Why Plasma HDTVs are better than modern 4k OLEDs for 7th gen

[Lord of Pirates]

That's strange, the ST50 is one of the later models so it should have plenty of options for proper overscan controls. My P50V20 scales perfectly 1080p from a PC source, here's what a review says about your display:
[Overscanning on HDMI - 0% with [16:9 Overscan] set to “Off“]
https://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/panason ... 041899.htm

I've been through the menu tree and there's no option to disable it. That's for a different model or this is why:

I used to own a 50" Panny ST50. You could disable overscan on it for sure. But there could be weird regional differences perhaps?

No mention of additional features mentioned in the update changelog.

[Josh128]

Just wanted to drop in and say we still have 4 F series Sammy plasmas in my household. My sons 4500BFXZA must have WAY over 10K hours on it. My original 4500AFXZA developed some vertical purple lines that would not go away no matter what board I replaced or cables I played with, apparently a failing panel, so I had to replace it a year or so ago.

Replaced it with a used 60" F5300 pentile matrix that I picked up for $50 that had a blown power supply and after replacing and its just a stupendously beautiful set. Same input lag as the F4500s.

These sets have 37ms of input lag (Bseries) and rolling 37-45ms of input lag (A series) per time sleuth readings. Perfectly acceptable still for most gaming IMO.

Its been a long time since I made my gushing F4500 fanboy post back in 2013 or so, lol.

60" F5300 + RT5X + Sega Genesis.

https://i.imgur.com/pH1Gnth.png

[cfx]

I used to own a 50" Panny ST50. You could disable overscan on it for sure. But there could be weird regional differences perhaps?

I can't say about this specific setting, but there were certainly regional differences. No SCART jack on the US models, and unfortunately no 50Hz support. Why they go to the effort to remove 50Hz for US models I will never understand.

[tongshadow]

Plasma's did degrade pretty fast in terms of their brightness output I found. I kept my Panasonic VT50 for almost 8 years (I had a VT25 back in the day before it), but by year 4 or so I noticed the peak brightness capabilities to have diminished quite a bit (I ended up having to push it up for the later years). I think there's very little chance that a used Plasma today could in any way shape or form output the levels of brightness a new high end OLED would be capable of (the newest high end OLED's do closer 180cd/m2), in many cases OLED would possibly win even with BFI enabled.

More importantly I'd have to ask, unless you play in a very bright room would that even matter? For SDR there's a point where enough is enough, and as a user who tends to try and play in a darker room I would not want it beyond the standard calibration goal of 100 nits brightness for SDR anyway.

Same, I'd like to think of extra luminance as a reserve/tank for panel durability, if kept at a constant level. Anything above 110nits feels too bright for my eyes.

But Plasmas are known for being durable, some of the later panels are rated at 100.000 hours (30 years/8 hours per day), so I'm not sure why you saw such a drastic difference on your VT50. I noticed that Plasma luminance is heavily dependant on 2 factors: Coating and energy consumption.

The coating helps with contrast, black levels in particular, but can also block a significant amount of the light emitted by the panel. It is a necessary evil however, or you'll have a very bright panel with no black levels that reflects ambient light and washes the picture (ask me how I know that ). The VT50 is known to have the best black levels among Plasmas: https://www.avforums.com/reviews/panaso ... eview.276/
Energy consumption should be obvious enough, a brighter panel needs more power. Late Plasma models needed to be more efficient due to strict regulations, and this resulted in lower luminance levels, albeit still enough to reach proper calibrated levels.
Perhaps late dark-tinted Plasmas have aged worse than older models due to these factors, but each case must be analyzed individually.

And yes, you're right, a brand new display will surely have higher luminance than a 10+ year old one, but considering the price/performance difference between Plasma and OLED, I'd say the older tech is still an interesting proposition.

Just wanted to drop in and say we still have 4 F series Sammy plasmas in my household. My sons 4500BFXZA must have WAY over 10K hours on it. My original 4500AFXZA developed some vertical purple lines that would not go away no matter what board I replaced or cables I played with, apparently a failing panel, so I had to replace it a year or so ago.

