[Fins^]

Here is my sad story. I "currently" have a Pioneer Elite 520 with a Panny -91 DVD, DirecTV HD, and about 7 local DTV stations. Awesome pictures...


My wife hates it?! She says it hurts her eyes. What's a man to do? (I've done AVIA by the way and while she said it was better, it still bothered her)


She has looked at several other TVs and has given the thumbs up on the Panny 47" RPTV and the Panny 42" Plasma.


Which would you choose and why? Will the HD look "better" on the RPTV than on the Plasma?

 

[markrubin]

The Panny 42" plasma is the clear choice- plasmas have a WOW factor- you look at an HD picture on a good plasma and say WOW! - nothing else comes close- much better than a RPTV


The Panasonic 42PWD3 or 4 is one of the finest 42" plasma displays on the market- I recommend it IMO

 

[tcat]

How do the 42" Plasmas handle regular satellite signals (DISH)? Is there any problem with screen burn from left and right bars on 4:3 programming? I think I'm narrowed down to the Panny or the NEC when the price drops below $5K.

 

[rogo]

Regular satellite signals go from good to crappy, depending on how badly compressed they are. Sometimes, I think, "Wow, I can't believe how good this looks despite DirecTV's best efforts to ruin it."


You can, allegedly, have a screen-burn problem on the plasma with 4:3 although no one has proved that running the white-bar scroll doesn't correct it in most cases.


To mitigate/eliminate the screen burn problem, there are a few easy fixes:


* Run grey bars. Sometimes keep them light, other times run them a bit darker (there are 3 settings).


* Run as much widescreen as possible. I use Just a lot to stretch the sides of the image and not the middle. It is surprisingly tolerable to me -- except on pans, where the fishbowl effect is nauseating. I still use it a lot and am generally happy.


* Use the Wobbler, which shifts the screen image around.


I will note that the mean-time-to-half-brigtness loss is supposedly thousands of hours. This implies that burn in is very, very unlikely and than "clearing" the screen via the white bar should work until the set is very, very old (because the "burn in" is not really permanent until it's actually a differential brightness as opposed to "tired" phosphors). Supposedly.


Mark

 

[iceman143]

I had a Pioneer Elite RPTV which I loved. It provided a great picture but the box still took quite a bit of room. Ambient light was sometimes an issue as it was located in a room with much window space facing the bay. I took a lightning hit through the video portion of my sat. cable which was not stopped by the grounding rods. My DVD, Receiver, sat. box and TV were all lost.


I replaced the Pioneer with a Panasonic 42" 4uy plasma and was one of the first owners of that unit in the U.S..The picture is great, better than my RPTV and without the box. The screen size is a little smaller but ambient light is no longer an issue. I am using a Panasonic RP91 DVD player also. DVD's are simply outstanding.


My wife and friends love the "picture effect" as the unit hangs on the wall. No more RPTV box, however, the biggest issue has been how to position the center channel/speaker. We buy DVD's instead of paying the theater price and want good sound in our video area so a center speaker was required. Finding the right furniture is more difficult than it would seem.


As prices continue to fall we plan to buy a 50" and move the 42" to the bedroom. The plasma choice was a great decision in our eyes instead of buying another RPTV.

 

[tcat]

Thanks Rogo. I have a 32" OLD Panny, the Dish signal is good, all channels look very sharp (when it's not raining). I just don't want to be disappointed with standrad TV watching if I shell out $5K for a Plasma (Panny or NEC). I have only seen HD and DVD signals on them, and read a lot of posts about RPs that look bad with "normal" satellite. In 2 or 3 years I'm sure HD will be the standard and 99% of all viewing will be "perfect" (and a 42" Plasma will likely be $2-$3K then)... but I CAN'T WAIT!

 

[Fins^]

Quote:

Originally posted by iceman143 I had a Pioneer Elite RPTV which I loved. It provided a great picture but the box still took quite a bit of room. Ambient light was sometimes an issue as it was located in a room with much window space facing the bay. I took a lightning hit through the video portion of my sat. cable which was not stopped by the grounding rods. My DVD, Receiver, sat. box and TV were all lost. I replaced the Pioneer with a Panasonic 42" 4uy plasma and was one of the first owners of that unit in the U.S..The picture is great, better than my RPTV and without the box. The screen size is a little smaller but ambient light is no longer an issue. I am using a Panasonic RP91 DVD player also. DVD's are simply outstanding. My wife and friends love the "picture effect" as the unit hangs on the wall. No more RPTV box, however, the biggest issue has been how to position the center channel/speaker. We buy DVD's instead of paying the theater price and want good sound in our video area so a center speaker was required. Finding the right furniture is more difficult than it would seem. As prices continue to fall we plan to buy a 50" and move the 42" to the bedroom. The plasma choice was a great decision in our eyes instead of buying another RPTV.

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. I'll bet lightning is a real hazard where you live. My parents are near Orlando and my brother is in Ft Lauderdale, so I've seen some wild lightning storms. I guess that is ONE way to upgrade?!


I'll turn my wife loose on the furniture end. She is VERY good at putting a room together.

 

[gpmoore]

I have digital cable currently but will probably switch to DirectTV. I need to test the signal on my old satellite dish to see how much better it is than cable before I make the switch. Anyway, the signal on most movie channels from Digital Cable is pretty decent, minimal artifact except some MPEG effect in blacks and dark grays. On some of the "lower" channels -- PBS, HGTV, etc. etc., the signal can be downright awful . I used to have a 36" direct view 4:3 proscan set and the picture looked fine. When viewed on my NEC 50MP1 the artifact is greatly amplified and pictures are decidedly sub-par. DVD's look absolutely stunning on a progressive scan component-in (Sony DVP-NS700P). Still waiting for HD from NBC/CBS/ABC in 5/02 here in Richmond, VA. (too many trees to pick up the DirecTV HD Sat (119W)).

 

[Robert2413]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fins^ Here is my sad story. I "currently" have a Pioneer Elite 520 with a Panny -91 DVD, DirecTV HD, and about 7 local DTV stations. Awesome pictures... My wife hates it?! She says it hurts her eyes. What's a man to do? (I've done AVIA by the way and while she said it was better, it still bothered her) She has looked at several other TVs and has given the thumbs up on the Panny 47" RPTV and the Panny 42" Plasma. Which would you choose and why? Will the HD look "better" on the RPTV than on the Plasma?

My solution is to have one of each--50" plasma for DVD and HD, and a Barco Retrographics 50" 4:3 CRT rear projector for lesser sources. The plasma is hung above the living room fireplace (actually resting on the mantlepiece); the rear projector is against the right sidewall.


(I was originally planning to sell the Barco when I got the plasma, but, when I saw how the plasma exaggerated the flaws in noisy NTSC signals and how small the 4:3 windowboxed picture looked on the plasma, I decided to keep the Barco.)


I have six speakers. The plasma is set up for L/C/R/Ls/Rs. The sixth spealer serves only as left-channel stereo for the CRT, and the right-rear speaker is switched to serve as a right channel stereo speaker when I'm using the CRT.


I really prefer watching 4:3 material on a 4:3 screen, and I also find that with VCR and analog cable sources, the CRT has a forgiving quality that is more pleasant to watch than the plasma on these sources. OTOH, DirecTV looks good on the plasma because the plasma's sharpness helps compensate for the intrinsic softness of DirecTV's digital compression. And the plasma definitely blows the CRT away on DVD and hi-def sources.