my TN panel has crappy viewing angles but it can do 8-bit colour like an IPS (6-bit + FRC) so IPS monitors are not seeing more than me.
Just because the display supports deep color doesn't mean that it's properly reproducing the colors. It's important to remember that.
I like my IPS displays because I'm mostly looking at text on my displays so contrast is far more important than refresh rate, but even with most games, 5ms doesn't have a whole lot of ghosting. The benefit though is that these displays are crystal clear, images look amazing, and I don't need deep color for things to look good.
On the balance, I do also have a 42" Plasma in the other room and like OLED the biggest benefit is that each pixel is a cell that lights up on its own.
It's important to understand that LCDs have a backlight that's always on and a panel that blocks light to produce the image on the display. Plasmas have no backlighting, a single glass panel with cells in it that glow when exposed to electric current. As a result the plasma actually generates light for each pixel in contrast to LCDs which block light in each pixel. As a result, whites can be much brighter on LCDs (not always, good plasmas, are good) and blacks are very much so darker on Plasmas as there is no bleed from the LCD. Additionally, IPS and Plasmas both benefit from extended angle viewing.
Edit: Also Plasma "refresh" rates are a bit different than LCDs. I'm sure some of you have heard of things like "600Hz sub-field drive". While a Plasma may run at 60Hz, in this case it means the plasma controller will send 600 current pulses per second on a 60Hz signal, resulting in 10 pulses within any given frame to keep any given pixel lit. I just thought I should throw that out there.
Maybe it's just me, but I've never seen a TN display of the same resolution produce an image as crisp and clear as the Dells I have now.
No, it is not crap. The color representation is good enough for gaming and movie viewing, and the while the viewing angles aren't as good as IPS when is the last time you looked at your computer monitor from any direction other than head on? For me, thats never.
It's not about you viewing the display. It's about others viewing it while you're doing something. TN panels make it harder for more people to stand around and look over your shoulder which I do very often at work (showing people things at my desk, that is). Less often at home, but it's not like it's never important.