Replaced it with a used 60" F5300 pentile matrix that I picked up for $50 that had a blown power supply and after replacing and its just a stupendously beautiful set. Same input lag as the F4500s.

These sets have 37ms of input lag (Bseries) and rolling 37-45ms of input lag (A series) per time sleuth readings. Perfectly acceptable still for most gaming IMO.

Its been a long time since I made my gushing F4500 fanboy post back in 2013 or so, lol.

60" F5300 + RT5X + Sega Genesis.

https://i.imgur.com/pH1Gnth.png

That looks really good, the pentile matrix does make it look like a CRT!
I was pleasantly surprised when I hooked up my consoles+OSSC to the Plasma, the good motion clarity on a display this large is something to behold.
https://i.imgur.com/YlNvUj4.jpeg

I recommend Samsung or LG if anyone is interested in using original hardware+line multipliers, these brands play nicely with off-spec signals. My HD Samsung Plasma even accepts 5x@1080p!
Unfortunately the Panasonic's HATE anything but 2x, and only the later models (starting from the 2012 models) output uncompressed 4:4:4 chroma subsampling.
https://junkerhq.net/xrgb/index.php?tit ... patibility
If you still want to use a Panasonic, then a video processor like the DVDO models are necessary to output a proper signal.

[Taiyaki]

Same, I'd like to think of extra luminance as a reserve/tank for panel durability, if kept at a constant level. Anything above 110nits feels too bright for my eyes.

But Plasmas are known for being durable, some of the later panels are rated at 100.000 hours (30 years/8 hours per day), so I'm not sure why you saw such a drastic difference on your VT50. I noticed that Plasma luminance is heavily dependant on 2 factors: Coating and energy consumption.

The coating helps with contrast, black levels in particular, but can also block a significant amount of the light emitted by the panel. It is a necessary evil however, or you'll have a very bright panel with no black levels that reflects ambient light and washes the picture (ask me how I know that ). The VT50 is known to have the best black levels among Plasmas: https://www.avforums.com/reviews/panaso ... eview.276/
Energy consumption should be obvious enough, a brighter panel needs more power. Late Plasma models needed to be more efficient due to strict regulations, and this resulted in lower luminance levels, albeit still enough to reach proper calibrated levels.
Perhaps late dark-tinted Plasmas have aged worse than older models due to these factors, but each case must be analyzed individually.

And yes, you're right, a brand new display will surely have higher luminance than a 10+ year old one, but considering the price/performance difference between Plasma and OLED, I'd say the older tech is still an interesting proposition.

Thank you for sharing. Those are valuable points to consider.

In view of the prices of the high end OLED models I fully agree that for value, if one is considering for use on SDR content and 7th gen video games then it is worth considering.

My VT50 was also a lot more resistant to burn in and image retention than my VT25, so even in the span of just a few years Panasonic had made tremendous progress in that area as well. My VT25 had some pretty much permanent perm in just a few years, my VT50 did develop some persistent image retention but only in the latter years, and even then it would sometimes get better (or get replaced by new areas of image retention). The VT50 was one of the greatest TV's I've ever owned.

[H6rdc0re]

100% Fullscreen white is an useless metric that doesnt reflect on real world usage or content, and OLEDs are also nothing to brag about when compared to the newest MiniLED panels. When viewing actual content in SDR, a proper calibrated Plasma doesnt lose to an OLED. Some of the later Plasmas were even capable of reaching luminance levels as high as 220nits:
https://www.avforums.com/reviews/samsun ... eview.544/
This is more than enough for SDR content and not far from an OLED's performance (without BFI). With BFI luminance is roughly reduced in half, depending on the model.

I'm aware that the CX has the best BFI implementation and it's probably the best option for 4k/60~120hz sources but I still think HD Plasmas are better for 720p/60 sources, specially when you consider the price. And still hold up pretty well if they can accept 1080p signals.

