Plasma V Projector

[fragmast3r]

Sanyo Z2 gets a massive thumbs up from me, had it for approx 3 months now (projects onto a 12 foot screen) and i still cant help but smile when i turn it on and watch a film, although once xmas is out the way i will be going for a plasma aswell as i think both have strenghts and weakness's but hving both will be perfect

[Spatial]

What's a plasma like in daylight? If I got one (which I probably won't but my TV's slowly dying so I'm toying with the idea) it would have to be my full-time screen, so how does it compare to a CRT for daytime viewing?

I have heared people moaning about this but so far I haven't found any problems with mine. I guess it depends on where you'd be putting the set and how much light it would get.

The room mine is in is fairly bright, the plasma is not too far away from a window and the room catches the sun ( when there is some ) in the morning.

You can always adjust the set for daytime viewing if need be.

[charlaph]

Right, well my 29" Sony CRT finally died at the weekend. Up until yesterday I was pretty set on getting a 30"-32" LCD to replace it, but having read all over the magazines and internet about the impending rollout of hi-def sources, I'm not going to commit ?1k+ just now on anything that may not be able to handle it properly.

Bearing in mind I'm on a TIGHT budget and don't have room for a 42" plasma (otherwise I'd push myself into getting a PW6) I've decided to go for a stop-gap of a cheap projector and a cheap CRT as replacements. The CRT will be for everyday viewing, and the projector will be for watching movies and playing games. Total cost is well under ?1000 and although it won't be the last word in quality I think it's the best balance of size/quality/cost for me until the hi-def compatibility filters down to the budget Plasma/LCD models in a few years.

This thread has been very helpful, particularly with the projector pictures. Nothing like seeing actual results rather than poring over specs and opinionated reviews. My living room is near-perfect for a projector as I'm in the middle of the country so have no streetlights to contend with plus both window have wooden shutters hat block all light. All I need to do is soundproof the baby's room for when I crank the volume

[nips]

In dixons, not that they are the most high-end electronic retailer around, the LCD opposed to the Plasma is no contest.

The Plasmas seem to be a low resolution, but after a foot away from the screen, you can't really notice. The LCD however is dull and blurred and awful. NO WAY I'd go LCD. For the same price as a high-end LCD, you can get a Plasma that's about 15" larger. Pointless.

Oh, and Plasma is sunlight: From my experience, If you have direct bright sunlight, like a summers day straight on the screen, you can't see anything, much like a CRT TV. Otherwise, it's fine. Average light for the UK has little/no effect.

[Lyris]

I don't understand why LCD gets bashed so much... the Sony KLV26HG2 I have is stunning, certainly no worse than any Plasmas I've seen.

[nips]

The 20" models we stock are OK. If I had the money I'd go LCD over CRT in that respect. But when we're talking larger screens, say 30" and above, I've seen no LCD that beats the Plasma we have in the window, and that's a cheapo model.

I'm only going off what I merchandise, but seriously, I have no been impressed.

[007]

charlaph - You could go for the new Panasonic 700 Projector, that can handle High Definition real good. That projector is absolutely amazing. It would save you splashing out ?1k now for two cheapy items, when you could save that money and go for the wham bam right now.

[007]

nips, I doubt Dixons actually has everything setup properly, with good quality cables showing what they can really do, do they?

In comet, everything is boosted through a normal aerial lead. Hardly going to show off what they're really like.

[nips]

I had to merchandise it myself. They were using scarts which just lost quality every time they extended the signal, now they are on boosted coax which looks much better than it did, but still piss poor. They wouldn't allow me to explore to possibility of using component inputs, but playing composite PS2 through a selection of the TVs in my spare time also added to my opinion that within the selection on offer, the LCD TVs are inferior.

Ultimately though, even if they aren't set up properly, they are all on the same crappy footing, and on that rather limited comparison alone, the LCDs perform less.

[Darwock]

Funny, this thread seems to have resurfaced just as I placed my projector order - seems like months ago (well it was) when I was asking dc-arena for advice on here!

Anyway Panasonic AE700 is on the way. I'm a bit nervous to be honest, I read about all the potential problems beforehand so just waiting to see how badly (if at all) they may affect me really!

[charlaph]

Cheapest I can find the AE700 is about the ?1100 mark so it's definitely tempting. I was wanting to keep ?1k as my absolute limit if possible but I guess I'm a bit flexible.

Spending ?1000 on displays is not a minor deal to me, it's a hell of a lot of money and I want it to do me for at least the next five years day in day out. My plan of cheap PJ + CRT is done with the idea of tiding me over until HD is well established, then making an informed decision about my next upgrade. Thing is - I want a big screen now, so a PJ is the best value way of achieving this.

