Quote:
Quote:
I'm really surprised that you're talking about burn-in on plasma. Do you disagree with the conventional wisdom that it isn't an issue anymore with newer models.
i think the effects are dramatically overstated. you're not going to blow up your television by playing a video game, etc. but i have seen enough slightly smoked sets in-person to have lingering concerns about 4:3 black boxes, since i refuse to stretch. the bottom line for me is that a 0.25% or whatever chance of burn-in is too great when i get just as easily get 0.0%. it's the same thing as the dlp rainbows, not many people see them but i can avoid the risk entirely. i will take impossible over extremely unlikely if it's reasonable.
I suppose it varies from person to person depending on what you like to watch, but very little of the content I watch is 4:3 anymore. Most of my TV usage is for HD sports, Xbox 360 (all games display in HD, and even a decent amount of Xbox games have HD support as well), and mostly mainstream TV shows. The local ABC and CW affiliates doesn't broadcast in HD (bastards) but I can download HD rips of shows like Lost or One Tree Hill and stream them over my Xbox. Pretty much the only thing I watch in standard definition are non-HD sporting events (which are becoming more and more rare), shows like Family Guy that don't exist in widescreen, and cable shows like The Shield.
What do you think about the picture quality of plasmas versus rear-projection TVs (LCD and SXRD)? I bought my KDF-E50A10 (Sony 50" LCD rear-projection) a little over a year ago, and I probably would have gone with a Panasonic 50" plasma instead if not for price ($3500 vs $2200). I'm happy with my purchase, although I do see the screen door effect to a certain degree during some programming, especially hockey games (something to do w/ the white background I guess). However, when I was shopping for sets and doing a lot of comparing in stores, I thought that the plasma displays had a noticeably better PQ than the RP LCDs.
That said, SXRDs were pretty new back then and I still haven't seen one up close; also, being able to get 1080p way cheaper on an SXRD than on a plasma these days is nice, and I've heard they're pretty hot.