Plasma input lag varies alot between models and brands, some models, like Panasonic's, can go as low as 16ms, while others, LG models in particular, can indeed reach unplayable 100ms of input lag.
https://www.avforums.com/reviews/panaso ... eview.131/
https://www.avforums.com/reviews/lg-pz9 ... eview.201/

Plasma like OLED always use ABL. In that AVForums review it clearly states the following:

Even in the most accurate Movie Mode, the F8500 was capable of hitting an eye-blistering 225 cd/m2 on a white window which should be more than ample in almost any environment, especially when the quality of the filter and anti-reflective coating is considered

That's high for a Plasma but pretty much straight out of the box. Plasma dims quite quickly when aged. I highly doubt any F8500 out there can even come close to doing 75% of that peak brightness. Also it's a on a white window so probably a calibration pattern. With a windowed 100% white calibration pattern an OLED goes a lot brighter in SDR. In HDR things get worse. BFI @60Hz in SDR is comparable or maybe slightly worse in brightness to aged Plasma TV's at full brightness. BFI @120Hz in SDR will be higher in brightness.

However HDR can also be injected into any source and thus increasing brightness with BFI quite a lot. Allowing to run BFI with filters (scanlines + shadow mask).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but in my honest opinion. I see no reason to play retro games on one of my Plasma TV's over my LG 65CX6LA. BFI whipes the floor in motion with Plasma, infinite contrast ratio, higher resolutions with better resolution scaling (1344p/1440p 6x integer scaling), even better SDR calibration results (20 point white balance and full CMS) and input lag with BFI comparable to best Plasma TV's.

No mention of additional features mentioned in the update changelog.

Just check the advanced picture settings. 16:9 Overscan should be set to off.

[cfx]

My main issue with any current TV is the 4K resolution, and no nearest-neighbor scaling, so there's no way to get an unfiltered image.

Certain Sonys used to have nearest-neighbor in graphics mode, but as I understand it only certain of their processors had the option, and I guess it's no longer in any of them. I know Panasonic TVs used to have it and perhaps still do, but as they're not sold in the US it doesn't much matter.

And I'm one that can see flicker on OLEDs so they're totally out of the question for me. Supposedly some don't do it but I haven't seen one that doesn't.

[bobrocks95]

And I'm one that can see flicker on OLEDs so they're totally out of the question for me. Supposedly some don't do it but I haven't seen one that doesn't.

Do you mean the very small dip in brightness at the start of a screen refresh? Quite different from the PWM flicker most would be referring to. I've not heard of anyone being able to notice it before.

[tongshadow]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but in my honest opinion. I see no reason to play retro games on one of my Plasma TV's over my LG 65CX6LA. BFI whipes the floor in motion with Plasma, infinite contrast ratio, higher resolutions with better resolution scaling (1344p/1440p 6x integer scaling), even better SDR calibration results (20 point white balance and full CMS) and input lag with BFI comparable to best Plasma TV's.

I will say OLEDs are a safer option for upscaling/line multiplying old consoles, as they generally have no issues accepting off-spec resolutions/refresh rates.

Regarding motion, the only display tech that "wipes the floor" in motion are CRTs, between OLED BFI (CX/C1) and Plasma the difference isnt that big, and later implementations by LG are known to have worse motion in favor of brightness. In fact, motion resolution is so low priority to LG that they didnt even bring back 120hz BFI on the C3, and their flagship 240hz OLED monitor doesnt even have the feature at all. This is a huge shame and it's simply not understandable why manufacturers would leave this out when it has already been done in previous models! Can you imagine paying $1000 for a display that makes everything at 60hz look like a blurry mess?
So it's clear that good motion resolution on OLEDs is model specific, whereas on Plasmas it's almost guaranteed you'll get it. And when you factor in the price/performance, it makes for a compelling choice.

Again, I understand that your LG CX is a fantastic display and given its specifications and capabilities it's hard to justify getting an older Plasma, and I'm sure many people are also in a similar position. But for others, it could make sense.

[Lord of Pirates]

Just check the advanced picture settings. 16:9 Overscan should be set to off.

I found the setting for mine, it's under Picture->Aspect->HD Size, 2. I guess I skimmed past or misread the setting the first time around .

[Rastan78]

My main issue with any current TV is the 4K resolution, and no nearest-neighbor scaling, so there's no way to get an unfiltered image.

Certain Sonys used to have nearest-neighbor in graphics mode, but as I understand it only certain of their processors had the option, and I guess it's no longer in any of them. I know Panasonic TVs used to have it and perhaps still do, but as they're not sold in the US it doesn't much matter.

