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Plasma replacement - to LED or not to LED

A

andersun9

Joined
Sep 13, 2021
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Location
Sydney, Australia
I'm currently sitting on a little over 10-year old mid-range Plasma TV (50" Samsung C680) and thinking about whether it is worthwhile to upgrade or not with my current usage. Distance to TV is about 2.5 meters with windows to the west (=sun coming in during afternoon and evening).

Usage:
Sports: 70% (Football, Ice hockey, Tennis, esport) with only about 5% of broadcasts available in 4k, rest in 1080
News: 10% Watch news for like 20 mins when eating and getting myself ready for work
Movies: 20% (1080 is basically what is offered as streaming in Sweden)
Gaming: Tiny and only casual today. Mostly uses PC. If anything, RPG with lots of static HUD's

What I have read is that OLED would be the "natural" replacement coming from Plasma. Still, I'm concerned about the static logos from ~80% of my viewing, so considering going for LED as I would like to keep the TV for a similar length as the current one, and I can't imagine an OLED not burning out in 10 years.

As I have understood, Sony has the best motion handling, so I was thinking about the XJ95, but with the disappointing review from Ratings and the high price, I'm a bit torn about what to do. Keep the plasma; it's not like I think the picture it provides is terrible, or go with, i.e., XH95, which lacks HDMI 2.1, or additional options are there? What size would you consider with a 2.5 m viewing distance, 55" or 65"?
 
andersun9 said:
What I have read is that OLED would be the "natural" replacement coming from Plasma. Still, I'm concerned about the static logos
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I have had an LG OLED for about 5 years now. No problems with logo or blue LEDs. Note that any decent OLED will have features to mitigate those potential problems.

Do note a logo would have to sit in the exact same place for hour upon hour upon hour - over and over again. How likely is that? Do you never change channels?

Besides that, most quality TVs have a feature that senses when a logo appears and will gently move that logo a few pixels here, then a few pixels there just to prevent burn in. And it works.
 
Current LG OLEDs have three features to reduce burn-in risk that old plasma units did not have.

The first one is Pixel Cleaning which happens automatically after a cumulative amount of usage. It basically resets the pixels when the TV is asleep. This can be manually invoked.

The second one is Screen Move which regularly moves the image by a couple of pixels. This can be disabled.

The third one is Adjust Logo Brightness. The TV's CPU looks for what it thinks is a logo and attempts to locally dim those pixels. The settings are: Low, High, and Off.

Generally speaking burn-in is not an issue for typical consumer usage, it's more of a possibility with showroom demo units or if you were using it exclusively as a computer monitor neither of which is your usage case.

From a gaming perspective, OLEDs crush LEDs in response time.

I am a very satisfied owner of an LG-OLED55C1PUB (55" C1 OLED). My TV usage is probably 50% general TV programs and movies, 30% sports, and 20% gaming. I bought the TV primarily for the Nvidia G-Sync despite the fact that I game less on my TV than other activities. Picture quality is great and I am typically seated about 2 m. away from the screen. I am not using the TV's built-in speakers, all audio is handled by an A/V receiver with decent tower speakers, center channel and powered subwoofer. My particular situation does not pose any challenges concerning bright sunlight or reflections from room lights.

I highly recommend you visit a bricks-and-mortar store and view the image quality of your candidate units with your own eyes These aren't cheap toys and you'll be staring at the screen for years, make sure you know fully aware of what you are buying. Use a retailer that has some sort of decent return policy just in case whatever you buy doesn't work for your particular environment.
 
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OLED and plasma share the same affinity for burn in, so if it was not a worry with your current plasma, it should not be with a OLED either.

Image retention can occur at times, its a temporary thing. But to worry about burn in in general, you need a solid static image on there for a lot of hours, a whole day with the same static image more or less. And most logos are semi-transparent these days, so its fine.
TVs have some kind of settings for it, like pixel rotation or pixel shift. Which if i recall the sony tv's do indeed have and im pretty sure most other models have a feature for it either way.

When it comes to "motion" or what not, ignore all that. Disable all the extra features. On the sony example in this case they have the XR motion and XR color, XR clarity etc etc. just turn all of it off, it does more to harm your picture than help it.
 
cvaldes said:
I highly recommend you visit a bricks-and-mortar store and view the image quality of your candidate units with your own eyes
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I agree but do remember many manufacturers and retail outlets adjust brightness and contrast to provide the brightest image on the showroom floor. This is because, to the untrained eye, we humans perceive brighter, high contrasting images as better quality - when in reality, it is often not realistic. This is also why some users will go through the time and expense [typically a good idea] to have a new, big screen TV properly calibrated, only to go back in and change the settings back - instead of giving their brains time to get used to the new, and properly calibrated settings.
 
andersun9 said:
Not yet changed
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Not buying that. You already indicated you watch the news and movies. Perhaps "channels" was too specific. Perhaps inputs or sources, as well as channels would have been better.

