, accurate color and gamma representation and composed of the same finish (matte/glossy), the rendered image should be indistinguishable.
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post #17 of 168
1/21/10 at 9:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tbird8450 View Post

The real world is not digitally edge enhanced. When I look at a tree outside I don't see ringing or other artifacts as I do on a display with its sharpness set too high. Many plasmas and LCDs are capable of an accurate, natural level of sharpness from normal viewing distances.

Edge enhancement is a matter of image processing, not LCD technology itself. Plasmas would have the same amount of it on same settings too, but they are much more forgiving when displaying really small details. You just don't see stuff like that. That's why people often say plasmas have "less artifacts". It's true - because it isn't sharp enough to display them and whole image is "smeared" in comparison with LCDs. Plasma forgives every little fault that LCD easily shows.

LCD monitors over DVI are allways pin-sharp-perfect, there's ZERO edge enhancement if you dont play with sharpness (if available, and it isn't most of the time when using DVI). You can even play on subpixel level with cleartype etc, only because it's sharpness is perfect and without any enhancement.

LCD as a technology can do that, and plasma just can't. "Softer, more natural image" of plasmas is something that we've been watching for 100 years on CRTs, but it doesn't mean it should be that way. There's nothing more natural in it in comparison with 100% sharp image.

All of this is because of inertia - people know what they expect from a TV and they get it with plasma. LCD might be considered as something next-gen in comparison with that. Unfortunately, it has it's flaws, and that ony added confusion to the whole story.

All this sounds like those guys who liked cracking of gramophone records. It certainly had some charm, you may be emotionally connected to it, but you can't say it sounds better than CD.

It is a personal preference, but we're talking about technology and possibilities here, not preferences.
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post #18 of 168
1/21/10 at 10:09am
There is nothing less sharp about plasmas other than in the fact that they can show dithering noise at close distances. Back up to a normal distance and it's generally not an issue. I've spent a lt of tome watching blu-rays on XBR8s, A950s, a couple 8500s, etc. When you turn off all of the appropriate enhancers they appear no more sharp to me than my plasma.

Anyone with a calibrated 1080p LCD around 50" is free to set it up in my livingroom and point out how it's sharper looking from my couch (~7ft back).
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post #19 of 168
1/21/10 at 10:19am
I respect what you said, but that's something i really don't get. Many people feel the way you do, but I CLEARLY see the difference in sharpness between plasma and LCD (same size and resolution). I allways see it. In 1080p it's even more pronounced. LCD image looks much more detailed to me.

Maybe you are one of those who allways set sharpnes to -15(minimum), for example. People do that to get rid of edge enhancement, but (IMHO) end up with really blurry picture.

On plasma, sometimes i even ask myself "Is this HD?". I never see that detail punch and never have that HD feeling i allways have with lcd (and details is what HD is all about - for me at last).
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post #20 of 168
1/21/10 at 10:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielo TM View Post

The entire concept of realism is entirely subjective to the user..


What you see with your eyes when you look around that
is 100% visual-realisme,this is not a concept,this is a fact.
Says who? your brains.
It can objectively be determinated witch tv-technology is
close/closest to the visual realisme of the eyes.
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post #21 of 168
1/21/10 at 11:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryko1000 View Post

I respect what you said, but that's something i really don't get. Many people feel the way you do, but I CLEARLY see the difference in sharpness between plasma and LCD (same size and resolution). I allways see it. In 1080p it's even more pronounced. LCD image looks much more detailed to me.

Maybe you are one of those who allways set sharpnes to -15(minimum), for example. People do that to get rid of edge enhancement, but (IMHO) end up with really blurry picture.

On plasma, sometimes i even ask myself "Is this HD?". I never see that detail punch and never have that HD feeling i allways have with lcd (and details is what HD is all about - for me at last).

Then you've either never seen a high-end plasma, properly configured and displaying a good-quality source, or you simply like a more enhanced picture

I set my sharpness to its neutral point. Sometimes that's the minimum setting, sometimes it isn't. I don't want to introduce edge enhancement and I don't want to soften the material. My goal is accurate pixel-per-pixel rendition from source-to-screen with the minimum amount of processesing necessary. Of course, if you're starting with a source of poor quality, then that extra processing can come in handy. But for Blu-Rays and good-quality HD TV, I don't care for any of it.

As far as realism goes, it's pretty simple to me: A realistic picture does not look digital or "electronic". Obtaining such an image from a digital display is not easy, and generally requires among other things excellent contrast, properly saturated colors, an accurate grayscale, a flat gamma curve targeted to around 2.2, sufficient light output without clipping, and natural motion rendering with as little added processing as possible.

