It's Offical Plasma Is In Trouble!

[complectus]

I may be wrong, but it's my understanding that high-end LCDs have one advantage over plasma that current plasma technology will never be able to make up - colour gamut. Is it not true that plasmas create colour using the same phosphors as CRT & thus have the same limitations of colour reproduction, ie. approximately the sRGB/ 72% NTSC colour space? Viewing a CIE1931 diagram for a plasma shows just how little of the visible spectrum a plasma can actually reproduce. Current high-end LCDs with 92% NTSC gamut backlighting are a significant improvement, & Samsung has already released a 20" professional LCD monitor for computing with LED backlighting & 111% NTSC colour gamut. OLED & SED will likely increase the colourspace even further & Laser RPTV will cover very nearly the entire visible spectrum.

The increased bandwidth of HDMI 1.3 is at least in part a response to the need to address the larger colourspaces of 111% & above NTSC gamut new-generation LCD monitors. I believe that no plasma will ever be able to reproduce enough colours to use the extra bandwidth of HDMI 1.3.

LCDs still have problems that may or may not be fixable with better technology. It's likely that the newer technologies will become economically competitive before all LCD's current problems can be totally fixed. Whatever happens to LCD, it seems to me that it will outlast plasma because of its potentially better colour reproduction. The changes written into the spec for HDMI 1.3 may well be plasma's epitaph.

BTW I'm about to buy a 50" plasma...

[Zacspeed]

I dont know how many people on this forum are pro LCD.

I consider those of us subscribed to this forum the tiny minority that are educated on the varying TV's based on facts through the various articles and threads.

Unfortunately the majority that make up sales stats have very little clue as to what factors make good TV viewing.

Ive overheard countless times when Ive been on a sales floor, hearing someone say, "but that tv picture looks better"

When I tell people im pro plasma and not a fan of LCD they beg to differ and I get the odd laugh. So I then ask them, "Why is Plasma so bad?" and "Who do you know with a plasma?"

As for the 1st question its nearly always as Plasmas have a short user life, suffer screen burn and dont have good picture.

The 2nd question is nearly always that they know no one with a plasma.

I agree that on the showroom floor LCDs look better, but perhaps thats because of the generally smaller sizes, issues arent as amplified and I notice stores dont put as much fast action motion on them also.

So at the end of the day, us educated folks can be satisfied that we're making a purchase on an informed decision and the somewhat others that make up the majority can be (falsely) satisfied based on their perception that it was a good TV on the showroom and the salesman said so.

[thanks4thefish]

I'm not technical, but I don't understand why people buy LCD's when the stores show Lord of the Rings & similar dark movies. In many of the dark scenes between Frodo & the little fat bloke I just sea a void of 'black' if you can call it black, with no detail. Another example I saw was a Harry Potter film where he is in front of a bookshelf which is just in total darkness, & yet on my Panasonic plasma or CRT TV's I can clearly make out the lines of the individual books.

People talk about LCD's having more colours, but I just see less of the picture & faces look surreal against darker backgrounds, I don't know if it's because of higher definition but it doesn't look natural, it looks like blue screen Hollywood stuff, ie the actor is superimposed on the background. With darker hair I just see a mop of hair instead of strands.

I am not a purist, & would not consider myself fussy, but I just find these TV's unwatchable.

Whenever I see these films in the store on LCD's I tend to focus more on the missing picture, than what's there.

Also the colours look like a low metallic sheen, & the picture appears to be made up of very fine sand.

Am I crazy, is there technical terms for these things, or do I see LCD differently than other people?

Edited April 14, 2007 by thanks4thefish

[Peterpack]

let's face it, LCD v Plasma, it's close to 50/50. Just like Ferrari v Porche

Get what you think is better for you

[Owen]

I may be wrong, but it's my understanding that high-end LCDs have one advantage over plasma that current plasma technology will never be able to make up - colour gamut. Is it not true that plasmas create colour using the same phosphors as CRT & thus have the same limitations of colour reproduction, ie. approximately the sRGB/ 72% NTSC colour space? Viewing a CIE1931 diagram for a plasma shows just how little of the visible spectrum a plasma can actually reproduce. Current high-end LCDs with 92% NTSC gamut backlighting are a significant improvement, & Samsung has already released a 20" professional LCD monitor for computing with LED backlighting & 111% NTSC colour gamut. OLED & SED will likely increase the colourspace even further & Laser RPTV will cover very nearly the entire visible spectrum.

