Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater What to buy with Panasonic Plasma off the market

I was really disappointed when Panasonic dropped their Plasma based TV's. For those of you like me who really liked the contrast, black levels, color, etc., what do you do for a replacement?

I am moving away from Seattle and will finally have a house with a basement/rec room. I am tempted to go back to the ceiling mounted FP but that is such a hassle that I may go with a 75" to 80" TV. They all look great in the store but my current Panasonic Plasma still blows me away and I hate to take a step back technology wise.

NC

Samsung F8500 Plasma if you can find one. I went from 3 Panasonic Plasma's to the Samsung, its gorgeous. I swore I'd never own a Samsung Plasma but then they came out with this one. Super Bright, white is actually white, and black is deeeeep. It is also the thinnest Plasma I've ever seen, LCD type thin. It does have an aggressive anti glare filter on it, so you need to mount it at the right level so it doesn't dim when you stand up.

I agree, the problem that arose was that the "masses" wanted a monitor they can hang on the wall and as thin as possible and as a result the plasma technology was not suitable for such a purpose along with the constant reminder that they were less energy efficient than LCD/LEDs.

As you stated, the regular buyer just sees a bunch of these bright televisions in the store with the contrast and color cranked up so that is all they care about, they will never understand the more technical aspects of superior black levels and how that affects color etc. From what I am reading other than the LG OLED's(which are still comparatively too expensive), even some of the best 4K monitors still can't match the black levels and overall color balance of a good plasma.

We have seen it throughout consumer electronics history where alleged newer technologies aren't any better or sometimes not even as good as what they replaced.

I'm sure if you searched hard enough you could find a TCP55ST60 or ZT model. I bought mine a year ago and LOVE IT

Sorry for the very late reply . . .

I have a 65" ZT model that I bought two years ago and I am still enjoying it.

I have heard the new OLED TVs that Panasonic is developing to be released in time for Christmas 2016 will be a big improvement over current LCD/LED and surpass, hopefully, their own plasmas.

I agree the LG OLED's are an awful lot of money but they look pretty darn good.

Maybe I'll upgrade my center channel for Christmas this year and wait another year for the new OLEDs?

Greg

The Panny OLED is using a LG Panel. Hopefully will be FLAT and not curved. Very intersted in what they do with it

South Korea's LG Display to invest $8.7 billion in new OLED plant
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/2...U8Pc5SMrPHFA.97

I never really understood the following of Plasma TV's until I finally saw someone with one calibrated properly. Yes, the picture was very impressive. Sadly there were many uncalibrated low quality plasma TV's sold and the market was killed for them.

So what do you have to choose from now.

Well, the LCD answer to Plasma is FLAD. The problem with LCD is that as the pixels themselves do not glow, you need to have a back light to shine through the screen with the LCD blocking the light to give the colour picture on the screen. All is good but black can only be as black as the amount of light that can be blocked and white can only be as white as the total brightness of the back light. A compromise at best. FLAD moves the back lighting from being around the sides to being an array of smaller LED blubs covering the whole back panel of the TV that can be turned on and off in grid arrays. This means that when displaying darker parts on a screen, the blacks can be blacker as the back lighting for that particular section can be turned off so less background light is there to illuminate the LCD filter.

So, if you are looking at LCD for your next TV and want better dynamic range, then FLAD is the way to go.

But then you get into the HD vs UHD. Is getting 4K going to give you a better picture. Well, this is where some things get fun. 4K does give more detail and though some disagree, there are those of us that can tell the difference between 1080p and 2160p. The other thing that is coming into play is the possibility of the expanded colour space taking the picture from 8bit/channel to 10bit/channel and upping from NTSC/709 colour space to a better DCS/REC2020 that allows the TV to display colours that simply were not possible to produce before. To get that added colour you must move to the newer 4K TV set.

The down side to the move up however is historic video footage. I have current 1080p HTPC media center that stores a copy of all my old movies and TV shows. The 4K tv however needs to upscale the video from all my lower res sources to display. Up-ressing from a 1080p or 720p material is very good, Going from a 480p is pretty good but pushing the limits. So a DVD does look watchable but you can tell that it is not nearly as sharp as it should be. Your TV enhances the loss or resolution in 4K far more than an older HD 1080 tv ever did.

