Best plasma at the moment

Hi Fozz
I know that fellow forumite Graham Russell has a 42" Kuro and is extremely pleased with it. I have a slightly older Panasonic, also 42", and I have nothing but good to say about it. Those two brands seem to lead the field in plasma and I don't think you can go wrong in selecting either.

Thanks Chris, they say the black level is very good on that one too.

I may be well established as a member of the LCD fraternity, but I'd agree that the picture on the 428XD, especially with standard def from it's own tuner, is stunning.

In fact it might have been the way I'd have gone if it wasn't for the fact it basically becomes a big black mirror under the lighting conditions I have (the reason I went LCD was the non-reflective panel)...

Back on topic though, the one area is doesn't measure up is "on-paper" spec... in as much as it's 768 line not Full HD.

That may not be an issue... but it's someone else's money you're helping to spend... much better to cover that base before she shells out, than to be dealing with constant reminders afterwards.

If she wants Full HD, 42 AND Plasma that only leaves Panasonic... better by spec, lower in price, and a very good image, but hasn't got the jaw-dropping picture of the Pioneer.

thanks Mike, I had not realised it was not full HD... back to reading specs... I think it had better be to cover getting blu ray in the future.

I have the Pioneer 42 Plasma too and a couple of smaller Panasonic LCD's. The Pioneer is better by miles.

Forget any concerns about "Full HD". If you cannot see the difference, it does not matter. Unless you have a device that outputs to 1080p (and even then may be not) , you will not see the difference.

Do you choose your HiFi based on specs or with your ears?

Geoff

Thanks Geoff, this is a case of buying a bit blind because unlike hifi at our level you cannot live with it for a week before parting with the cash... My thinking now is given the likely use of this telly which will be mainstream programming and possibly a bit of hdtv without SKY (they are heavily anti sky) then the pioneer may still be the best for them. ie it makes the most of the bog standard signals. thanks. oh BTW what does a blu ray player actually put out then?

quote:

BTW what does a blu ray player actually put out then?

I believe they put out 1080p if you put in an HD disc. If you put in a standard DVD disc, they only put out 540p. Television programms are probably 480 or 540 or thereabouts with some HD programmes at 720p or possibly 1080i.

Most of the plasma screens that I have seen have a built-in processor to convert all these different inputs to the resolution of the screen. The quality of the end picture depends as much on the processor (scaler) as the quality of the plasma screen. Whichever screen you buy, it will have to do some processing, either up or down to cope with the variety of inputs.

You can buy stand-alone scalers which are very versatile and very good, but as you might expect, they are expensive.

I would try to take a look at the Pioneer and the Panasonic models if possible. The 42" Pioneer Kuros don't do 1080p they only do 768p (or is it 720?) but they are very highly rated. Frank Abela has stated on here that they are the best - full stop. John Lewis knock them out for about £1500 including their 5 year warranty. They can be properly calibrated for about £300 IIRC

The Panasonics do models at 768 and 1080 starting at about £800 up to about £1500 again at John Lewis.

Allow £100 to £200 for a stylish table and perhaps £100 for a good set of cables. £2k should be just about right

Cheers

Don

One other point.

The Pioneers do 24 fps which apparantly is better for most dvd films.

Panasonic used to "glitch" (according to Which?) because they only do 25 fps. I think I saw Panasoncis the other week with the 24 fps Logo - might be worth checking.

Cheers

Don

Have a word with Peter T @ Cymbiosis Fozz.

Regards

PB

Another thought, if you have a John Lewis near you, check them out, they have most models on display( Pioneer £1500) and you can see the reality of picture quality.
I use my Pioneer with a Sky HD as well as analogue and digital aerial feeds.If the basic program material is good quality even SD is fantastic. DVD s played on an nVi are equally excellent.

Geoff

Cheers guys, I like the idea of using John Lewis as with things like this I am sure the extended warranty you can trust is well worth it. On anything else I would say no to extended.

quote:

If you put in a standard DVD disc, they only put out 540p. Television programms are probably 480 or 540 or thereabouts with some HD programmes at 720p or possibly 1080i.

Most of the plasma screens that I have seen have a built-in processor to convert all these different inputs to the resolution of the screen. The quality of the end picture depends as much on the processor (scaler) as the quality of the plasma screen. Whichever screen you buy, it will have to do some processing, either up or down to cope with the variety of inputs.

You can buy stand-alone scalers which are very versatile and very good, but as you might expect, they are expensive.