The increased bandwidth of HDMI 1.3 is at least in part a response to the need to address the larger colourspaces of 111% & above NTSC gamut new-generation LCD monitors. I believe that no plasma will ever be able to reproduce enough colours to use the extra bandwidth of HDMI 1.3.

LCDs still have problems that may or may not be fixable with better technology. It's likely that the newer technologies will become economically competitive before all LCD's current problems can be totally fixed. Whatever happens to LCD, it seems to me that it will outlast plasma because of its potentially better colour reproduction. The changes written into the spec for HDMI 1.3 may well be plasma's epitaph.

BTW I'm about to buy a 50" plasma...

You are ignoring the obvious.

All video source is produced to specific colour gamut standards e.g. PAL, NTSC or HD colour space. These standards where designed around the capabilities of phosphor based CRT displays, and Plasma being phosphor based, should be able to conform to these video standards.

Using a display with a non standard wider colour gamut results in colour being displayed incorrectly and should be avoided.

Displays with wider colour gamut will only ever be useful if video standards change, and that is VERY unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

The ability of HDMI 1.3+ to carry up to 48bit colour information will remain useless for many years to come, as all video is encoded at 24bit and will remain so for a long time to come.

Likewise the ability to carry resolutions greater then 1920x1080 and higher frame rates then 60fps is useless in a world where video is limited to 1080p 24 or 1080i 60.

Remember that BluRay and HDDVD do not support resolutions greater then 1080p 24 or 1080i 60, and also do not support any more then 24bit colour, so we will be waiting for some future HD video distribution format to deliver what HDMI 1.3 is capable of. God knows how many years that will take.

Wide colour gamut displays and HDMI 1.3 are marketing tools at this point in time, not useful advancements for the display of video.

About the only useful advancement in HDMI 1.3 is on the audio side of things, and you would want to have some sh*t hot and very pricy audio gear to be able to take advantage of that.

[Muzzer]

Really well said Owen.

The other thing that amuzes me is when people talk about "deep colour" and billions of colours that are available with these new technologies.

The human eye can only make out around 300,000 colours according to my son who's an optomitrist...anything more than this is a "brochure feature only"!

[Owen]

24bit colour (16.8 million colours) is fine and is not a limitation. The displays have been the problem, not 24bit video.

Any good quality display has no issues with Posterization or colour banding with 24bit colour video, so increasing colour bit depth will yield very little benefit.

[tom_tank]

I'm not technical, but I don't understand why people buy LCD's when the stores show Lord of the Rings & similar dark movies. In many of the dark scenes between Frodo & the little fat bloke I just sea a void of 'black' if you can call it black, with no detail. Another example I saw was a Harry Potter film where he is in front of a bookshelf which is just in total darkness, & yet on my Panasonic plasma or CRT TV's I can clearly make out the lines of the individual books.

People talk about LCD's having more colours, but I just see less of the picture & faces look surreal against darker backgrounds, I don't know if it's because of higher definition but it doesn't look natural, it looks like blue screen Hollywood stuff, ie the actor is superimposed on the background. With darker hair I just see a mop of hair instead of strands.

I am not a purist, & would not consider myself fussy, but I just find these TV's unwatchable.

Whenever I see these films in the store on LCD's I tend to focus more on the missing picture, than what's there.

Also the colours look like a low metallic sheen, & the picture appears to be made up of very fine sand.

Am I crazy, is there technical terms for these things, or do I see LCD differently than other people?

This debate could go on 'til the cows come home..... I've been an AV enthusiast for almost 20 years. I never watch tv with all the lights off, & can tell a good picture when I see it. Like any technology, some plasma's are better than others, & some LCD's are better than others. Life is about compromise.

I consider the LCD I bought as being among the best of breed, with a very high quality picture - Regardless of benchmark. While black's are not everything, i'm happy with the blacks I get, & i'm happy with the picture quality. That's all any consumer could ask for! & although i'm not an 'average Joe' when it comes to AV gear, I bought an LCD anyway .