Even so, even networks move their logs around, depending on the programming, commercials, etc.
 
Bill_Bright said:
I have had an LG OLED for about 5 years now. No problems with logo or blue LEDs. Note that any decent OLED will have features to mitigate those potential problems.

Do note a logo would have to sit in the exact same place for hour upon hour upon hour - over and over again. How likely is that? Do you never change channels?

Besides that, most quality TVs have a feature that senses when a logo appears and will gently move that logo a few pixels here, then a few pixels there just to prevent burn in. And it works.
Click to expand...

I am on one year of the CX as a desktop monitor (read static stuff all the time) and no burn in yet.

If it doesn't burn in soon i wont be able to use my BB warranty.
 
I have used a Panasonic Plasma extensively throughout the years, I was the first to pre-order a 1080P Panasonic plasma back in 2007. Back in 2007, watching just regular DVD's on it just blew me away by the sheer picture quality, more so than any OLED TV that came out after. No modern OLED can match the smooth motion of plasma or the way it naturally displays picture.

Bought a Sony 1080P 70 inch 3D TV in 2013, biggest regret of my life, and should have paid more and bought the last VT series Panasonic 65" plasmas.

Fast forward in 2016, so much regret getting an inferior TV that I bought a 2016 LG OLED 65", brand new model for the year.

Not sure if it had anything to do with 2020 being one of the worst years ever, the LG OLED all of sudden started flickering crazy with flashing white vertical lines across the screen while watching Golf channel. Extremely upset with OLED quality, because my Panasonic Plasma from 2007 still works flawlessly to this day.

I figure out it was bad T-con board from a local TV technician, and replacement screen on these boards are super expensive like the price for a brand new LG OLED. I decided to take a gamble to fix the LG OLED myself by sourcing a used T-Con board, which did fix the problem almost completely, although I did preorder a top of the line Samsung Q90T 75" for an excellent deal. I am to watch the LG OLED now, but you do notice some very faint vertical banding that wasn't there before it died, it could be a non-calibrated T-Con board or something else. After all it is a used T-con board. Doesn't affect the viewing experience though and it is better than throwing an OLED TV in the trash.

The QLED is amazing, best TV I owned through the years and I would easily choose it over an LG OLED. It is brighter, everything is so much vibrant. It is also much easy to calibrate than an LG OLED, could never get the right colors out of an LG OLED, they tend to have a bluish tint no matter how hard you try to calibrate your picture. Picture noise seems to be higher on the OLED, it does get better over time though.

I wish they had new Panasonic OLED TVs in North America. My Grandma is still watching on 32" Panasonic Tau TV from 2002 til this day, shows the quality of Panaonic TV over any TV manufacturer.
 
I have a 40 inch Panasonic plasma in my bedroom. I bought it from a guy at work who needed cash and the price was right. It’s got burn from the weather network. Still looks ok though, love the blacks. My not quite as old LED is “ok”. Looking at oled myself since I have a GPU I can use with it now.
 
"LED", unless it's OLED, are just LCDs in disguise! That means IPS LCDs or VA LCDs for most brands and PLS LCDs for Samsung. QLED is more likely a PLS LCD, unless Samsung decided to make a VA LCD.

Looks like PLS (plane-to-line-switching) is the Samsung version of IPS.

And for Sony? Does Sony even truly manufacture their own LCD panels?
 
I only replace TVs when they Fail

freeagent said:
I have a 40 inch Panasonic plasma in my bedroom. I bought it from a guy at work who needed cash and the price was right. It’s got burn from the weather network. Still looks ok though, love the blacks. My not quite as old LED is “ok”. Looking at oled myself since I have a GPU I can use with it now.
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Yup and OLED/AOLED (SAMSUNG) suffer burn in on their phones still
 
I've just had a warrant replacement processed for my LG OLED 65" C1 PTB 4K AU$6,500.00 unit that suffered severe logo burn in + multiple areas of discolouration after only 2 yrs = had all the mitigations set in the tv settings.

Ended up getting a store credit (Harvey Norman in Au) for a Samsung 65" QN800A NEO QLED 8K SMART TV (2021) = hopefully this will last a bit longer
 
I don't know how you all are managing burn in. My B9 still has none and I even have the mitigations off. Just use a screensaver.
 
Fangio1951 said:
I've just had a warrant replacement processed for my LG OLED 65" C1 PTB 4K AU$6,500.00 unit that suffered severe logo burn in
Click to expand...
Reminds me of arcade CRTs and the like, yikes!
 
