OT - HDTV help, SpeedHD - Dishnetwork finally got off their asses Options

[brp986s]

Finally - I've been waiting for SpeedHD on Dish to buy my first HDTV. Are LCDs suitable for watching racing, baseball, and tennis? Does the fast motion blur them out too much? Anyone have one these 240 Hz LCDs? Is that a noticeable improvement? Howabout LED - same issues? Trying to avoid plasma due to heat and power consumption.

[Pnambic]

First I'd like to qualify my comments with the fact that I have both an LCD HDTV (for 2 years) and a Plasma HDTV (for almost 3 years).

They say:

• Plasma's have burn-in - true, but not near as bad as used to be the case and even now, you'd have to have some strange viewing habits to encounter this problem. Panasonic says you would have to have the same static image on the screen for 4 days straight before burn-in would become a problem.
• LCD's blur with fast motion - used to be true, but with 4ms and lower refresh rates, as are most common nowadays, its not an issue anymore.
• Plasma uses more power - this has been pretty hotly debated. It turns out that LCD's use power at a MUCH more stable rate and Plasma energy usage varies with the image being presented. Most of the intelligent (sounding) info I've read indicates that the power usage ratings are peak measurements and make Plasma look far worse than it really is. I've read that the actual difference may be closer to $10- $20 PER YEAR for the average consumer.
• Plasmas are heavier - I'm pretty sure this is true, but as long as you mount the wall bracket in the wall studs like you're supposed to, it shouldn't be an issue.
• Plasma's have deeper blacks and better color in general - still an issue, but not as much of one as it used to be. Quite frankly, if you're going from normal TV to HDTV, both the LCD and Plasma are so ridiculously far superior, youi're going to be pleased regardless.
• You could get dead pixels with an LCD TV - I have personally encountered this on a computer monitor (Viewsonic), but I've never seen it on an HDTV.
• LCD's last longer than Plasmas - this may be true, but even Plasma TV's are supposed to last 60,000 viewing hours - or 20 YEARS watching it for 8 hours a day. I don't know about you, but I highly doubt that I'll still be using the same TV in 20 years. Chances are more likely that we'll be watching something silly like 4320PQR or something by then so I'll have bought a new TV anyway...

Some other things to think about:
They say that if you're sitting between 8 - 10 feet away from a 42 inch screen, the human eye can't tell the difference between 720P and 1080P.

The Contrast ratings for TV's mean almost nothing. There is no agreed upon standard testing method, so one manufacturer's 10,000:1 may be equivalent to another manufacturer's 15,000:1. At best, you may be able to use them to determine which model from the Same Manufacturer to go with.

I haven't been in the market for a little while, but when I was, Panasonic and Samsung were the big dogs in Plasma. Sony and Samsung were the big dogs in LCD. Pioneer Elites were also highly regarded, but were way over-priced. Like Sean says, Visio seems to be producing a good, inexpensive product, though reliability down the road is a question mark.

Personally, I like my Plasma better than my LCD. My boys play video games on it all the time, they watch cartoon network and nick toons and all that with the logo in the bottom corner of the screen and I've never had even a ghost of an afterimage from that. But I'm not about to tell you that you shouldn't get an LCD. Its like the argument between getting a 6 powered 914 or a big Raby engine. They both have their points, but either one of them will give you a grin from ear to ear. Kind of a no-lose situation.

Just make sure that if you do go with an LCD, you get one with 4ms or less refresh rate. (I think plasma's are at 1 or 2 ms and the human eye can only discern 6ms so anything less than 6 is golden, but don't quote me on that.)