I had to switch the input type to PC to get clean scaling of 1080p and 720p on my LG C1. Yeah by default the scaling is atrocious. It seems to perceive extra blocky areas and apply extra Vaseline locally. Smart features lol. Also there were nasty artifacts on large solid color areas. Made everything look like it's on a cheap 15 year old LCD.

On PC mode I'm totally happy. If it's not an integer scale then I couldn't tell even with my nose up in the screen.

A good game to test 1080p scaling IMO is Virtua Racing on Switch. It's 1080p, doesn't have antialiasing and has long straight high contrast edges all over. It really exposes the terrible "smart" scaling on the LG yet looks amazing in PC mode.

[Konsolkongen]

You can get the same scaling without using PC mode on the C1. Just disable everything called “Dynamic something”, turn off all edge enhancements and set the sharpness to 0.

PC mode just disables these features and enables 4:4:4 chroma which is really nice

[bobrocks95]

If you're using the display for games you should always be in PC mode on every input anyway.

[Rastan78]

Could've sworn I had everything like that turned off, but maybe I missed one. Either way, yeah the uncompressed color is worth turning on PC mode for anyway.

One of the cool side effects of 4K is having one screen that can display both 1080p and 720p games with clean integer upscaling.

Native 720p sets barely ever existed and most were 1366x768. Then the next generation of 1080p panels didn't do 720p too many favors either. So I think enjoying 720p games for the first time with pin sharp image quality is kind of a major stealth bonus of 4K sets.

[Konsolkongen]

I agree, definitely use PC mode for 444. On older LG OLEDs this caused severe color banding, but that is thankfully not an issue on newer models

[Einzelherz]

Just wanted to drop in and say we still have 4 F series Sammy plasmas in my household. My sons 4500BFXZA must have WAY over 10K hours on it. My original 4500AFXZA developed some vertical purple lines that would not go away no matter what board I replaced or cables I played with, apparently a failing panel, so I had to replace it a year or so ago.

Replaced it with a used 60" F5300 pentile matrix that I picked up for $50 that had a blown power supply and after replacing and its just a stupendously beautiful set. Same input lag as the F4500s.

These sets have 37ms of input lag (Bseries) and rolling 37-45ms of input lag (A series) per time sleuth readings. Perfectly acceptable still for most gaming IMO.

Its been a long time since I made my gushing F4500 fanboy post back in 2013 or so, lol.

60" F5300 + RT5X + Sega Genesis.

https://i.imgur.com/pH1Gnth.png

I was wondering how long til Josh showed up. He's the one I remember touting the Samsungs a lot.

As for me, I have a pair of Panasonic S60s. A 42" that I bought new and a 50" that I picked up in 2018 for a song. Love them both.

iirc their lag rating is around 36ms. They're both calibrated, and recalibrated whenever I get around to it. The only negative I've ever had (and it occurs on both) is a smearing of a high contrast line when watching animation and there's a solid horizontal dark/white (always the opposite so usually dark) line. Think of a southpart scene where there's a black line in the background from a wall or whatever. It'll smear across the entire horizonal axis like a ghost. In filmed or most video game used it's basically a non issue since they rarely have solid horizontal lines.

Also I think some of the ribbon cabling in the 50" is starting to deteriorate so the top left corner has some of the pixel cells flickering their red subpixels when they shouldn't be. I'll deal with that when I need to.

and in regards to the comparison everyone's going over - do you pronounce it correctly as O-L-E-D or do you say it wrongly as a word ohlead?

[orange808]

There's always tradeoffs.

If you want truly flicker free and only persistence blur, you need a high quality bulb powered three chip DLP beamer and a good screen.

Real world OLED 100% response time still measures in the milliseconds. The DLP chips refresh in microseconds--and that's not in a lab. The mirrors move and the image changes.

You'll pay a lot for a used unit and there's a ton of tradeoffs. No way you'll find a unit at affordable prices with 4k, HDR, and "simulation" low latency use case features. New bulbs are expensive and you're in trouble if the chips get misaligned.

Trade offs.

Anyhow, that's where you get no flicker and no real motion blur at all (just persistence blur).