Where the real problem comes in is bad quality DVD's or any item that you ripped and compressed as that process reduced and eliminated much of the detail that was close but would not have been seen at a lower resolution, but when you try and upscale it to 4K ends up looking awful.

Any the problem gets worse. If you try and play this media on a device that itself upscaled to 1080p (that many media players do) on your 4K TV your picture will be so fuzzy it will be almost unwatchable. This is because the TV then tried to upscale an already upscaled picture and hell breaks loose.

If I play a re-compressed DVD on my Kodi media player with the screen res set to 1080p, I get a far worse picture than if I re-set the media player to output at the native 480p res for the media player and let the TV do a single upress to the 4K.

Just figured I would put some experience out there and see if anyone else had had the same results.

The biggest concern I have is that they don't use FALD ( full array local dimming ) on any mid range sets that I can find. You have to buy the upper tier models (6G Canadian) to get that benefit. I am extremely bothered by light bleed from side lit TV's and also the uniformity issues. I am continuing my search for a plasma to replace my ailing panny. I found some Samsung online as mentioned above but they are only 60" and would really like a 65. Also watch for IPS panels which have better side viewing but cant reproduce blacks as well.

Why do you say 6G? I picked up my Panasonic 65CX850 that has FLAD + DCI + HDR @ 4k60p for under $3000 CDN + tax

Great TV with a THX certified screen and full ability to to do ISF screen calibration without the need to get into special hidden setup modes.

I did look at that but I set my sights a bit higher. I am after the Samsung js9500 and its down to 5g right now but still too much for my budget.

if you like having a curved screen for no other reason than it's curved. If you were looking for picture quality I'd go with the Vizio R

It is unfortunate that to get the best tech you have to settle for a curved screen. I really hope I can hold out for OLED but my Panasonic is giving me grief hopefully it doesn't worsen. I am also playing with the idea of getting a projector but will wait and see what sales are like after Christmas.

lg oled flat not curved
http://www.cnet.com/products/lg-ef9500/

Still lots of money. OLED still immature. But beats anything out there. Granted, I do not like LG. But would never buy LCD, fald or not. LCD will never enter my house.

So, would you agree the problems mentioned above will transfer into the PJ realm as well? Not that I really watch DVD on the big screen anymore, as it looks like mashed potatoes compared to hi def.

I wonder how much closer a PJ will come to the quality in a plasma flat panel with the new 4k/Gammut/Dynamic range playing into the end image.

The Vizio R has a dynamic range that blows away Plasma hands down. It uses a 384 fully active FLAD zones. Does true Dolby Vision HDR support with 100% REC2020 coverage with 800nits brightness. The problem is that you simply can't buy one.

I truly hope one day they make an HDTV that appeals to me in the same way a plasma does. I don't expect anyone to understand the attraction that a plasma has to plasma lovers. LCD just does not look real, it looks artificial to me that's the only way I can think to describe it. In reality a true cinema should be front projection with the light reflected back to the audience not a light source such as a TV. If I did not have a failing TV I would be going with a projector in a NY minute but I still need a TV for my everyday viewing and gaming in the family room. The M series vizio by far is the most attractive set in both price and viewer recommendations and may end up being the go between set as a compromise. My 16yr old who does a lot of gaming has an LCD in his room and prefers it to my Plasma so I do realize that my bias is personal though my 25yr old son prefers the plasma , go figure. I found the above mentioned Samsung plasma for a decent price as well but I worry about their history of humming power supplies and having it shipped 3 thousand miles is a bit of a gamble. Much to mull over , but I feel in the end I will have to compromise and go with and LED.

I recently I had to bite the bullet and buy a new monitor and frankly, because I wanted one at least 65" or larger, I didn't know whether or not to wait for the newer OLEDs or look at one of the readily available moderately priced 4K sets. I ultimately settled on one of the new mid-range moderately priced LG 4K monitors and even though it is LCD/LED I must admit when finally setting it up properly in my system, I have been pretty impressed with all types of HD video. There is no question that there still is a certain "look" to LCD monitors, however, the colors, resolution along with the ability to provide at least decent black levels with both the adjustable backlight and local dimming features makes it quite worthwhile. The menu functions and remote are pretty much identical to the OLED described in the above CNET review and off-axis viewing has improved significantly over the old LCD technology. There is also several different video presets each with its own quite varied video adjustments.

