I am going to get a Samsung plasma and I was wondering if some people who actually own a plasma and use it connected to a PC for gaming could tell me how it is.
Is there any problem if the plasma has, for example the windows start bar on it for a few hours? Or will this cause problems? Also if for example I wanted to play Battlefield 3 on the plasma how likely would I REALLY be to get any sort of damage? If I played for 3 hours at a time or maybe a bit more?
Is gaming in general as good as an LCD? For example do you get any motion problems or "frame doubling"?
You may want to ask specifically from people who have Sammy plasmas as the Pannys are a different animal in many ways.
Anyway, on my Panny there's no problem with using it as an only monitor, so not just gaming but everything. There's no burn-in from games or desktop or anything. I use max contrast for gaming and movies but switch to a lower contrast picture mode with pixel shifting for desktop just to be sure. Gaming at max contrast gives me some image retention after several hours of playing the same game, but it clears up quickly enough when playing another game or whatever. Desktop hasn't left any mark, even temporary, probably due to the aforementioned precautions.
It's better than LCD's for gaming in pretty much every way as long as you stick to 60hz. It's 50hz where issues like double image may or may not arise. It's got lower input lag and maintains full motion resolution without laggy image processing. Even 120hz TN monitors can't touch the definition of motion on a plasma. Everything remains pin-sharp. It's only the dithering and phosphor trails holding it back from perfect motion.
EDIT: It's been taking 8 hours of Mass Effect a day for the last three days like a boss.
Last edited by valtterieranen; 03-10-2012 at 09:18 PM.
Thanks for the reply. I have decided that all LED over about 27" inch are poor and the bcklight quality control is not acceptable.... Do they not test these Tv's in low ambient light? I want to like LED tv but keep getting let down every time I buy one and turn the lights off to watch a film... Therefore I am going to stop messing about with large sized LED tv's and buy a plasma.... Comming from my PC monitor the quality of every TV I have bought has been pretty poor tbh... Hopefully plasma will be better.
I can't comment on gaming (yet), but I'm fairly satisfied with my new Pansonic GT30. The only thing I'm having a very difficult time getting past is how annoying the dithering is. It's intolerable in certain areas, to the point where I've been debating exchanging it for a smaller set since I can't push my seating back any farther, though from what I've been told I might just be one of those that are more sensitive to it.
I can't compare it to modern LCDs, but it's definitely an improvement over my aging one. I really should fire up a game as mine is pretty much broken in already, but I have no doubt it'll look pretty good.
From what I have read the Samsung are better than the Panasonic in most ways except for black levels and ambient light. Less issues as well. Although I would like a low black level I would rather have not so good blacks but a clearer image with better colour and no flickering or dithering. Although if the flickering / dithering wasnt there and they didnt have the green blobs problems etc. I would deffo get a panasonci plasma
Use it with an HTPC, mostly in XBMC but I have it windows desktop or browsing in chrome for certain periods as well.
I just keep the taskbar auto-hidden and the desktop clear of icons. There is some IR after a while but it goes away in a few seconds when the image changes.
I only used it a few times for gaming, connected a PS3 to it and mostly played Burnout Paradise. Seemed fine even though reviews state that it should have a 50ms response time.
I really have to take my main pc upstairs and try BF3 on it to see if there is any ghosting.
Hmmm maybe I should have said "cleaner" image not "clearer" motion resolution
Apparently they have better motion with less artifacts such as false contouring, 50hz bug etc. But the actual motion resolution on the Panasonic is full 1080 instead of 900 on the Samsung.
Either way... Whichever is better is irrelevant because the flickering on the Panasonics rules them out completely for me unfortunately.
I've been having some people tell me Panasonics have worse dithering, and others that the Samsungs do. At least to my eye, though, comparing a D8000 display next to a VT30 the dithering was equally distracting at various viewing distances.
What did stick out like a sore thumb was that (however they happened to have them set up) the colors on the D8000 looked a lot more vibrant. Reds especially seemed to stand out more, and scenes with a lot of color looked much more pleasing overall. But it also meant skin tones looked over-saturated and unnatural.
I'm still debating whether or not to keep this 55" GT30 or exchange it for a 51" D8000 or 50" ST50, honestly.
I have noticed some flickering on my Panasonic. It's also a little distracting - not nearly as much as the dithering - but was under the impression it was also just one of those things inherent to plasmas.
Sounds like the Samsung was oversaturated and just needed a little toning down of the "color" control, easy fix. My G30 is slightly oversaturated at default as well. The bigger problem is that it scales non-linearly for different colors, which makes it difficult to get red in the right place. If I go for a neutral grayscale, red is oversaturated. If I put red in line with grayscale controls, then grayscale is messed up. If I just use the color control to put red in line, then blue and green end up undersaturated.
It's a shame about the dithering. It's a shame there isn't a perfect TV. Here's hoping OLED will get everything right but I doubt it. For now, I'll just have to go with what's best available, and that's the Panny plasma for me.
Flickering is inherent to plasma. Refresh rate is the only factor afaik and I don't see how one 60hz plasma could flicker more or less than another 60hz plasma. I'm open for explanations for this claim.
Last edited by valtterieranen; 03-11-2012 at 10:28 PM.
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