Plasma display artifact on newer plasmas (panasonic?)

Hi all. I'm looking to drop ~ $1000 on a new TV. The other day I went to a local electronics shop and convinced them to let me hook my PS3 up to their HDMI splitter, thereby tossing up COD4 onto all the TVs in the store (heh) so I could try to evaluate a couple PQ issues for myself.


Unfortunately the only Plasmas they had were Panasonics. My attention was glued to a (pricey) VT series Panny, but one thing that caught my attention was when I zoomed in with the scope of a sniper rifle and moving from side to side: the black cross-hairs on the white snowy backdrop produced various artifacts on all the Plasma TVs (Panasonic U, S, G series). The effect was different across each TV, but generally the cross-hairs would sheer and move in a disjointed, jagged motion in response to the camera movement. The G series was the worst, the cross-hairs appeared almost as if they were under water any time I moved from side to side.


Any idea what the source of these artifacts might be? Unavoidable image processing or possibly due to a high sharpness setting on the TVs? Do you think LG or Samsung Plasmas might not have it?


It reminded me a bit of the description of the image processing artifact on the PK750 TVs.