Help A Plasma Junkie Convert to LED: Advice Needed (1 Viewer)

[cineMANIAC]

I couldn't find a thread dedicated to LED TV discussion so I started this one. Please merge with any existing thread if needed.

This is a question for veteran owners of LED TVs willing to help a Plasma junkie transition into now-standard LED technology: are you generally happy with your sets? Like the thread title suggests, I'm in the market for a new TV set and they don't make Plasma sets anymore so I'll have to "go with the flow" and get an LED. I know places like Best Buy intentionally boost the contrast/brightness of floor models to make them look more "appealing", and the pictures, while dazzling for the most part, appear too "video-y" for my tastes. I know this is a common complaint among the more knowledgeable folks looking to buy TVs and this is the group I'm reaching out to for help. Are the pictures really that sharp and bright on these sets? I don't want my Blu-rays looking like music videos. Or should I get an LCD?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I have a plasma TV currently, but have also owned LED LCD TVs, and we have an LCD in the bedroom. Many of these sets come with the extra bells and whistles turned on right out of the box, but they can be turned off. The LED LCD I used to own now resides at my father's house, where it looks as good as the day I got it. The regular LCD we use in the bedroom also looks good to me. Once all of the auto-motion and edge enhancement stuff was turned off, it looked like what it was supposed to. No film content I watch on it now has that "video" look - I'm able to go from my plasma and/or projector in the living room to the LCD in the bedroom, and I don't notice any jarring shifts in quality.

I think you might be talking about OLED TVs, which are different from LED LCD. A regular "LED" TV is an LCD TV using LEDs as the lighting element - but the video is still displayed on LCD panels. OLED uses a different kind of technology and is said to have better black levels than plasma. The people on the forum who have jumped from plasma to OLED seem very happy.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I am a plasma owner with Panny GT & VT models along with Samsung F8500 model. I now own a LG OLEDE6P too and the reason why I was drawn to OLED models is because from my own comparisons and those from other prior plasma owners, the OLED panels give you the best picture comparison to plasma displays. In fact, the OLED displays have improved upon the plasma displays in more ways than one.

 

[gadgtfreek]

Advice:

OLED #1
Sony 940 FALD Series #2

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Note that if 3D is important to you, you'll have to look for a 2016 model TV, as it is not currently offered on any 2017 models.

 

[cineMANIAC]

Appreciate the feedback from everyone. I learned something new today: I had no idea that, other than the lighting element, LED and LCD TVs are the same technology (thanks, Josh); I would've been wracking my brain trying to decide between the two . I do feel a lot better about being able to disable the settings that make the sets brighter than they should look, which I sort of knew about but wasn't 100% sure. The picture quality on those showroom displays are pretty spectacular but I don't want my Blu-rays to look like that

OLED is currently beyond my price range but I am aware of the benefits of the technology over LCD/LED and even Plasma.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

If your price range only allows for an LED/LCD, I think it's still possible to get a quality TV that you can be happy with. For picture quality alone, I'd give a slight edge to the Samsung LED model that I gave to my dad over the Samsung LCD we have in the bedroom (both are probably six to eight years old at this point so no idea what the model numbers are).

The main thing, once you've gotten a set, is finding all of the different menu settings and disabling them. There are a few different presets usually built in, and on my Samsung, the one called "Cinema" or "Movie" looked closest to accurate out of the box, without that overwhelming extra brightness. There's something that will mess with the frame rate to give it that soap opera look (Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus I think, different names on different brands), and that's the first thing I turned off. There was another setting for "edge enhancement" which I also switched off. These different functions have different names on different brands, but I've found that just about everything that comes automatically switched on for an LED/LCD TV is something you'll want to turn off.

When I was picking out that Samsung TV back in the day, if memory serves, I brought a copy discs with me to the store and I asked them to put those on the display instead of the store's prerecorded demo material. I think I also played around with the settings a little bit. The point was so that I could see what something looked like on the TV where I already knew what it was supposed to look like. In my opinion, if you're buying at a brick & mortar store, I definitely recommend doing that. But if you end up buying online, there are good deals that way too. I never thought I'd buy a TV on Amazon, but they were great when I got my plasma.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

The picture quality of my 2016 LG OLED dwarfs my old, dead Panasonic Viera. That was apparent the instant it first turned on. Velvety blacks. Blinding whites. Incredible 3-D.

Plus, who doesn't love a magic remote?