[digitalj]

I may be wrong, but it's my understanding that high-end LCDs have one advantage over plasma that current plasma technology will never be able to make up - colour gamut. Is it not true that plasmas create colour using the same phosphors as CRT & thus have the same limitations of colour reproduction, ie. approximately the sRGB/ 72% NTSC colour space? Viewing a CIE1931 diagram for a plasma shows just how little of the visible spectrum a plasma can actually reproduce. Current high-end LCDs with 92% NTSC gamut backlighting are a significant improvement, & Samsung has already released a 20" professional LCD monitor for computing with LED backlighting & 111% NTSC colour gamut. OLED & SED will likely increase the colourspace even further & Laser RPTV will cover very nearly the entire visible spectrum.

The increased bandwidth of HDMI 1.3 is at least in part a response to the need to address the larger colourspaces of 111% & above NTSC gamut new-generation LCD monitors. I believe that no plasma will ever be able to reproduce enough colours to use the extra bandwidth of HDMI 1.3.

LCDs still have problems that may or may not be fixable with better technology. It's likely that the newer technologies will become economically competitive before all LCD's current problems can be totally fixed. Whatever happens to LCD, it seems to me that it will outlast plasma because of its potentially better colour reproduction. The changes written into the spec for HDMI 1.3 may well be plasma's epitaph.

BTW I'm about to buy a 50" plasma...

One of the biggest problems with LCD's is that if you do something else and can only see it at an angle, the closer you get to 90 degrees, the harder it is to make out detail, but Plasma's can be viewed at any angle and it's just as easy to make out what's there as if you were straight in front.

[sexythang]

This debate could go on 'til the cows come home..... I've been an AV enthusiast for almost 20 years. I never watch tv with all the lights off, & can tell a good picture when I see it. Like any technology, some plasma's are better than others, & some LCD's are better than others. Life is about compromise.

I consider the LCD I bought as being among the best of breed, with a very high quality picture - Regardless of benchmark. While black's are not everything, i'm happy with the blacks I get, & i'm happy with the picture quality. That's all any consumer could ask for! & although i'm not an 'average Joe' when it comes to AV gear, I bought an LCD anyway .

yes. high picture quality, low price and no burn in's. as well as catering to the majority of the market will make lcd takeover plasma sales no doubt. lcds can capture the market of the average joe as well as av enthusiasts. unless of course plasmas come down in size and price....

[AndrewWilliams]

yes. high picture quality, low price and no burn in's. as well as catering to the majority of the market will make lcd takeover plasma sales no doubt. lcds can capture the market of the average joe as well as av enthusiasts. unless of course plasmas come down in size and price....

Why would enthusiasts be interested in smaller plasmas? Plasmas are already too small. I also don't know any enthusiasts who are impressed by current LCDs.

[ummester]

Read the extended warraty detail clauses from most retailers regarding plasma screens and you'll see that it doesn't matter what you pay, beyond what the manufacturers offer there is no insurance for the plasma problems.

I would love to see how CRT sales figures (even the new (inferior to deep tube 100Hz) slim fit varietys) currently compare to Plasma and LCD sales. I know the local GGs just ordered in a heap more of both the LG slimfit models and I haven't seen them restock any LG Plasma ranges in a while.

[complectus]

You are ignoring the obvious.

All video source is produced to specific colour gamut standards e.g. PAL, NTSC or HD colour space. These standards where designed around the capabilities of phosphor based CRT displays, and Plasma being phosphor based, should be able to conform to these video standards.

Using a display with a non standard wider colour gamut results in colour being displayed incorrectly and should be avoided.

Displays with wider colour gamut will only ever be useful if video standards change, and that is VERY unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

The ability of HDMI 1.3+ to carry up to 48bit colour information will remain useless for many years to come, as all video is encoded at 24bit and will remain so for a long time to come.

Likewise the ability to carry resolutions greater then 1920x1080 and higher frame rates then 60fps is useless in a world where video is limited to 1080p 24 or 1080i 60.

Remember that BluRay and HDDVD do not support resolutions greater then 1080p 24 or 1080i 60, and also do not support any more then 24bit colour, so we will be waiting for some future HD video distribution format to deliver what HDMI 1.3 is capable of. God knows how many years that will take.

Wide colour gamut displays and HDMI 1.3 are marketing tools at this point in time, not useful advancements for the display of video.

About the only useful advancement in HDMI 1.3 is on the audio side of things, and you would want to have some sh*t hot and very pricy audio gear to be able to take advantage of that.

There is a difference between 48-bit colour & extended colour gamut xvYCC. 48bit colour maps the existing sRGB colourspace more accurately, but xvYCC extends the gamut considerably, while maintaining backwards compatibility with sRGB. It does this by assigning negative values to colours that exist outside the sRGB boundaries.

