Hi,
My TV was broken last eve and I’m looking for a new one,.
My insurance company say I can buy whichever TV I want and pay the difference in ‘new for old’ value which is a bonus.

The TV was an LG LCD 32 inch which was nice, but suffered from motion blur when watching sports, even on HD channels.

I am toying with the idea of upgrading to a plasma of around 40 inces as from what I have read Plasmas don’t suffer much with motion blur. However, when I visited Currys this afternoon I found that every Plasma there has an extremely reflective screen.
My sitting room is very bright as the sun hits the patio door most of the day so any reflections of my ugly mug when watching it would be very off putting.
Are there any Plasma TV owners out there with sets that have non reflective screens at all?

If I don’t get a Plasma then I’ll go for an LED TV. In people’s experience can you watch sports on yours without motion blur? And if yes then which model do you recommend/own please?

Plasma screens are glass - so all are far more reflective than the plastic LCD screens - they are also far less bright.

Shut the curtains when you watch TV, I do


There's not really any such thing as an 'LED' TV - it's just a LCD set with LED back lighting, and you'll probably be hard pressed to find an LCD which doesn't use LED's now. LED lighting makes them thinner and more power efficient, it doesn't improve the picture particularly.

As for what to buy?, check the top two makes, Sony and Panasonic - which are generally better than the cheaper brands. It's also worth going for higher 'frame rates', with 400Hz or 800Hz quite common now.

Ignore the Plasma 600Hz figure, that isn't the frame rate, it's a 'made up' figure to try and confuse people in to thinking it's the frame rate (which is only 100Hz).

Hi, thankyou for replying.

I wont be 'allowed' to watch the TV with the curtains closed so an LCD Tv with LED back lighting seems to be the way forward.

Having a quick glance at the Currys website this set has a 400Hz frame rate which compared to most of the others seems quite good, although its not a Sony or a Panasonic.
What do you think?

I'm not sure I really need a Smart TV as I already have a media server setup via my PS3 etc, but i couldn't find a non Smart TV with as high a frame rate.

Go and have a look in Currys, see what you think - but Samsung are on a similar level to LG.


TV's aren't very smart anyway

But as you say, it's hard to find one without it - although facilities vary a LOT.

Motion blur would probably have been due to a slow response rate.

I'm sure the vast majority of recent TV's are faster, so it seems best not to bother with a higher wattage Plasma.

Is this supposed to be impartial advice, based on watching a plasma that may be older than many forum members here?

Yes; old or cheap plasmas can be reflective, but the recent Panasonic 3D ones are not. When I got my GT50 I was shocked at how easy it is to watch in bright daylight (the TV faces a large window). It's far less reflective than my older (much smaller) CRT, despite the difference in screen size.

Many modern LCDs have highly reflective screens. It's an intended effect, and many people are happy with it. The important thing is to know what you're getting.

So the simple answer to the question of which screen is more reflective is: it depends!

That's not the experience of other Panasonic owners on here, nor of the Panasonic Plasmas we've sold this year.

They do add anti-reflective coatings, which help a little bit - but are still no where near the much lower reflectiveness of LCD sets.

Ehh?

I disagree.

My 5 year old Panasonic 42 inch plasma set is well coated with anti-reflective material and is not significantly reflective. When switched off, the only difference with my more modern 27 inch LED monitor is that the latter produces a fuzzy reflection not a clear one (but equally dim). I hardly think they would have lowered the quality of anti-reflective plasma coatings in the last 5 years, such things tend to improve with new models.

What you and customers are seeing is almost certainly caused by the greater brightness of LCD screens when switched on, compared to plasma screens. Obviously, brighter screens when on will show reflections a bit less than the less bright plasma screens, given similar reflectivity.

But many people do not like bright screens - I run my LCD monitor at 15 to 30% reduced brightness and would dim it even more if the contrast didn't then become unacceptably low. Plasma brightness and contrast is perfect for me on the 'normal' setting i.e. some way below maximum brightness and contrast, even after 5 years. Neither screen produces noticeable reflections when in use, in my domestic environment, unless the sun (rarely) manages to get onto a screen, in which case they both do. Brightly lit shops may differ!

Good job. The factory setting for Plasma is dull to conserve electricity.

I believe the user friendly bright setting in Plasma uses 4 times the wattage of a modern LCD.
Thankfully, gone are the days when Plasma used half a kilowatt per hour.

You can't use a kilowatt per hour. The Watt is already a measurement of the rate of energy use per unit time.

Physics lesson - no charge!

Cheers,
David.

Except that we all knew what he meant. My plasma uses less than a kilowatt-hour of energy per day, on average.

You can't have it on for very long then!

Well it averages less than 200 watts and it's probably on for less than 5 hours a day on average, 5 hours would be more than enough!

Most of us knew what he meant too, though he was determined to confuse just a minute few.