So far the closest display I've personally seen to nailing those qualities has been a plasma.
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post #22 of 168
1/21/10 at 11:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryko1000 View Post

I respect what you said, but that's something i really don't get. Many people feel the way you do, but I CLEARLY see the difference in sharpness between plasma and LCD (same size and resolution). I allways see it. In 1080p it's even more pronounced. LCD image looks much more detailed to me.

Maybe you are one of those who allways set sharpnes to -15(minimum), for example. People do that to get rid of edge enhancement, but (IMHO) end up with really blurry picture.

On plasma, sometimes i even ask myself "Is this HD?". I never see that detail punch and never have that HD feeling i allways have with lcd (and details is what HD is all about - for me at last).

There is one other visible difference between Plasma and LCD displays. Generally this effect is visible only at very close viewing of detailed images, but with the earlier mention of TrueType fonts we may be talking about this effect.

Although LCD and Plasma displays of the same size and resolution have individual pixels that are approximately the same size, the light is emitted from the ENTIRE PIXEL in an LCD, and the color of the light is related to the amount of "twisting" in the complex liquid crystal molecules, but an LCD is a "transmissive" display where the entire area of the pixel is the same color.

In contrast, a Plasma display is an "emissive" display, and there are three color phosphors, effectively three "sub-pixels" for each pixel. The color of that pixel relates to the amount of light emitted by each of the three Red/Green/Blue sub-pixels. However, the phosphors are printed in parallel bars each of which comprises approximately 1/3rd the area of the entire pixel:

....in short, this is why an LCD can be used as a dual-purpose video/computer display - you can view it at very close range and the computer text is sharp and detailed. But try this with a plasma display and you will see color fringes and moire patterns, due to the physical seperation of the three colored sub-pixels.

But this effect is visible only when you get very close - below one screen width away from the display. From further away then that, the typical human eyesight will not distinguish the sub-pixels, you see only the single color from the mix of three sub-pixel colors.
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post #23 of 168
1/21/10 at 11:37am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 8mile13 View Post

What you see with your eyes when you look around that
is 100% visual-realisme,this is not a concept,this is a fact.
It can objectively be determinated witch tv-technology is
close/closest to the visual realisme of the eyes.

What I see is not what others see and vice versa.

To me, 60p is unnatural. To others, it is natural and swear by it. Some can't sport the difference between 24, 25 and 30 while others can (including myself).


Fact is quantifiable data, not opinions or personal beliefs. Just because the eye can detect x number of colors and x number of frames doesn't mean all humans interpret such information in the same manner.


We are not machines with identical software and hardware. I wish we were but we are not.
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post #24 of 168
1/21/10 at 11:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary McCoy View Post

Although LCD and Plasma displays of the same size and resolution have individual pixels that are approximately the same size, the light is emitted from the ENTIRE PIXEL in an LCD, and the color of the light is related to the amount of "twisting" in the complex liquid crystal molecules, but an LCD is a "transmissive" display where the entire area of the pixel is the same color.

That's not true

The LCD crystals do not produce color, they produce grayscale.

Each pixel of an LCD is fitted RGB color filter. So 1/3 of a pixel is composed of either red, green or blue sub-pixel (just like plasma).

FD Sony Trintron:



IPS based LCD:



Old ED PDP:



http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/pixels.htm
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post #25 of 168
1/21/10 at 12:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nielo TM View Post

What I see is not what others see and vice versa. Just because the eye can detect x number of colors and x number of frames doesn't mean all humans interpret such information in the same maner.

What you say is true,this is also true:
.
Most human eyes work basicly the same and most human brains
work basicly the same .
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post #26 of 168
1/21/10 at 12:05pm
Extremely well said! I remembered one comment from a post I saw the other day: People often describe a good image on TV as "3D like" or "images are sharp and popped out" or "colors are vibrant and life-like", but when a good LCD TV gives that image quality, some people start to say those images on LCD TVs are fake/unnatural. This really puzzles me since their statements are usually self-contradicting.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary McCoy View Post

Wrong question anyways. LCDs have much more natural images than do Plasmas.

What Plasma's simulate well, as did CRT televisions in the decades before plasma technology, is the appearance of film images. Plasmas and CRTs both flash images of short duration onto the viewing screen, the same way that film flashes images via the shutter of the film projector.

The other thing that plasma panels offer is the same comforting spectrum of light that you have always seen on a CRT screen, because both technologies utilize glowing phosphors to produce light. (The CRT excites them to glow with an electron beam in a vacuum, the Plasma by passing an electric current through the ionized gas of the plasma "cell" that comprises a pixel.)