I wrote about plasma & CRT being limited to 72% of the NTSC gamut - this suggests to me that xvYCC addressing will not be required to notice a difference, even with standard definition sources. I imagine the improvement from 72% to 100% will be noticeable, but that further improvement to 111% & higher might not be.

Consumer level display devices with xvYCC colour are already shipping now from at least Samsung, Sony, Toshiba & Mitsubishi. Sony has already given it a marketing name - x.v.Colour/ x.v.Color. Sony's BluRay player supports it. Prosumer video cameras support it. I've only had limited exposure to wide gamut displays so far, but everything I've seen suggests that this is much more than a marketing gimmick, even with current video sources.

[Santa1503559644]

Last time I spoke to Aaron (admittedly a while back) he said in his (professional) opinion, the plasmas did indeed leave LCDs looking pretty sad.

Much of the current talk about colour gamuts etc is purely marketing, and a lot more complex than simply who's figure is bigger.

If LCDs enter (and thus leave) the showroom with significantly skewed settings (eg compared to plasma), then however wonderous the colour gamut potential, the display will not reflect reality.

That said - I stopped looking at LCDs a while back. Are they still suffering from the problem of colour variation dependence on viewing position? (Or is that just certain types?)

[tom_tank]

Last time I spoke to Aaron (admittedly a while back) he said in his (professional) opinion, the plasmas did indeed leave LCDs looking pretty sad.

Much of the current talk about colour gamuts etc is purely marketing, and a lot more complex than simply who's figure is bigger.

If LCDs enter (and thus leave) the showroom with significantly skewed settings (eg compared to plasma), then however wonderous the colour gamut potential, the display will not reflect reality.

That said - I stopped looking at LCDs a while back. Are they still suffering from the problem of colour variation dependence on viewing position? (Or is that just certain types?)

Some still do, some a little, & some not enough to mention.

Unfortunately, people tend to lump all examples of a panel type into one bucket. I would suggest there's somewhat more variation in LCD quality between manufacturers (& people remember the worst examples) than Plasma.

[Anton-P.]

The human eye can only make out around 300,000 colours according to my son who's an optomitrist...

Can someone then please explain the clay-face syndrome on LCD panels,

does it mean they're capable of showing much less than 300,000 colours?

[tom_tank]

Can someone then please explain the clay-face syndrome on LCD panels,

does it mean they're capable of showing much less than 300,000 colours?

I used to have clay face syndrome on my CRT RPTV. It's mostly in the processing. A few service menu adjustments..... Fixed!

[MLXXX]

Can someone then please explain the clay-face syndrome on LCD panels,

does it mean they're capable of showing much less than 300,000 colours?

Clay face is to do with video encoding bit-rate limitations, or -- conceivably -- suboptimal decoding of the encoded vdeo signal. It has nothing to do with Plasma vs LCD.

On any tv screen displaying a Free To Air digital broadcast, look carefully if a person bursts into a room from a distant door. For the first fraction of a second their face is without features, and without colour variation, and looks like a lump of clay!

Higher bit-rates, and more efficient video encoding/decoding algorithms ("codecs") are the answer. This effect is not relevant to the LCD vs Plasma debate.

[Anton-P.]

Clay face is to do with video encoding bit-rate limitations, or -- conceivably -- suboptimal decoding of the encoded vdeo signal. It has nothing to do with Plasma vs LCD.

On a row of displays showing the same feed, I see clay face on LCDs but not on Plasmas.

[MLXXX]

On a row of displays showing the same feed, I see clay face on LCDs but not on Plasmas.

1. When you say the same feed, do you mean the same decoded feed (e.g. from a DVD player or set-top box) or merely the same antenna and each set is tuned to the same digital television channel?

2 Is it that the LCDs are displaying a more detailed picture, such that any artefacts in the video (such as the clay face syndrome due to bit-rate limitations) are more obvious?

3. Are the LCDs cheaper displays with some limitation in their MPEG2 decoding?

As tom-tank has pointed out just above, clay face can appear on crts too, if they are displaying a digital source, especially if the processing is maladjusted.

It is not seen with analogue feeds, unless there was digital processing earlier in the chain of events.

[AndrewWilliams]

LCDs in shops tend to use overblown brightness and contrast settings which makes the problem worse. An LCD which is well calibrated doesn't (or shouldn't) suffer clay face worse than any other display. LCDs weaknesses are more to do with contrast and black crush but I know what you mean - LCDs often look very 'digital' and suffer from posterization in shops.

