Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners RPTV vs Plasma

Thanks for the heads up Zarak. I contacted Sony and they gave me the same clearances you mentioned: 4" sides and 12" top. I talked with a techie friend who works for Magnolia HiFi's home theater installation department and I'm going to design a passive vent on the top of the cabinet to abate the heat issue. Other than that, I think that with all of the forum's input and a couple of other reviews I've seen, I think the Sony is going to be the best choice for the buck.
Thanks again,
Sips

Glad to be of assistance. Let us know what you think of the TV once you get it all setup.

I don't doubt that you'll be loving it!

I agree with all of this. I have the older sony 50A2000 and could not be happier. The projection system lends to a more film like picture. I see other TVs, like my parents LCD flat screen, and miss my beautiful picture. The 2.5 ms response times on these sets just about eliminates motion blur and I must admit that I have NEVER noticed motion blur on my set. The 10,000:1 contrast on these sets also affords for some pretty decent blacks.

One thing to consider is that these sets come out of the box set to the brightest setting. I can send you my settings (if you get a sony set) if you like.

Also, take into consideration the amount of light in your room. Plasmas require a darker setting whereas the RPTVs are more forgiving of ambient light.

Other notes, these TVs also do not produce 1:1 pixel mapping due to the inherent overscan nature of RPTVs. With my Mac hooked up to the TV, I can barely see my dock when it is set to out put 1920 X 1080. Windows does a better job as you have greater control display drivers which can allow you change the aspect size.

Also, I have my TV plugged into a battery backup as some people have stated issues during power failures. To be more specific, when you normally power off a sony RPTV the fans will continue to run for a minute or 2 in order to cool off the set. A power failure will cause the TV AND fans to turn off at the same time, theoretically this could cause issues. I got a cheap battery back-up just in case...you only need about 5 mins of backup time at most. This will give you time to turn off the TV and allow it to cool down.

You probably have not seen many LCOS RPTV's. LCDRP and DLP look somewhat different.

JVC pioneered the product range with their HDILA and Sony introduced their very popular SXRD a couple years ago. I compared the Sony, JVC and Panny plasma side by side in store and each of them looked very similar.

Plasma is great for off axis viewing and controlled lighting areas where you are not going to get glare from outside sources.

RPTV are better suited to bright areas of uncontrolled lighting.

the A3000 also supports 24p, which some feel lends to a better picture, more specifically, it helps to eliminate motion jitter caused by pulldown from the conversion from 24fps to 60fps.

The reporting of response time by Sony and others is misrepresenting. a 2.5ms response time indicates only the half cycle of response, so the time taken to change from one colour to neutral. Think of a sine wave and cut it in half as that is what they are reporting. The actual response time should be 5.0, which is still very fast but actually slower than most plasmas at 4.0

Also, when I was looking around I was told by an ISF calibrator that the Sony A2000 line did not properly do inverse telecine(3:2 pulldown) and had an inferior videoprocessor to that of JVC, PAnasonic, Mitsubishi, Samsung and the Sony XBR2 sets.

You probably will not notice at all, but the SD programming looks softer on the A2000 compared to the XBR series and the JVC HDILA.

Here is a couple links that shows the A2000 fails the 3:2 test and doesnt resolve every line of a 1080 test pattern, while the JVC HDILA does 3:2 and will show all 1080, albeit only thru HDMI inputs.

http://www.hometheatermag.com/hookmeup/1106hook/

http://www.hometheatermag.com/hookmeup/1107hook2/

Personally I would buy the Sony XBR or JVC HDILA over the A2000/A3000 sets. But my next 42" is gonna be a Panny plasma.

Thanks for info Ctown. Concerning the 3:2 pulldown stuff, would that explain the choppieness of the pan down to the ship in the opening scene of Revenge of the Sith? This is the only issue I have noticed on this set.

To tell the truth, i'm rather pleased with SD programming on this set, I was worried when I first started looking into HD sets, but I can barely notice any problems.

Vassillios, I dont own that DVD and dont know if that causes your issue. According to this article

http://hdguru.com/?p=187

lack of inverse telecine can cause loss of resolution or motion artifacts. So if what you are describing is motion artifacting then it may be.

As for the SD, I think some SD is worse than others. I was watching a women's tennis match on an A2000 in SD when they came out and the fact that I almost didnt want to watch Sharapova vs. Dokic match made me keep looking.

I have seen other SD broadcasts that look better on that set as well. The fact seemed to be it handles good programming well, but bad programming worse than other sets.

I'm not impressed by the SD, but I wasn't with other sets either. I really only watch HD, so it doesn't matter much to me. I'd be happy if there was an HD only plan, and I could dump all those other channels.

Yeah, the fact that NFL sunday ticket and a lot of other sports programming is only broadcast on SD channels made it more important to me.

I also liked the fact that my set does resolve all lines of a 1080 test pattern where many of the others did not at this time last year. I'm all about getting the best performance for a reasonable price and the Sony XBR2, JVC HdILA, Panny Plasma, Sammy DLP all fit that bill.

The pioneer plasmas are beautiful, but I'm not paying the premium for black laquer finish.