2011 HDTV - Advice for Gamer Please. So confused.

Before I go into the input lag I wanted touch upon Plasma burn in. I own a Pioneer Pro 1150 that is in the living room and I used to have a Pioneer pro 110 and pro111. I have in error left the dvd player on the Pro 1150 overnight many times, it doesnt have a auto dimmer so in the morning it was still on full blast. Slight image retention was there but it went away. The 110 and 111 are the same.

Basically it would take ALOT of abuse to get permanent burn in, but image retention is a definite possibility. I personally would NOT worry about it.

As for input lag, in my experience with way too many tvs (sad I know) the Samsungs seem to be the worse culprits of input lag. The Pio's are good, some Sony's are good. I would have to say that taking the console to the store and try out some models you are eying. Thats really the only way to make sure.

I would check out the Sony 52hx929, the Panasonic VT30 and the Samsung's new Plasma's. You can try the Samsung lcd's but each could be widely different with input lag. Hope this helps a little

Before you go buying a plasma for gaming I would tell you to read the plasma forum for a while, where you will see countless stories of people who have the Madden scoreboard burned into their plasma because they were told modern plasmas don't have problems with burn in.

I can also tell you that finding a larger LCD with low input lag is nigh impossible these days. I ended up going with a 42 inch Panasonic D30, as it has about 30ms of lag, and I didnt find a better option on the market right now.

1-It's important to differentiate between "specs" and features. Most specs for contrast ratio and viewing angle are largely fictitious as there are no industry standards for the method of measurement. Pixel response time is usually specced and can also be fudged but not as badly. Pixel response time refers to how long it takes for the pixel to change for each frame of video--typically anywhere from 4-8ms for lcd panels (led is an lcd with a different backlight) and .001ms for plasma. The faster the pixel response time the less loss of resolution during fast motion, all other things being equal.
Pixel response time isn't really much of a factor in gaming lag.

Gaming lag is caused by relatively slow video processing--the gap between the time the set recieves an incoming signal and the time it actually appears on the screen--not a factor when watching tv, dvd, or BD, but important for types of gaming that require controller inputs to show up on the screen as quickly as possible. I don't know of a single mfg. that actually publishes specs for processing time. It can vary according to how much processing the set's doing. Many set's "game" mode turns off some video processing to speed things up. Leaving the frame interpolation features activated on a 120 or 240hz set (auto motion plus on a Samsung, Motionflow on a Sony) as well as turning on digital noise reduction and such slow down processing time.

LCD and LED lit LCD sets don't necessarily have to have slower processing than Plasmas, it's just that as a brand Panasonics have about the fastest processing and most Pannys are plasmas (they don't market anything else at 50"+ screen sizes.) Sharp's LCDs with Vyperdrive are quite fast, but LG and Sony models are also pretty good. Samsung not so good.

There are two types of LCD now, regular LCD and LED/LCD. The former uses a cold cathode fourescent array behind the lcd panel, the latter uses light emitting diodes either around the edges of the lcd panel, or on uberexpensive models locally dimmable zones of leds actually behind the panel. Edge lit LEDs tend to have more uneven lighting (flashlighting and clouding effects) than the local dimming backlit leds or ccfl sets, but those can also have some problems. The most even illumination is on plasma.

Plasma burn-in is largely a thing of the past. They don't have as much maximum light output, produce more heat, use a little more electricity and some people like the whites on lcd and led/lcd better. In general a good plasma will have more accurate as opposed to super vivid color and have a lower price point for a given size and featured set. The look is definitely a bit different than lcd or led/lcd and both have their adherents.