What an LCD display does better than either Plasma or CRT is simulate the real world. Images of real objects are continuous, not discrete flashes of light such as you get from Film/Plasma/CRT. An LCD is a "sample and hold" display, where the image is continuously illuminated by the LCD backlight (flourescent or LED)(which incidentally is closer to real daylight colors) and continuously displayed, changing as a new video frame is clocked into the frame buffer. The higher the frame rate, the better the simulation of the real world you see on the LCD panel. Modern LCDs that offer screen refresh rates of 120Hz or 240Hz are such good simulations of reality that they are criticized as being "too real" or "realer than real" (which is entirely mistaken, and actually means "realer than I ever saw on film, or on a CRT TV, or on a Plasma TV"). This happens because most of us grew up watching film source material on CRTs, a distinctly "unreal" image.

Nowadays in the 21st Century, much of the material we display on our video displays is pure digital, it either never was a film because it was captured on tape or created in an animation studio, or it passed through a "digital intermediate", because editing and visual effects are much cheaper than the optical film effects and film editing. Such digital movies for my taste look better on LCD than on either CRT or Plasma.

So decide if you want to select a Plasma display that has the comforting appearance of the TVs you grew up with, and is a better film display. The other option is a high refresh rate LCD which for my taste is considerably better for animated movies, movies captured on videotape, and movies that had Digital Intermediates in post-production.
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post #27 of 168
1/21/10 at 12:13pm
Quote:


Extremely well said! I remembered one comment from a post I saw the other day: People often describe a good image on TV as "3D like" or "images are sharp and popped out" or "colors are vibrant and life-like", but when a good LCD TV gives that image quality, some people start to say those images on LCD TVs are fake/unnatural. This really puzzles me since their statements are usually self-contradicting.

This is what I mean about not liking displays that look too "digital".

It's pretty easy to make most any modern TV of reasonable quality look 3D-like and vibrant - LCDs especially. Oversaturate, oversharpen, crank up your brightness, increase your gamma, etc and you'll usually arrive at an eye-popping image that catches attention. But such images do not hold up to scrutiny to me.

This is why excellent black, gamma and grayscale rendition is important. With those qualities in play, you can achieve a very dimensional, 3D-like, vibrant image that doesn't exude the "fake/unnatural" look. Not many displays can do that, but those that can impress me greatly.
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post #28 of 168
1/21/10 at 12:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by 8mile13 View Post

What you say is true,this is also true:
.
Most human eyes work basicly the same and most human brains
work basicly the same .

We have no evidence to conclude that.

We are aware of the brain's components and its functions but we still don't know how it truly works. Does it use analogue methodology or quantum. Is it pure hardware or software or combination of both. Does the consciousness play a part in audio and video perception and such? What kind of language does it use?

These are things we are currently researching.
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post #29 of 168
1/21/10 at 1:24pm
To me, the so-called "fake/unnatural look" is entirely subjective, not objective. It is funny to see that the basically same thing is considered natural if it is on Plasma TVs and is considered fake if on LCD TVs.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tbird8450 View Post

This is what I mean about not liking displays that look too "digital".

It's pretty easy to make most any modern TV of reasonable quality look 3D-like and vibrant - LCDs especially. Oversaturate, oversharpen, crank up your brightness, increase your gamma, etc and you'll usually arrive at an eye-popping image that catches attention. But such images do not hold up to scrutiny to me.

This is why excellent black, gamma and grayscale rendition is important. With those qualities in play, you can achieve a very dimensional, 3D-like, vibrant image that doesn't exude the "fake/unnatural" look. Not many displays can do that, but those that can impress me greatly.
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post #30 of 168
1/21/10 at 1:42pm
Quote:


It is funny to see that the basically same thing is considered natural if it is on Plasma TVs and is considered fake if on LCD TVs.

It's not "basically the same thing". I don't give a hoot what display technology is producing it; I prefer a natural, dimensional image to an overprocessed one. There's nothing contradictory about that.

Here's a crude analogy:

Imagine you're on the prowl for a female companion. You happen across two possible choices.

Option 1 wears a pound of makeup, has brightly-dyed hair, big ol' implants and a spray-tan.

Option 2 doesn't wear much makeup, has vibrant hair without the dye-job, is naturally curvy in the right spots, and was born olive-skinned.

Both are attractive. Both women will produce their share of admirers who are looking for a similar end-result. But each will have gone about it in different ways. Based purely on looks, I'm going for option 2.
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