Bill_Bright said:
I have had an LG OLED for about 5 years now. No problems with logo or blue LEDs. Note that any decent OLED will have features to mitigate those potential problems.

Do note a logo would have to sit in the exact same place for hour upon hour upon hour - over and over again. How likely is that? Do you never change channels?

Besides that, most quality TVs have a feature that senses when a logo appears and will gently move that logo a few pixels here, then a few pixels there just to prevent burn in. And it works.
Click to expand...

Yeah i believe they even do it with LED ones too as mine has that thin black border too ( LED ).
 
andersun9 said:
I'm currently sitting on a little over 10-year old mid-range Plasma TV (50" Samsung C680) and thinking about whether it is worthwhile to upgrade or not with my current usage. Distance to TV is about 2.5 meters with windows to the west (=sun coming in during afternoon and evening).

Usage:
Sports: 70% (Football, Ice hockey, Tennis, esport) with only about 5% of broadcasts available in 4k, rest in 1080
News: 10% Watch news for like 20 mins when eating and getting myself ready for work
Movies: 20% (1080 is basically what is offered as streaming in Sweden)
Gaming: Tiny and only casual today. Mostly uses PC. If anything, RPG with lots of static HUD's

What I have read is that OLED would be the "natural" replacement coming from Plasma. Still, I'm concerned about the static logos from ~80% of my viewing, so considering going for LED as I would like to keep the TV for a similar length as the current one, and I can't imagine an OLED not burning out in 10 years.

As I have understood, Sony has the best motion handling, so I was thinking about the XJ95, but with the disappointing review from Ratings and the high price, I'm a bit torn about what to do. Keep the plasma; it's not like I think the picture it provides is terrible, or go with, i.e., XH95, which lacks HDMI 2.1, or additional options are there? What size would you consider with a 2.5 m viewing distance, 55" or 65"?
Click to expand...
That plasma TV is a power-sucking-space-heater. OLED is highly over-rated, has burn-in problems and is over-priced.

Get a quality 2160P(4k) IPS LCD panel and call it good.
 
A bluish tint? (also purplish tint) =That's what happens to the LG UH6100s, which are LCD, and are prone to getting bad LEDs! That's one of the cheap series out there, LG claims it's 4K, but it can't do real 4K!
1080p looks better than "4K" on the UH6100 series!

The UH6100 series, is the one that will make you regret dumping plasma! Its "4K" mode while not good for color, is good for piercing my eyes!
 
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Judging by some of the posts in this thread you’d be better off asking at avsforum than here. Most people don’t get the appeal of plasma (I still have a panny VT :love:) and it’s value for dark scenes and motion. I’ve never owned an OLED but, as others have pointed out, if you aren’t experiencing burn-in with your plasma you probably won’t with an OLED (IIRC @R-T-B even uses there’s as a PC monitor, so they ought to know if so).
 
lexluthermiester said:
That plasma TV is a power-sucking-space-heater. OLED is highly over-rated, has burn-in problems and is over-priced.

Get a quality 2160P(4k) IPS LCD panel and call it good.
Click to expand...
Id replace the plasma if it ever goes out
 
RJARRRPCGP said:
"LED", unless it's OLED, are just LCDs in disguise! That means IPS LCDs or VA LCDs for most brands and PLS LCDs for Samsung. QLED is more likely a PLS LCD, unless Samsung decided to make a VA LCD.

Looks like PLS (plane-to-line-switching) is the Samsung version of IPS.

And for Sony? Does Sony even truly manufacture their own LCD panels?
Click to expand...
Samsung QLED is LED with QD layer on top but it can be VA or IPS depending on the model. QN90A is VA, QN85A is IPS. There's also QD-OLED which is going to be Samsung entry into the OLED space but because they've been criticizing OLED for so long in their marketing they will market it as QD Display instead.

I'd say for now stick to your plasma. Next year all LG models should have the new EVO panel with higher peak brightness, currently only the G1 series has it (well, technically some C1 models also share the same panel but you have to hack firmware to fool it into thinking it's a G1).
 
eidairaman1 said:
Id replace the plasma if it ever goes out
Click to expand...
I've got a plasma TV. It's currently sitting unplugged. It looks ok still, but not like it once did and it can't hold a candle to my 4k TV and at less than half the price.

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It's a Quantum LED screen, but it's starting to show just a tad bit of burn-in, something it wasn't supposed to do. And I've only had it for two years. However, it's only noticeable up close and on a pure white screen. Still, it's very pretty, 120hz and doesn't heat up the room to furnace levels like the plasma does.
 
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