I am fortunate enough to have along with the software and meter and the ability to do my own calibrations, a Lumagen Radiance VP and Darbee VP, and even though they max out at 1080p, the ability of the monitor to upscale to 4K, add it all up and the picture is as good as anything I have seen so far, regardless of the technology.

It's a new day!

Glad to hear you found a set that makes you happy. Doesn't hurt that you have the equipment to do your own calibrations.Most of LG's sets use ips technology which has much better off angle viewing but are said to have not quite as good black levels. This is only what I have read while researching. Something that has come to my attention is Hisense has a tech called ULED which is very close to OLED in contrast and black level but at a much better price. No luck getting them in Canada yet but they have them on Amazon.com .

Front projection is a different beast all together. I currently still have a Epson 8700 which is LCD. NEVER AGAIN. I went through 5 Epson 8350's trying to get one without an issue. Panels all out of line, blurry images dust blobs, convergence issues, pink hues. I'll give Epson credit, they replaced and shipped everyone by air and eventually just upgraded me to the 8700ub - which was a pretty good picture in its day and matched with a high gain screen really popped but still no plasma by any means. But my PJ's before that were DLP. DLP has a much nicer image assuming you can't see the rainbow effect...which is imho is blown out of proportion as I had DLP's for more then a decade and never had anyone complain of it.

Anyways, front projection for everyday use is a bad idea. Granted we are buying newer Panasonics LED now with like 30,000 hour bulb life. But you still need a good screen, proper room for it....trust me it adds up quickly.

If I lost my Plasma today, granted I have 3, but if I lost them today, it would be OLED or nothing. I would probably buy the cheapest LCD I could get just to temporarily wait for a decent OLED if I could not afford the OLED now. LCD belongs on a wrist watch or cell phone. Not on a TV. They just have too many issues but I'm one of those people that when it comes to displays - I will always find what's wrong with it. I'm one of those guys that Held onto my Sony CRT long after flat panels came out because I did not like them until Plasma matured enough.

Just curious if you turned off any "Tru Motion" or similar visual processing that was originally meant to increase the refresh rates.
I have a friend who bought a new LCD over a year ago and loved it. When i was at his place, the picture playback looked "fake". It was then i realized he had his Tru Motion turned on (the default setting for the tv) and when i turned it off, he didn't see the difference.
I notice it immediately.
I read that someone described it like comparing a regular tv movie to watching a soap opera. The soaps always have some odd smoothing motion to them.
http://hometheaterreview.com/what-is-soap-opera-effect-and-how-to-make-it-go-away/
This is what the Tru Motion (or similar) processing looks like to me and hence, "fake". The motion of anything on the screen doesn't flow naturally.

I turned it off on our LG LCD but otherwise i agree, OLED is for us in the near future. Never liked LCD.
Want to change out my computer monitor asap too.
Waiting....

This is one factor that ultimately pushed me off of getting a front projector system even after having designed the media room with ceiling connections for it (in two orientations on a long or short wall!).

The room isn't used daily, but cost, bulbs, sound, heat, the fiddling, just wasn't worth the hassle. Even less so with 70"+ flat screens becoming so easily available now for $4k; about the same cost for a high quality projector and screen, and our room can do a max. screen size of 80" before locating speakers around the screen becomes impossible.

Obviously other people have larger rooms and if you want a huge screen over 80", then sure, projection is still the only way to go, but very large flat screen technology is fast becoming the norm. Envision a 120" flat screen rollup OLED! No more projector needed. Has all the same features except no projected light issues.
It is coming.

I dunno guys. I have a 55" Sony LCD from a couple of years ago that is the model just below their flagship XBR line. For us, it is simply stunning with good material. The Star Wars Blu-Rays that we presently viewing are absolutely first rate on this machine.

I prefer a natural looking picture - not artificially bright with overly saturated colours that many people seem to gravitate to. I 'calibrated' it by using many of the settings that I found on the net that essentially turned 'OFF' all of the redundant picture enhancement features plus a used a few more tweaks that ended up making the picture 'natural' looking but crisp & clear as well. I haven't been into the settings menu since because it is so close to perfect.

As I've said before, looking at a wall of demo machines in the store, I can't see much difference in them except for the factory set 'Torch Mode' that the manufacturers use to make their machine stand out from the herd.

The only LCD weakness that I see is off-axis viewing that is not a factor in our room. My Sony LCD is a winner IMO & is by far the best display that I've ever owned. That is most praiseworthy because over the decades I always went with the higher end video gear...