I would try to take a look at the Pioneer and the Panasonic models if possible. The 42" Pioneer Kuros don't do 1080p they only do 768p (or is it 720?) but they are very highly rated.

Sorry, but there are some quite fundamental inaccuracies in this Don...

To clarify, first with resolutions:

The Pioneer 428 is a 768 line panel (larger Kuros are available as 1080 line Full HD panels).

The 428 (and ALL other Full HD or HD Ready screens) has an inbuilt scaler, and in the case of this screen it will accept 480i/480p/576i/576p/720p/1080i/1080p resolutions.
It will NOT take a 768p feed... so regardless of what you feed it the inbuilt scaler ALWAYS is involved to some degree in processing the picture.

DVDs are 576 line pictures (unless they're NTSC which means they be 480) and are, by nature interlaced (i, not p).
Just about every DVD player on the market though has a de-interlacer, to convert the picture to progressive scan (p).
This function can, however, only be used via compnent video (3 RCA sockets, red green & blue) or HDMI.
If you connect via these you can feed 480p/576p to the screen.

If you connect via scart, then the best will be 576i.

Scart itself can support 3 video transmission types...

Composite - entire picture over one wire - lowest quality
S-Video - monochrome picture with colour overlay - better but still not great.
RGB - not the same as component but the best scart can offer

Any Scart device, where possible, used with this screen should be set to output RGB - this includes Sky/Cable/Freeview boxes.


Regular TV through the built-in freeview tuner - this is also 576i, effectively similar picture quality to what RGB scart offers.

Now on to using HDMI/Component....

The screen is perfectly capable of accepting a 1080p inpout from an upscaling DVD player...
However, to do so is to ask the player to push the picture beyond the screen's resolution and get the screen to downscale it again. This is pointless.

It's also worth remembering that you'd have to spend a LOT of money on a DVD player to find one that'll do a better job of upscaling DVD to 720p (for the screen to do the last bit to 768p) than if you just fed RGB scart or 576p to the screen and let it do the rest of the work.

Finally onto HD sources.

You can't get an HD picture into the screen without a separate box.
SkyHD, Virgin V+, Bluray etc.

ALL HD broadcasts in the UK are 1080i - so the screen de-interlaces & downscales to 768p

ALL Bluray discs are 1080p - so the screen downscsales to 768p

Don also mentioned 24FPS

A number of Bluray disc are encoded at the 24 frames per second rate of motion picture cameras.
If the Pioneer is fed a 24FPS movie, on a 24FPS disc, on a 24FPS player (all Bluray) via HDMI then it will show it at 24FPS.

This has nothing to do with DVD really,but it does improve the experience as the movie plays at the correct speed (as opposed to running at 25fps, making the film run quicker and rasing the pitch on all the audio in the movie).



Absolutley nothing in the above has any bearing on whether or not it's a good screen... if she wants PLASMA (rather than either plasma or lcd), and only wants 42", and largely watches regular TV/DVD then it's THE best screen... and whilst it lacks absolute resolution for Full HD it'll still knock her socks off when HD is shown on it to the best of the screen's ability.



Geoff... I agree with your sentiments of not buying by spec.... but when making recommendations for a family member it is CRUCIAL to look at spec too, as inevitably some smart alec will say to them, "Ohh, why didn't you get the Matsuboza 1600deluxe, that even..." etc, and I'm sure Fozz doesn't want to suffer recriminations from that later on.

All the best

Mike

Thanks for the comprehensive info Mike. I have been away from this scene since I bought my projector a while back and things move fast. My comment on reading spec was more or less being forced to by potentially missing out on some fundamental feature you thought all recent panels had. My mistake, I thought they all did native 1080p now...

I'll let you know what they decide on the road to hi-def... this all started when she saw bbc hidef on my projector. LOL.

Gary

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
Hi Fozz
I know that fellow forumite Graham Russell has a 42" Kuro and is extremely pleased with it. I have a slightly older Panasonic, also 42", and I have nothing but good to say about it. Those two brands seem to lead the field in plasma and I don't think you can go wrong in selecting either.

Yup, I bought the 42" Kuro at the beginning of the year from Audio-T. Fantastic telly

I have a Netgear EVA8000 for streaming movies. I built a 720P movie from a series of wedding photos using Pro Show Producer. The image quality of the movie was simply stunning.

It's a lot more expensive than other 42" plasmas, but the picture quality is great.

Thanks Graham, there is currently a bit of minor mumbling about not being able to fit the 42" screen in the place where the old telly went...I'll find out more soon.

Then the 37" Panasonic will fit the bill nicely!