The main problem I'd have with just buying a very nice AE700 is that it'd be impractical as my only screen. It's just a bit too expensive to buy a CRT with it, so it'd have to be my only display in the lounge, which I doubt very much would go down well with the wife, or my CBeebies obsessed son (don't want him to grow up with a crick in his neck from looking up at a projector screen!)

So although it'd be very nice, I'd rather spend under ?1000 now, then in a few years get something else that should be a lot better than the AE700 - I'm thinking plasma or LCD in the future as one screen would be a very good one stop solution. Hopefully the native resolution of displays will match HD by then.

Dirty Sanchez - did you try other projectors before deciding on the AE200? There are a whole heap available in the ?500-?700 price range I'm looking at, although nobody has a bad word to say about the AE200 I'm not going to have any chance to test it against the others, so was wondering if you did so.

[007]

You see, if you're looking in the future for a one stop screen (say LCD and Plasma) You're going to be paying through the nose for a really big screen. With High definition. And also, that's going to be on top of what you're paying now for your cheaper Projector and CRT.

The AE700 is going for about ?1100 with a free 66" Screen. You're looking at the AE200 you say for around the ?500-700 mark. But for an extra few hundred, you've already solved the high definition solution, and also bought yourself an absolutely cracking screen and projector,

Thinking time perhaps?

[Dirty Sanchez]

Dirty Sanchez - did you try other projectors before deciding on the AE200? There are a whole heap available in the ?500-?700 price range I'm looking at, although nobody has a bad word to say about the AE200 I'm not going to have any chance to test it against the others, so was wondering if you did so.

I'd looked around a few retailers, ruled out DLP as I saw rainbows on the lot of them. I went for the AE300 as it was available at the right price, it compared more than favourably against the competition and appeared to have a good service life/record.

The AE700 is reporting as being excellent, personally I would now buy that one blind, having already had the AE300, still got 4700 hours on my bulb to go yet though!

[charlaph]

waaah! going to have to save for the AE700 then. Anyone want to buy my PS2, or a kidney?

EDIT - Thinking about it more seriously, I just can't justify spending ?1000+ on something that wouldn't be used all that much. It's not practical to have it as my main screen, so I'd have to buy a CRT to accompany it, and then it'd only be used for movies and games, which only honestly account for about 10 hours a week at the moment. Maybe ten years ago if I'd had the money, but now I'm old enough and have the money (kind of) it's not worth it. Almost ironic. Back to the budget projector route methinks.

[charlaph]

Well I went for it and got me a budget projector - Epson TW-10, and I have to say it's fantastic. No doubt if I'd spent more the quality would be even better, but this sub-?1000 RRP projector has really impressed me already. For films it's astounding, having a massive screen really adds a lot to the whole movie watching experience. I know it sounds obvious, but until I got it I wasn't convinced it was going to have much of an impact on me.

Picture quality isn't the last word, due to the scale of the thing it doesn't look as good as CRT (I didn't expect it to) but once you play around with the various settings it can give either a very 'TV-like' or 'movie-like' picture, depending on what you want.

It also gave me the chance to try component connections and progressive scan. However, for movies all is not great. Due to the size of the screen it shows up the limitations of either the projector, my DVD or the compression of the DVD - I don't know which is at fault (probably my DVD player) but there's some 'noise' on the picture and in particular banding. On some DVDs it's almost like watching sky digikal but not quite as bad. Overall it depends on the film. Kill Bill wasn't too hot because of all the black and white, showing up the banding, yet House of Flying Daggers looks brilliant - overall a bit hit and miss, but no matter what I'm watching it's all better than RGB via a Scart cable, so buying component cables is definitely worthwhile.

Then yesterday my Xbox component cables turned up. Whacked on Tony Hawks 4 and oh.my.god! what a difference 720p makes over RGB. Undoubtedly it's helped by the purely digital picture, but the sharpness and quality of the picture was almost beyond belief. This game confirmed that there's sod all wrong with the projector - I couldn't believe the clarity of it. I tried a few other games, but I didn't have anything else that's 720p, so although they were looking good, my other games weren't as gob-smacking as T-Diddy.

Now I'm ordering my GC component cable. This is the way to go - I'm now sold on component and prog scan. In fact I'm going to replace my ageing 25" panasonic CRT with a more up to date model with prog-scan component inputs as soon as I can afford it, just so I can have everything hooked up for the best picture quality I can get (without spending fortunes)