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Hey folks. My wife has said we should get a big tv later this year. Naturally I've started shopping early. I noticed the "DLP" tvs are considerably cheaper than plasma, and about the same as LCD. What the hells the difference, and is the money worth it? I mean, if I'm going to see a dust speck on an eyelash on one and not the other, does it really matter? Somebody whose seen or owned both help me out please!

Main difference with DLP?  They're thicker than plasma/LCD, so they take up more space.  Older models require periodic changes of the lamp as well which can get expensive, but some newer systems are using LEDs which last a lot longer.   

Also, watch a high-contrast image on the set for "rainbow" patterns (they'll show up in the bright areas.)  Some sets exhibit more than others, and some people in particular are susceptible to seeing them.  So, it's hard to say whether it will affect you or not, it's just something for you to look out for before purchasing.

I know plasmas draw quite a bit more power than LCDs, but I don't know what the power consumption of DLPs is.  Something to look into if you care about your power bills.

The LED based DLPs have a good picture and don't have the lamp problem for the most part, but DLP is a fading technology that probably won't be around for a whole lot longer.  Plasmas have better blacks but take more power (plasma is also starting to lose the market-share game). LCD's are better in bright rooms but don't get great blacks unless you get a very high end one, they can also have motion blur and what's called 3:2 pull-down judder if you don't get 120hz but most of the newer ones have gone to that standard.

Those DLP sets are old technology. If it was between LCD and plasma, then plasma has the advantage if you watch a lot of sports and movies (better with fast motion). LCD has the advantage if you're more interested in videogames than watching sport (better with digital graphics). When the TV signal is perfect, LCD is crisper. But if the signal is weak, plasma compensates better.

Plasma technology is older but reaching new and unexpected highs. LCD is constantly threatening to defeat plasma, but they are both worthwhile. However, they're both developing very fast, and what you buy now will feel old in a year or two.

What about those LED-tvs ? How are they compared to LCD / Plasma ?

LEDs is just another way of backlighting an LCD. The more common technology is CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Tube). LEDs use less power, are more uniform in lighting, and you get better color compared to CCFLs. The disadvantage is that they are more expensive.

Going back to the original question:

DLP is a projection-type TV. This allows manufacturers to project images onto larger screens for less cost than "direct-view" TVs which include CRTs, plasma and direct-view LCD TVs (there are also projection LCD TVs), but the picture quality isn't as good as the direct-views.

Of all the TV technologies CRTs *still* offer the best picture. Unfortunately nobody makes them anymore and even if they did, to build one in the sizes people expect these days would mean they would weigh 1/4 ton or more.

Of the newer technologies plasma is the closest to CRTs in picture quality but they usually lack the proper HDTV resolution of other technologies. E.g. a "720p" plasma is often something like 1024 x 768 instead of 1280 x 720 and "1080p" is often 1366 x 768 or 1280x1080 or some other weird resolution instead of 1920 x 1080 so the display isn't actually showing you all the detail in the source material. Also as Abagadro said plasmas suck up a lot of power though newer technologies have cut that down quite a bit. Plasma's also not so great if you want to play video games on them since there are potentially burn-in issues.

Direct-view LCDs are currently the best compromise. Picture isn't as good as plasmas (or CRTs) but their native resolutions are correct (1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080), use less power and are better quality picture-wise than the protection technologies like DLP and you can get them in large sizes, though they cost more than projection TVs.

Also, since liquid crystals always let a small amount of the backlight bleed through, being able to turn off selective portions of the LED backlights leads to better black levels in the picture.

If you want to game, DLP rocks. Get the 1080p with LED lights. Get bigger than you think you need. I've had my 61" 720p DLP for five and a half years and still love it (see grief title).

Projection, bleh.  I love my Mitsubishi 52" LCD.  People with projection TVs who see my TV make appreciative comments.

and then there is laser (http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/pr_mitsubishi_laservue_hdtv)

Unfortunately it blinds you if you look at it so its not the ideal TV set.

I bought a Samsung 67A750 DLP set after doing some research and looking around.
In the 1500 to 2000 dollar range you are going to get a 42-50 inch TV Plasma/LCD and in my opinion the picture quality is not as good. I don't have motion blur at all and my picture looks great on games, movies, and sports.

You can also check out http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ for a little more detail than you will get here.

Thats hilarious. Thats the exact tv I picked out like a week ago to show to the wife. Well, except I was looking at 1080. Response? "We don't need one that big." Le sigh.

Everyone says that. After about a week of watching it, you don't know how people settle for such tiny tvs. I mentioned the 67" set to my fiancee, and she agreed that when it was time to replace mine, we would get that one. She also loves the tv, but does not call it George. We go to my dad's townhouse, and they've got a 46" that just looks tiny to us now. I tried convincing him to go larger, but his wife intervened.

I question everyone's taste in women.  :oh_i_see:

I've got 32" and 37" LCD HD TVs.  I really don't see the need for bigger in either of the spaces we've got them in, and I've never thought while watching or playing games on them that they needed to be bigger.  If they were in different spaces, sure, I can see going bigger.  But we've also got nice furnishings, and I always find myself thinking these enormous sets look ridiculous in some of the places people put them.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that my wife didn't also influence these decisions.  But the above stands, so I guess she was right in the end.  :drillf:

Don't start watching a bigger TV for any length of time or you'll sit there stewing in bile whenever you are watching your own.  It's a one-way trip.

Don't be a size whore :P Take your viewing distance and how much space you have in your TV room into consideration before purchasing, don't just buy the biggest one you can just because you can.  I bought a 46" not because I couldn't afford or didn't want a larger TV, but because it was the right size.

For the record, the wife didn't complain about the size, she just complained that I was dropping $4k on a TV (even though I had the cash).  But whatever your woman's complaint, just remember: diamonds are the way to shut her the hell up  :grin:

Or you could just tell her to shut the fuck up and watch tv.

Edit: Everyone, even women, appreciate a completely oversized TV when something THEY want to watch is on. Though I didn't really appreciate my HDTVs until blu-ray.

My wife complains all the time about the size of our TV, but she'll get over it and I'll still have my big TV.

My 52" is kinda small, but I can't get a bigger one into the cabinet.  My wife thinks it is great.  This is because of the 360, PS3 and Blu-ray.  More recently we get some HD channels on DirecTV.

That's a pretty big cabinet. 

Unless I want a bigger TV. :oh_i_see:

Since you're not married and may not fully comprehend, let me clarify:

Diamonds are the way to shut your woman up, without her setting fire to you in bed some random evening.

No no no, flowers are the way to silence a woman.  Diamonds are for when she finds you in bed with someone else.

You have it all wrong.  Lawyers are the best way to silence a woman.

   

I again question your tastes in women :) Why are you with a woman you wish to silence? Life is too short to saddle yourself with a nag.

Watching the Planet Earth series in HD hooked her, along with HD movies. We just DVR'd a couple of the Blue Planet series, love that stuff.For a 46"? Ouch. I paid less for that for my 61", in ye olde early adopter days. You can snag the 67" DLP for $1800!

As a lawyer, I am particularly fond of rohypnol.

Yes, but then I'd be stuck with a DLP  :grin:

I didn't quite have the ~$6k for a Kuro, so it was a tossup between the XBR4 or the 4671, and I preferred the latter.

(No, I got nuthin' in particular against DLP)

Edit: I should point out that after price-matching discount refunds, I ultimately got it for closer to $2800.

They don't start out as nags.

Back to TV.  I have been in the store and looked at things.  I just don't care for the projection sets.  Personal preference, I guess, but I don't care for the picture.  My LCD has the expected quirks but I prefer those to a projection set.  The motion blur is hard to notice on my TV but I suppose some people are more sensitive to that; it is noticeable on my 22" LG monitor but only if I am looking for it since I'm used to it now, or if I'm viewing at an angle.  In any case, it bothers me far less than a projection picture for some reason.

I have a 62" LCD, and 32' and 52" Plasmas, both Samsung and all techie spec's aside I cannot tell the difference. I was told when I got the 52 plasma that they last longer than LCD (something like 25,000 hours) but I would say do not get too ground down by the details, get the best price/size combo.

Other way around.  Half-life of an LCD display is generally claimed to be about 80,000 hours, while plasmas are in the 60,000 hour range (up from 30k a few years ago).

Expect a little manufacturer bullshit in all those numbers, but if they're even vaguely accurate you'll replace the set with something better way before you get to that point.

I'm a DLP evangelist, but my #1 rule is to look at them yourself, and try to view source material you'll be watching. It's the only real way to choose, along with a healthy dose of avsforum research. There are things about DLP that I can see if I look for them...I just don't look for them! Especially on my older tech set.

On life: my older tech lamp gets about 6k hours (haven't checked the service menu to see actual hours, though). So going by that guesstimate, I'm at 13 or 14k total on the set after 5 and a half years, so even an old Plasma would still be ok, but getting ready to head downhill in the next year or two, unless I'm misremembering how plasma degrades. I pop in a new bulb and have a brand new set as far as optics go. So that one is technically in favor of DLP, especially with an LED light engine.

Get what you like and it's tough to go wrong, they're all good techs at this point. Just make sure you know what you intend to do with the set so you have the correct resolution, inputs, etc. They're so much better than they were when I bought, and they weren't bad then.

I'd like to take a moment to complain about the SD signals used on display models in many stores.  I can't make a good decision if the signal is shitty.

I only look at the frames in the stores; the picture is a mess:  SD, split signals, high contrast, crappy movies.  I'm not very good at diagnosing what is wrong with a picture, so I tend to go with a professional review, like Sound and Vision.

Yeah, you've got to request another input. Tell them you're also interested in a PS3 or BluRay player or something. Or that you want to hook your pc up ^^

Finding the best LCD TV (http://www.smartratings.com/electronics/plasma_and_lcds/472) can be difficult if you have no clue at all on which one to go for. I did some research and I finally settled on Samsung 32" Series 4 lcd television. So far, I have no regrets and I'm happy with it.

 :oh_i_see:

You have a small penis!

8 or so months ago I bought a 46" LCD tv (samsung).  I love it and it looks amazing with HD programming.

However, due to my previous setup I had my 360 hooked up to my roommate's DLP 50" and I mostly used it to stream videos from my laptop.  The quality was amazing and you couldn't tell that the video itself wasn't even at 720p and was being upscaled.  However, now that I am using my LCD tv, it is much noticeable(DLP was at 1080i, LCD is using 1080p).

It's not horrible, but you can certainly tell that it's not HD quality.  I do not know if that's because HD looks better on my LCD tv or if the projection makes the artifacts/pixelation less noticeable.

*edit: meant the artifacts/pixelation is less noticeable on the DLP

Another issue with a DLP is the viewing angles.  You can watch a Plasma or LCD from 45 degrees off axis without any problem (other than parallax), but many DLP's get very dark at more than 15 degrees away from straight in front, so only one or two people are actually sitting where the view is good.  Also, you may have bright spots where you're seeing the lamp in the mirrors, and the edges may be dimmer than the center.

On size, keep the limits of both your budget and the room in mind.  If you've got a 60" set but you're sitting 4 feet away from it, you're going to see every pixel even at 1080P, and you're going to have some of the same effect of losing the action at the edges of your peripheral vision you'd have if you were in the 4th row at a movie.  The fovea (the part of your eye where you see the most detail) is only about 10 degrees wide, saccades (the automatic flicks your eyes make) can widen that out a bit, but if you're not sitting at least twice as far from the set as its width (so about 8 feet for a 60 inch set), you're going to have issues (like blinding headaches after watching a few hours).  On the other hand, if your room layout dictates a 10 foot viewing distance and your budget sets a 50 inch limit, 1080P is a waste (because you can't see the pixels of 720P at that distance on that size of screen).

Nobody makes large CRT's anymore, I have a 150 *pound* 36 inch SDTV in the kid's game room as an explanation of why (my old "good set").  LCD's are probably the most reliable technology (but they get expensive in the larger sizes), a *good* DLP (like my Sony) can be just fine if you don't mind a TV that's a couple of feet thick.  Plasmas are inherently prone to break, the way they generate a picture just doesn't allow a really long-term service life, unless your ego or your space absolutely requires a completely flat set, don't do it.

With any projection set, keep in mind that you may want to elevate it to eye level (when seated) or slightly higher.  This tends to reduce some of the lighting problems I mentioned before (mine is sitting on a buffet, the lower edge of the screen is about 3 feet off the ground).

Something to look at is the cost and service life of the lamps.  6000 hours and a replacement cost of $100-150 is about right.  One downside of the LED backlights is that you *can't* replace the backlight in most cases, if one of the LED's dies, you've got a dim spot and that's that.  Or if you can, you have to replace the whole assembly for much more than the cost of a lamp.

--Dave

Not true. The DLP viewing axis issue is vertical, not horizontal.

I have a loveseat that's more than 45 degrees off and you can watch tv just fine. And there is no lamp effect. However, I like to lay on the carpet and watch tv, and my tv stand is a bit too high, and I have a degraded picture and the lamp effect. Ideally I'd lower my tv stand a bit, I've already eyed the legs with a hacksaw...

Maybe it's a difference in the way Sony and Samsung lay out their electronics?

Must be, because I've noticed that viewing angle problem with the DLPs on display at Best Buy and Sam's club when the wife and I have been browsing.

I have one of them fandangled new 52" Samsumgs (650A) with 120hz, and it is the bees knees.  I love it more than my sorta old Panasonic plasma (42") which I loved dearly.  120hz is the shit on those Samsung sets...may take some getting used to for some people.

Buy DLP if money is a major issue.  The only good projection is front projection.  If I could fully control the light in my living room, I'd only use a projector.