Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

I have an older Viera 42" 1080p... was a gift to myself for Christmas 2004, which I guess makes it four years old. The UI/controls are a little clunky, but the picture is terrific, the colors are great, the vast numbers of inputs are great (I use it as a VGA monitor for my music playing/picture displaying Linux box.) Have had no problems with it and no noticeable decline in picture brightness over the years.

FWIW, the deciding factor for me in plasma over LCD was motion blur. It is reallllly irritating, especially for sports, and I'm a big sports junkie. YMMV.

One other thing- size-wise, make sure you understand the measurement of the base of the thin models. If you're not wall-mounting it, the bases can easily double the depth of the screen, making it fit in a much different space than you expected.

I got a Panasonic plasma last X-Mas. It is great, but I have it in a theater room with no windows. It seems like Plasmas are on their way out now that LCD can be made in large sizes and has solved most of the problems. I'd personally recommend getting a good LCD, such as one of the 120hz models.

I spent a lot of time last year obsessing over stuff like black levels and other things, in retrospect I do not think it was necessary. Being a techie it is hard to not overanalyze this stuff.

So I love my Plasma and if for you it is less expensive, go for it. Otherwise get an LCD. If your room is bright an LCD might look better.

I'd just like to toss in a suggestion to consider Samsung; I have a 42" Samsung LCD TV and absolutely love it. Everyone that sees it, even people with HDTVs, comment on how lovely the picture is.

We bought the Toshiba 42RV530U (also a 42" 1080p model) this summer, and we've really liked it so far. Brightness and avoiding glare were big factors for us because of where the unit would sit in relation to windows. Hence a matte LCD instead a reflective plasma despite the slight cost advantage of plasma.

Nice discussion. I'm in the market myself, but I won't be pulling the trigger until late January/early February, that'll be when the Superbowl™ offers will be going on. I'll be replacing my 8 year old 34" Sony WEGA, which is still putting out a great standard def picture. My wife's Christmas present to me, right after I proposed to her that Christmas. :)

And I should know by then if my wife is still working by then. :(

I own that Panasonic Plasma and love it.
I went with plasma because of the motion blur and better contrast ratio.

Man, for all the random hippyish posts you make, I'm stunned you'd even consider plasma given what a huge power hog it is. Seriously, plasma TVs use way more energy than any other class of HDTV out there.

Ryan, optimizing for the amount of power my television uses is one of the lowest concerns on my checklist of what needs to be done to prevent catastrophic, climate-change induced planetary destruction.

If you're seriously thinking that small when it comes to saving this planet, you're wasting your time.

Without a massively large-scale (most of the first-world nations) carbon tax regime (whether through direct taxation or a cap and trade system) that can actually bring our carbon emissions down by orders of magnitude, this planet is doomed in about 100 years.

No amount of individual action in terms of energy usage will have any material impact on whether or not we see 95+% of the life on this planet made extinct in the next 100 years. Spending even a minute of your time thinking about such trivial concerns as automobile gas mileage, light bulbs, or plasma TVs just exposes how little you understand of the challenge this world faces.

Seriously, TV power consumption. What a joke. If every TV on the planet ceased to exist tomorrow, it wouldn't be a drop of water in the ocean compared to what needs to be done to stop the cataclysm that's going to hit us in ours or our childrens' livetimes.

- A

Asa, you must be kidding. Increasing power consumption per person along is an issue, resulting in putting weather off balance e.g. floods, hurricanes, droughts, etc.
Everybody, except you and our president gets it.

Funtomas, actually it's you who doesn't get it. The problem is so much worse than you imagine. It's so extreme that no amount of individual action can stop absolute catastrophe. Humanity, and probably 90+% of all life on this planet will end before the next century if something much more drastic than indidivual action does not happen. It's going to take change on the scale that only the governments of large countries are capable of making.

You can try to make yourself feel better by pretending that this problem is something that can be fixed with lower-power devices or recycling or any of those small actions but it just can't be fixed with that kind of trivial change. You might as well be trying to move the pacific ocean to the atlantic ocean with a teaspoon.

The problem is so much bigger than you imagine. The solutions are so much bigger than you imagine. Anything short of _real_ change, the kind that can only happen when the world's largest governments mandate it, is just pissing into the wind.

- A

I fell in love with Philips.
Ambilight plus the possible connectivity (LAN jack with DLNA support, USB for external drives) just sold me for the next few Television sets, I will end up buying.
Besides that, the Philips TV sets can be used as Computer screen, too.
You'd think, most of 'em should, but there you are wrong.
Indeed, most can do that up to a low resolution, but almost none can be set to display a computer at 1080p.
Those Philips ones can!
42pfl7603 would be your choice. Plus, for an LCD, they have the fastest response time (2 m/sec).

And you know what? (Oh god, I sound like a retailer)
They use open source and linux for products.
Yes. Even your TV would run on open source.

Tyler out!

This may not be useful info for you, but I was really stubborn about the size of the TV and bought a 50" plasma even though we are just 3 meters (10 feet) away from the TV. Sofie really thought it would be too big and had read somewhere that you can get a headache if you watch a too big screen; but guess what: we are both super happy about it and no headaches!

I don't really understand what you need 1080p for, as even with a 50" screen 10 feet away it's really really hard to even tell. We went for the cheapest 50" Samsung plasma we could find and we are really happy about it. The picture is razor sharp compared to a traditional TV and every tech freak friend I have always say something like "wow! is that full-hd?" (further proving that people really can't tell the difference).

David, we're going to be 6.5-7.5 feet away from the screen and this is right on the edge of where eagle-eyed people can see the difference between 1080p and 720p on a 42" screen. My math is rusty, and it's 2:30 in the morning so maybe it's just wrong :-) but this will give us a viewing size just about the same as what you have :-)

If we were 3 meters or more away, we'd probably go with 720p at that size or even a bit larger.

- A

I love our Samsung 7 series but it might be a bit out of your budget. Quick look surprisingly shows that prices are in the same range as 7-8 mo ago. I am no expert but it seems like some drop is overdue so it might pay to be patient.

If the opensourceness of your TV matters ;) my Panasonic included a copy of the GPL. Imagine my surprise finding that in the manual one morning while trying to figure out a question about the remote control....

Plasma TVs use way more energy than any other class of HDTV out there.