Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Choosing a Television

I am looking for a 40" to 42" television and am not sure which technology to go with, LED or Plasma. The Samsung LED's look extremely sharp with great detail, but I still hear good things on Plasma's. I am unsure on which way to go, though Plasma's are less expensive, looking at them at B-Buy the Samsung LED's look much clearer than the Plasma's. Would like some input as to why you prefer one technology over the other and what brands you consider better.

Thank You,
Tim

Personally, given those 2 choices, I'd go with Plasma.

IMO, better price, better picture quality.

The store is a tough place to evaluate tv's. I have a Panasonic 50" plasma. I love it. Less than 2 years old but they get better every year. I know what you mean about the Samsung Leds looking so sharp. But every time I see one they have Avatar or an animated movie playing. I would love to see what a regular movie looks like on it. The reason I love the plasma is that everything looks natural.

My vote would be for plasma.

With digital displays one should not look more "sharp" than the other. If a picture does look sharper, it's because the set is playing games, and not delivering the picture as intended. Things like the sharpness control, and edge enhancement actually destroy fine detail in order to make larger objects appear to pop.

Not saying that the LCD (there's no such thing as an LED set outside of sports stadiums), can't be tuned to deliver a more accurate representation of what's on the disc, but it seems that the plasma is more right out of the box. Still don't trust the default setting of any display. You'll in the very least want to change it to "Movie" mode.

All that said, my vote goes to the plasma too.

The LED bsck lit Lcd's do use less energy than Plasmas but only by a small margin. Most LCD's come from the factory in 'torch' mode where they are set to the highest and brightest settings possible to attract the consumer's eye. Once thsese sets are properly calibrated they look similar to Plasma but IMO, not as smooth/crsip at these proper settings.

I don't think you'll go wrong either way in this day and age. I preferred the LCD over the plasma myself a couple of yrs ago and bought the Sammy 6 series due to overwhelmingly positive user reviews. Never had a problem with it and love the picture.

If it were me I'd get the plasma. The off-angle viewing with LCD/LED's are bad. In my experience, the store adjusts the screens to sell the one they are pushing at the moment. On one trip, the plasma they were trying to push had the best picture. On a different trip to the same store, they had a new plasma they were pushing and the one that looked the best before, was now the worst looking one in the store.

I have an LCD that I bought before the LED backlighting or edgelighting came out. It is true that the off axis viewing is not as good - so I don't sit off axis. The picture continually amazes me when looking at HD TV or DVD's or Blu Ray.

Same here. I bought a LCD a couple of years ago and love the picture. I never had any problem if off-axis also because I don't sit off-axis. I picked a LCD because my living room has lot of light coming in, so in this condition it seamed better than a plasma. If my room would be in a basement with low light condition, I would probably go with a plasma though, the LCD just can't refresh the picture fast enough for fast paced movies or sports, at least not at 120Hz.