[Owen]

There is a difference between 48-bit colour & extended colour gamut xvYCC. 48bit colour maps the existing sRGB colourspace more accurately, but xvYCC extends the gamut considerably, while maintaining backwards compatibility with sRGB. It does this by assigning negative values to colours that exist outside the sRGB boundaries.

I wrote about plasma & CRT being limited to 72% of the NTSC gamut - this suggests to me that xvYCC addressing will not be required to notice a difference, even with standard definition sources. I imagine the improvement from 72% to 100% will be noticeable, but that further improvement to 111% & higher might not be.

Consumer level display devices with xvYCC colour are already shipping now from at least Samsung, Sony, Toshiba & Mitsubishi. Sony has already given it a marketing name - x.v.Colour/ x.v.Color. Sony's BluRay player supports it. Prosumer video cameras support it. I've only had limited exposure to wide gamut displays so far, but everything I've seen suggests that this is much more than a marketing gimmick, even with current video sources.

I don’t follow your line of reasoning here.

Most HD displays are designed to cover the HD colour gamut REC 709.

The HD colour gamut is closely defined and many displays can reproduce it 100% without problems.

Displays that have wider then standard colour gamut are criticised by ISF calibration professionals because they cant reproduce accurate colour. Some of these displays can be correctly calibrated to conform the REC 709, but not all.

Displays should be calibrated to conform to the video encoding standards, not exceed them if accuracy is required.

Unless video is encoded in xvYCC, what is the point in having a display that supports it?

So far I have not seen any video in that format.

[Owen]

A CRT display that does not use digital signal processing cannot in of it’s self create Posterization artefacts, although it will display them if they are in the source.

Digital displays have long been plagued by Posterization generated by the displays video processing, so with digital displays you see the sum of Posterization in the source combined with Posterization generated by the displays poor processing.

These days there is no excuse for inadequate processing and LCD's should in theory be no worse then Plasma, however LCD often do suffer from more Posterisation problems then Plasma or other display types. I put this down to the same mechanism that causes motion blur on LCD.

SXRD displays are completely free of Posterization problems and that is one reason they look the least digital of all digital display types.

[MLXXX]

... Most HD displays are designed to cover the HD colour gamut REC 709.

The HD colour gamut is closely defined and many displays can reproduce it 100% without problems. ...

When I walk into a showroom the LCDs and Plasmas have uncannily similar colour. And it looks to me a bit like cartoon colour. It is exaggerated and unrealistic. Whereas, if I observe an SXRD screen, the colour is more realistic, even with free to air.

I have noticed other Ultra High Pressure lamp rearpros to have more realistic colour too, though not as good as the Sony SXRDs.

But the real difference, I find, is with demonstration hi-def videos.

I don't know what tweaks are employed but the colour looks even better again, on a UHP lamp rearpro, a realism that I find staggering. When I first witnessed it I felt like saying: 'that's a colour I have only ever seen before in real life'. It was eerie to see the colour on a tv set.

It could be that some subtle tweaks are already occuring, away from the CRT phosphor reference points.

I'd also note, though this is technical ground on which I tread very hesitantly, that CRTs only ever approximate the NTSC colour space. Although the colour space was designed with CRTs in mind, I am not sure that the phosphors lie precisely at defined optimal locations of the NTSC colour space. I'd search for a webpage showing a diagram of that, if I had more time.

Digital displays have long been plagued by Posterization generated by the displays video processing, so with digital displays you see the sum of Posterization in the source combined with Posterization generated by the displays poor processing.

I cannot argue with that. However, as I understand it, 'clay-face' is more than typical minor posterisation added by a screen's processing algorithms. It is a temporary, severe, breakdown in the video encoding-decoding process brought about by a temporary overload in image complexity in the region that is changing quickly; in this instance the location of a human face. It is a gross posterisation.

[Owen]

NTSC and PAL colour space is slightly different and both are different to HD colour space, although the differences are not huge.

In the old days I believe NTSC and PAL CRT TV’s used different phosphors to match the relevant colour space. With the introduction of HD the issue was complicated and manufacturers had to come to some sort of compromise.

Modern TV’s auto detect the colour space based on the input video format and compensation is added to the video processing chain to correct for the differences as best as possible.