No more inefficent plasma screens

cwathen
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Plasma screen's aren't necessarily less efficient than LCDs - when displaying dark images a modern plasma can end up using less power than an LCD with an always-on fluorescent panel to light the screen up.
I've been somewhat out of touch in this area recently - the largest on the consumer market is Samsung's 40", isn't it?
Samsung's 'series 7' and above sets aren't OLED screens, they are just LCDs which use intelligent LED backlighting consisting of several separate LED panels which can be individually turned on and off and vary in brightness. This allows display of a true black (provided it's a big expanse of black covering at least one of the LED panels) and should provide a wider colour gamut, brining the screen closer to the quality of a plasma.
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Pete
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So, owning as I do, a 28" CRT, I had considered at some point replacing it with a nice LCD screen. However I've recently had a change of heard.

Having recently had wonderful fun exchaning my monitor, twice, due to overly bright and shoddy backlighting, and now having to suffer a very minor whine from my - otherwise lovely - new monitor due to having to dim the backlight, I've came to the conclusion that the backlights in exisitng screens are the main reason they're just utterly shit looking.

So t'other week I went into PC World - as you do - to laugh at the prices of their monitors, however I must admit - cirngingly - that I was drawn like a mystified child to the screen on display near the back of the shop. Not only was it amazingly thin but the colours and lighting were superb and resemebled a plasma / crt level of quality.

So apparently it is one of these ones with LED backlighting. And not just a big lump of LEDs but loads of little clusters of them, which turn on and off according to what is on the screen (so blacks look black, not grey). Course the small issue of it being £1200 was offputting but nevertheless.

So I've decided therefore to stick with my CRT for now, until either thse come down in price of plasmas come down in price (as I note from the display in tesco, they still look nicer, but are still twice as much).

Btw, what tellys do all of yous have? Just realised we've never really discussed this before.
"He has to be larger than bacon"
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Gavin Scott
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I'm still on CRT, but I've been keeping my eye out for an LCD panel. I've been in two minds whether to invest a small amount in one of the lesser, no-brand models as a temporary measure. I'll expect quite a few years of service from an expensive set - and I don't want to get caught out buying at the wrong time.

I'm anticipating prices will fall significantly over the course of this year.

Planning to move property this summer too - and a flat screen with an HD service is definitely on the shopping list.
Philip
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I have a Samsung 933HD; it's LCD and has built-in Freeview, and as you can guess from the name, is 720 HD. Although, I don't use it because the only thing I have close to HD is my Wii, which use component cables for HD, so at least I have some HD.
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lukey
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Philip wrote:I have a Samsung 933HD; it's LCD and has built-in Freeview, and as you can guess from the name, is 720 HD. Although, I don't use it because the only thing I have close to HD is my Wii, which use component cables for HD, so at least I have some HD.
Doesn't the Wii output 480p at best?
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marksi
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I have a Panasonic 37PX80 plasma. Bought it a year ago. No, it's not full HD (it's 1024x720), but as the majority of what I'll be watching on it will be SD, and it offered at the time the closest quality to a CRT I could find, I decided that was a compromise I was happy with. HD on it looks good too. So I consider it a compromise buyto do me a few years.

I too was impressed by the LED television in PC World, but as they were showing a Pixar movie on it have no idea what real images would look like on it.

Oh and this is probably relevant; I recently got Sky HD. First box was returned as the sound and vision were frequently out of sync on both live and recorded material. Second box was also returned for the same reason and I've returned to SD Sky+. I also have a Humax Freesat HD box.
Spencer For Hire
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marksi wrote:Oh and this is probably relevant; I recently got Sky HD. First box was returned as the sound and vision were frequently out of sync on both live and recorded material. Second box was also returned for the same reason and I've returned to SD Sky+.
Many people with Sky+ HD had lip-sync issues a while back. It could be quite off-putting at times. I understand it was a software issue, rather than anything to do with the boxes themselves, which now seems to have been fixed. I've not noticed any problems now for the past few months.
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Nick Harvey
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Just as an aside, is there an equivalent on Sky Plus of holding the back-up button while switching on at the wall, to force a download of the latest software, like there is on a conventional Sky box?
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