Reflections and Plasma - Page 2  

My CRT viewing habits have NEVER created a "burn-in". Not even on the 20 year old RCA 19 inch that current pulls duty in the kids' playroom. So if plasmas are no worse than CRT direct view tubed TVs for either burn-in or glare/reflection, then I can't see any objections to considering one. I was at a sports bar last week and they had almost 60 plasmas scattered throughout. At the bar where I sat, three TVs, side by side--one analogue cable feed, one digital SD feed and one HD 720p (ESPN) feed. I doubt the TVs were "tweaked" but the HD feed was, at a casual view, amazing, the digital SD was about what I get on my SDTV from digital SD and the analogue cable feed looked like crap (as many such stations do via my cable provider, though there are not many of them I watch, thankfully). If I can get PQ like I saw in the bar, I will be very happy (they were all Samsung plasmas, don't know the model number). I'll still look at LCD (one attractive feature of LCD is the 45-47 inch range of screen size--50 is a bit tight in my room and 42 is smaller than I'd like to go to). Anyone know why there are no 45-47 inch plasmas?

I think there is a middle ground between saying that reflection is no problem with plasmas and saying it's supernaturally bad. It does exist in some settings. Best to find out beforehand whether it will be an issue in the room you'll be putting it in. LCDs handle light differently than plasmas - they'll look slightly washed out, but won't have reflections. You can adjust the amount of wash out by increasing the backlight some. I have both a plasma and an LCD, and both have windows behind where I sit. In those particular configurations, I prefer the LCD during daytime viewing.

Re the one poster who said he had his plasma tilted down slightly to get rid of reflections - I've always thought that might work because when I stand up so that my eye level is above the plasma the reflections are gone.

The antiglare coatings definitely make a difference. My old crt was unwatchable most of the day because of the amount of light I have, as was my 42" plasma that didn't have any anti-glare. My new Samsung is great in comparison, and I didn't really believe it would be. I just figured that I don't watch too much tv during the day anyway, so being able to watch the last few days has been nice.

I agree, there's certainly reflections with my plasma, and the screen is glossy, no doubt about it. However, as Ovation was asking about, there's definitely nothing about plasmas that makes them reflect or glare any more than a CRT. It's about the same level of reflection and glare that anyone with a CRT would already be accustomed to. In fact, most plasmas probably have less glare than a CRT. My Panasonic plasma has this kind of purplish anti-glare coating that my Panasonic 32" flat CRT didn't.

I do agree LCD is better with reflections and glare. That's why it boggles my mind why a lot of new laptops have glossy, very reflective LCDs.