Widescreen Gaming Forum

I'm looking for a flat panel TV sized at 46" and priced at around $1,000. I'll use it mainly for moives and PC games (primarily flight simulation games) and do the document works on my old Dell 1905FP. Which type of TV is more suitable for me, plasma or LCD?

From what I know, plasma is good at displaying motive images and features low input lag. It is also cheaper than the LCD of the same size. Everyting looks promising untill the annoying burn-in comes in. It's not a problem as long as for watching movies. But it worries me when playing computer games, because fixed logos or texts are unavoidable. I've heard someone saying he was seeing a HP indicator hanging over the news presenter after 5-6 hours of game play the night before.

My biggest gripes about LCD TV is the notorious input lag. Although there are some models with very good performance, they are mostly highly priced.

What do you think is the best choice among Sony 46EX500, Samsung 46C650 and Panasonic 46S10C? Or a better one other than these three?

P.S. What is the highest refresh rate I can set in the NVIDA refresh rate setting page on a 120Hz LCD TV, 60 or 120? What if on a 550Hz plasma?

P.P.S. Is it OK to palce a 46" TV about 5 feet away in front of me? Will I be able to see pixel dots?

The panasonic sounds best from what you have said.

IMO you should shit around 3x the screen sizes distance from the TV. So 50" TV = ~150 inches. Quite a lot more than 5 feet. Go to a shop and see how they look @ 5 feet.

The extra 120Hz modes on LCDs' normally are crap for games as they cause input lag to increase (they delay the signal to "look" at the signal and then insert extra frames to make the movement appear more natural.)

I would go with the Panaonic Plasma personally (although I would get a G20 or VT20 model, but they cost a fair bit more).

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5 Feet for a 46" 1080P set is totally workable as you can see in these chart. If fact you won't want to be much more than 6 feet away for optimal viewing 1080P contents.

http://hdguru.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/hdtv_distance_chart.pdf

http://hd.engadget.com/2006/12/09/1080p-charted-viewing-distance-to-screen-size/

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

Now the most important part. How high a refreshrate can I expect from a Plasma TV? Most large LCD displays nowadays can only go as high as 60 Hz. What's the hightest refresh rate I can get from my Nvidia Control Panel?

The monitor input normally only works up to 60Hz (meaning VGA) at a good resolution, and the HDMI is treated like HDMI afaik, so you can probibly get 1080p60 from your PC.

Although, if anyone could shed some light on that I would be greatful, my camera records @ 1080p50 and want a screen that can accept it from a PC, but don't know if you can do 50p, 60p and 24p/ 23.976p from a graphics card, and how you go about switching it.

_________________
P8Z68-V Pro | 2600K | HR02 | HD5850 | 2x4GB Vengeance LP | 128GB M4 + 6TB | X-Fi > HD595 | AX850 | Tai Chi | PB278Q | G110 + Deathadder 2013
P8Z77-V | 3570K | Mugen 2 | HD5850 | 2x4GB Vengeance LP | 500GB | X-750 | Fractal R3 | U2212HM | G110 + G400
P8H77-I | G860 | 4650 | 2x2GB XMS | 320GB | CX500 | Prodigy | T22B350EW | MX518
DC3217IYE | 1x4GB Vengeance | 64GB M4 | TX-42VT20E

As for fitting a 24f movie into a 60hz TV, it's kinda complicated, read this:

http://www.dvdfile.com/tech/articles/36181-what-the-heck-is-32-pulldown

If you get a Panasonic, just be aware that black level will rise after using it for a while. It was something Panasonic was supposed to fix, but they could only slow its rising black for this year's model. The Samsung plasmas are also known for annoying buzzing. However, I feel both models have pretty good image retention handling. Really, while temporary IR still persists, permanent burn in is much rarer and is really an overblown fear.

Personally, I find myself being annoyed with phosphor lag the most with plasma displays. While it's true plasmas have lower response time than current LCDs, (hold time for PWM is 4-6ms, while for active matrix, it's 8.3ms for 120Hz, 16.7ms for 60Hz) it has a price. IMO, I find green phosphor trailing a bit more noticable than LCD's motion blurs. Plasmas are still my display of choice because of better viewing angles and good shadow details.

Currently, I know of no HDTVs that can accept native 120Hz. Those 120/240Hz HDTVs only accept 60Hz content and perform interpolations to give weird soap-opera effect. Because making it more soap-opera takes more calculations in scaler, input lag will be increased. Plasmas generally have superior motion handling than the LCDs, so 120Hz interpolation isn't necessary.