TAM

I am still impressed with the Sony ES-95 LCD projector that I bought several years ago. So much so, I have no desire to replace it with 4K or something else. Maybe when laser technology becomes mainstream I'll upgrade.

I also love my Pany plasma TV. Just wish it was larger. Motion is fantastic, and LCD just can't compare. ...yet.

That soap opera effect is caused by an overly bright lit scene with far too much detail. This effect has plagued many of the lower budget films transfered to bluray or above. The effect of having something overly sharp when we are so use to the grain and texture you get with motion picture film.

You must be referring to some other effect.
The soap opera effect i observed was from having Trumotion (or other motion processing) turned on as was noted in that article as well.
I only found that article recently but noticed the soap opera effect over a year ago. The effect was easily reproduced with any source material; HD satellite tv or dvds.

When i first bought a LCD panel, first version Phillips that was about 5 inches in depth, what i noticed was a blurring effect especially for fast sports shows. This was related to refresh rates and the Trumotion processing was designed to eliminate that effect. Instead it introduced a completely different and equally horrible vision.
Funny thing is that not everyone saw the blurring in early LCD panels. Some people were just more attuned to spotting it.

Perhaps there is also another reason for certain particular affects to show themselves on the screen of these new technologies and after checking with a couple of TV tech buddies of mine along with my own experience, generally speaking, even with these higher tech sets and superior resolution, if one thinks that they shouldn't consider having their brand new monitor calibrated properly, they could be sadly mistaken.

For those that might be interested, in my case, after taking my brand new 4K monitor out of the box setting it up to my basic specs(contrast, black levels color levels etc.)after watching for awhile, as impressive as the picture was, I noticed I suffered some significant eye strain yet I couldn't, of course, figure out exactly why? After starting my 12 pt. grayscale calibration, according to the readouts,there was a significant difference in the gamma, grayscale and color luminance levels between approx. 40-80IRE, i.e right out of the box,the picture was significantly brighter in these ranges than at the lowest and highest end of the grayscale so whether it is 4K, OLED or anything else, according to my tech buddies this issue is not that uncommon among all these newer technologies. It seems the manufacturers have intentionally chosen to jack up these levels to bring out the brightness and colors, yet, it is not something that can be readily corrected by just lowering black and /or contrast levels.

Once I did my calibration along the entire grayscale ultimately leveling everything out according to the proper specs., it is amazing how much more natural the picture looked, colors, brightness and contrast were significantly better and after some lengthy viewing, my eye strain all but disappeared.

Rest assured, on the surface, as impressive as these new technologies are, quite surprisingly, they still can be noticeably better.

No, I am referring to the exact same thing. And, BTW, you can get the exact same effect on a plasma screen that is not configured correctly.

If you look at the technology behind the LCD pannel, the issue is that you are bending or deforming a liquid crystal to block a back light from coming through with a whole series of colour filters in front. There was a lag time in the crystals ability to block and then open back up to let light through. as this was greater than
your eyes ability to perceive the change in each frame so you got ghosting on fast moving objects. This is different than blur. To get around this the TV would interpolate extra frames into the picture so that the in-between frames could be used to faster drive each pixel to the right state so that ghosting was eliminated. The sad side effect of this was it gave the effect of over sharpening the images and add too much perceived detail where there wasn't really any.

You can get the same effect if you over light a scene and add too much sharpness like they do in soap opera's.

But to say it's just in LCD screens is a bit of a hoax as many of the Plasma tv's started to add in oversample to take a 30fps (60hz) on up the refresh rate to 300fps (600hz) as a marketing ploy to have something on paper to say plasma is better than LCD that was claiming their 120hz and 240hz. Turn up the brightness on the plasma and it looked like a soap opera too.

Sorry Matt but your explanation regarding brightness doesn't jive with any article i've read. The soap opera effect is related to refresh rates and frames per second.

This processing was designed to reduce motion blur and was introduced with some plasma tvs as well so they could market a high refresh rate similar to the LCDs. If you want to call the artifact ghosting, go ahead. Every other article i've read including this one refers to it as motion blur.
Tomato tomatoe perhaps.

http://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-the-soap-opera-effect/
http://www.wired.com/2014/08/wtf-just-happened-soap-opera-effect/
http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-test-results/motion-interpolation-soap-opera-effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation