Originally Posted by LaidbackPrep

Uhm that's actually exactly what I was talking about... They just finished up their (bi-?) annual family and friends sale. There were a couple of 37" LCDs for below $500, which I considered getting but 1. 37" would overpower my dorm room but 26" would not be large enough for post-dorm room living in a year 2. They'll cease to exist by next year which would leave me in an interesting predicament if my set stopped working in 7 months. A warranty would be worthless if they no longer had replacement parts. I really think the horror stories are hyped up. In places like that, every one who gets a bad set feels the need to post, rant, and rave, while when you get a great set with hassle-free delivery, you may or may not bother to post and let people know about it. Most of the things in the outlet are refurbs and at a great discount, so it seems in poor taste to whine about poor customer service when you get a bad set; you aren't going to get grade A service on a grade C price (which seems to be the basis of those horror stores: customer gets DOA set, has to wait on hold for a CSR, has to pay return shipping, has to jump through hoops to have the return allowed, etc).

Originally Posted by Suhpreem

It's nice to know that all of you guys have fallen for LCD's marketing bullshit. I will admit that up until a few years ago, plasmas did have terrible burn-in.
a few years ago?? how long has the plasma technology been built into tvs and sold to consumers? go look at a calender

However, for at least the past year, this problem has all but disappeared if the set is treated correctly for the first few hundred hours of use. All big name manufacturers have almost completely gotten rid of burn-in even without proper set conditioning. To properly condition a plasma, all you have to do is download a free DVD iso from the Internet (avsforum.com) and run it on the plasma for a couple days when you first get it.
and im sure EVERYONE has sat around looking up plasma information to know to go to some forum download an iso, burn it to a dvd, hope your dvd player can read it, hope that the person even has a dvd burner, and have that person know to run this for a couple DAYS, if you go buy an lcd you can actually use it for what you bought it for right out of the box

It is even okay to only run the disc during the time you are not watching regular programming if that is preferred. Also, anyone who honestly believes that LCDs have better picture quality than plasmas is completely blind. Plasmas have much richer blacks than LCD.
are we talking about picture quality or contrast? ill let you know that the three LCDs that i own will shit all over your plasma, i bet you dont even have a plasma, regardless, lcd picture quality >>>>> plasma picture quality

and if you know so much about the picture quality of a plasma how come you never brought up REFRESH RATES which causes GHOSTING, tell me you can run cod4 on a plasma side by side with an lcd and you wont notice anything in the plasma.. read a book fool

id rather watch a movie and see FAST MOTION with a screen that refreshes the monitor faster, and not some ghosting bullshit

Next time you are at Best Buy, compare a Samsung 705 series LCD to the newest Pioneer Kuro (Kuro should be found in the Magnolia Theater section). You will be blown away by the difference in black levels. The Samsung blacks look gray in comparison to the Kuro.
lets talk about sony's lcds and how the blacks arent abnormally dark as found on the kuro, because ive seen the kuro compared to the latest set of consumer sony lcds, cool, the plasma IS dark, but its too dark, show me some contrast LEVELS not just HIGH CONTRAST

The new sets coming out also have even richer blacks than the ones out now. Pioneer also showed off an infinite contrast prototype at CES 2007. The set essentially blocks any light from showing through a pixel if it is supposed to display true black based on the color information the TV receives from the content.
cool pioneer displayed a prototype tv that did something cool, how about you get a hold of that tv so we can compare it to what we are talking about in this thread, CONSUMER TVS NOT PROTOTYPES

If you say, "But LCDs have xx,000:1 contrast ratio! That's so black!" then you are completely wrong. These numbers used by the marketing teams (for both LCD and Plasma) are completely useless. They tell you the dynamic contrast ratio of the sets, which is a pointless statistic. This measures the brightness of the set when it is displaying a completely white image, and then compares it to a completely black image displayed on the set. This is useless in the real world because you don't care about the difference of two different colors displayed at different times, you care about the difference of the two colors when displayed at the same time.
irrelevant to current discussion

plus, look at a sony xbr5 or 6, YES SOLD AT BESTBUY, the xbr6 disproves everything you just said about your lcd hating

but what can you expect from some troll with an HD-DVD avatar.. do you 'know it all' about hd-dvd too?

Originally Posted by Jake

Shut the **** up. This topic is like a year old.

Originally Posted by MacPlus512

I know this topic is old, but I wanted to throw some love out there for CRTs. My Sony CRT is barely four years old and gives a great picture.

The Sony Trinitron WEGA sets have always been pretty good, too bad they stopped making them. I got mine for only $300 (for a 24" with a 16:9 ratio) and I don't really see any reason to get a Plasma or LCD unless I want something that can handle HD signals, and given that I don't watch much TV I'm not going to bother.

If you find a Sony WEGA CRT set at a garage sale or something you should pick it up if you need an extra set--they were probably the high point in CRT engineering.