I agree with the Plasma / LCD comparisons. I have the PANASONIC TH50PZ85U and had it calibrated. Before going with a plasma, I had to do some tech "catching up" with the HD displays as I hadn't previously bought a WS HD set. Several weeks before buying my Panny Plasma, I bought my Mom one of the Samsung 46" LCD's, I think it's the LN46A650 model. Since Mom was the "beta site" for us regarding HD WS TV, I went with the (my perception at the time) more popular LCD vs Plasma TV for her house. The viewing distance at Mom's is about 8 ft in a small room. The LCD is fine for Mom's viewing for everyday programming.
I continued doing the legwork and research before deciding on my 50" Plasma purchase a few weeks after getting the LCD for Mom. I agree with the posts here regarding the Plasma's having the better overall picture. One of the first things I noticed was what although hard to put into words, a more, to me, "realistic" reproduction of movies vs comparable LCD models.
Interestingly, several months after I had purchased the Panny Plasma, I was in my local BB store (I purchased the Panny at Circuit City..sad to see them leave the market). I was just comparing prices at BB several months after I had bought my set. A Panny Rep happend to be delivering some BR players to the store and I had an interesting conversation with the guy regarding some of the issues that had initially "scared" me away from getting a Plasma set for Mom. We discussed Plasma picture lifetimes, burn-in/retention issues, etc...all of the issues that, from talking to some friends, have steered them away from Plasmas in the past. Since the Rep worked for Panny, I knew that, well....I might need to take it in context, so to speak
, but he didn't have a "sales agenda" with me since I'd already bought my set at another store, and we were in a 1:1 conversation so he wasn't speaking for any other ears. He said that the issue of image retention, which is a particular interest to me as I watch a large amount of 4:3 TV/DVD material in the "pillar box" mode, is largely "urban legend" and not true concerns for Plasma sets. I asked him about the necessity of choosing the light-gray pillar bars vs the black ones per the Panny manual to reduce retention issues. He said that selecting the black bars would not cause any permenant retention issues. He stated that, if a "pillar bar" retention image occured, that the pattern would disappear after a short time of watching a WS picture source.
I do take a couple of "safeguard" actions with my Panny set in that I don't leave the picture in 4:3 mode for any length of idle time. Since my DTV HD Receiver and my DVD player both have "screen saver" modes that activate after a certain period of idle time, I'm not concerned with the overall retention issue.
I do see the light-reflective issue vs the LCD's but as you and the posters mentioned, I keep that in mind with the lighting conditions in my viewing room at home. I haven't seen the reflective issue become an issue with my viewing. My current viewing distance is about 9 1/2 - 10 ft. I would recommend to those that are looking at WS sets, if their budgets allow, get at least a min of 46" screen size wih their purchases. My previous CRT set was the Sony Wega 36" set and I found that in order to get the same picture height size in a WS set, that I needed to get a min of 46" WS size set. I was actually looking to get a 52" size but have no regrets with the Panny 50 Plasma. It delivers an outstanding picture Q with both TV/DVD's and movies. I've read where some see what they consider to be a step-down in picture Q when watching older programming on HD WS sets, TV/DVD's in my case. I haven't found that to be the case for me. To me, watching these older TV/DVD's on this Plasma set is amazing. The real thrill for me since entering the HD WS world is watching movies that I'm very familiar with the films and seeing them like never before seen in WS anamorphic upconverted HD. I'm seeing color def & details that I'd never been able to see with that 36" Sony Wega.
Something that I found interesting in the Samsung LCD that I bought for Mom is that the manual has a statement of caution regarding burn-in (LCD?) when viewing mainly 4:3 sources (in the 4:3 OAR mode). I had heard that burn-in issues were non-existant with LCD's.
Regardless, especially since I'm not a video game viewer, I'm not concerned with burn-in issues with my plasma set. I bought the in-store warranty covering any burn-in/pixtel issue.
