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Rant Thread - What really grinds your gears?

LOveWerks said:
My cousin still has his Pioneer 52" Plasma... why did they stop manufacturing them? Safety reasons? The possibility of creating a black hole in your living room? Just joking. I didn't realize that plasma was no more. Gmash, enlighten me. LW :)
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They just weren't profitable. The LCDs are brighter, so look better under the bright lights in the big box stores, even though the plasmas look better at home unless you have a very bright room. The Pioneer Kuro was considered the reference TV until Pioneer gave up and got out of the TV business. Panasonic took over for the high end plasma market, but they stopped making them last year. That left Samsung and LG, and they both announced they are done with plasma by the end of the year. So plasma is really dead this time. OLED is the next big thing, but it'll be awhile before prices come down to earth. Another factor was it wasn't worth the effort to develop 4K plasma tv's when they didn't sell many except to A/V geeks anyway.
 
nickdalzell said:
Doesn't OLED suffer far worse burn-in and color degradation than Plasma?
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I've never had any burn-in on my plasma, and I haven't been careful with it at all. I play video games on it all the time and haven't had any problems. I prefer the picture over the LCD I have, even though the plasma is only 720 and the LCD is 1080.

On the other hand, I do have some burn-in on my Galaxy S3 amoled screen where the notification bar is. Haven't read much about it on TVs yet, but there aren't many out there.

Here's a review of the 55" $3500 LG oled TV. They will obviously improve and get cheaper over time if the technology takes off.

http://televisions.reviewed.com/content/lg-55ec9300-oled-tv-review
 
My mom has a very old plasma (three year old plus Pioneer) I wasn't aware they had a life cycle longer than 2 years. Last time I read Consumer Reports!
 
I believe there is a couple of environmental issues with plasma TVs.

1) They can consume a lot of power and they run rather hot. More so than CRTs I believe. Because they require lots of high voltage.

2) RoHS, Restriction of Hazardous Substance Directive, they contain mercury.

Neither of which are a problem for LCD(LED backlit) or AMOLED.

Plasmas are really at their best in darkened rooms because they can do true black, have normal room lighting or daylight, probably no advantage over LCD.

Burn-in can be a problem, more so for the older ones. In fact I've seen quite a few burned plasmas, often airport or railway station information displays. But then I've seen a lot of burned CRTs as well over the years.

Burned plasma monitor at airport.
Plasma_burnin_at_DFW_airport.jpg
 
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They do use more power, but mine doesn't get more than slightly warm on one spot on the back. Really big sizes are probably worse. An airport schedule is probably one of the worst uses for a plasma screen. No one would use it like that at home. I haven't had any burn in, or even temporary image retention from static HUDs in video games, or from things like tickers and channel logos. I think a lot of misinformation and outdated information followed plasma and contributed to its demise as well.
 
Plasmas had a fancy name but in the end, they're phosphor displays and all that goes along with them.

You want to solve image burn in, do what Pioneer and Panasonic did - go to a hard drying phosphor. Then offset the problem of energizing a hard phosphor with either higher energy or a very high subfield refresh rate. They were harder and more expensive to manufacture and couldn't survive their own market pressures.

OLEDs would market well. They're not color-faithful and unlike phosphor paints, have jealously guarded, proprietary color formulations. And because of that, full data are not shared - I doubt we'll ever see the day when red, green and blue produce the same light output as functions of surface area and energy used for excitation. Again, complex to manufacture, OLEDs are the next plasma - doomed.

The better solution has already come and gone. Thanks to corporate idiocy and patent trolling I doubt that it will ever return.

Simpler to manufacture, phosphor tech and no intermediate energy transfer mechanism like a plasma - the SED.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display
 
I don't like people arguing. Particularly when they are arguing the same. exact. point... over and over again, like little dogs worrying at a rag that used to be a stuffed toy.

Enough already, the horse is beyond dead, its freakin' Alpo!

... and then they start all over again.
 
Gmash, EarlyMon... thank you for the enlightenment. My cousin's Pioneer still looks great, and the color seemed more natural to me, than LED-based TV monitors. Yes, the LEDs are brighter in the big-box stores, to be sure... we'll see what happens with OLED, and future implementations of the television-based monitor. Thanks again, everyone - LW
 
My rant for the day... having to take our trash to the dump/recycling center - we only have three bags... on Sundays, the migrant workers clog up the lines with their HUGE amounts of trash. Yes, yet another slice of life from North Carolina tobacco country... I hope that everyone has had a good Thanksgiving Holiday, and, weekend. Also, tomorrow is my fiancee's 50th birthday... wish me luck on gift-getting, as I will have to street perform (my music) as much as possible this week to make that happen... the struggle continues, with positive energy. LW
 
LOveWerks said:
Gmash, EarlyMon... thank you for the enlightenment. My cousin's Pioneer still looks great, and the color seemed more natural to me, than LED-based TV monitors. Yes, the LEDs are brighter in the big-box stores, to be sure... we'll see what happens with OLED, and future implementations of the television-based monitor. Thanks again, everyone - LW
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The key to any TV is a good color calibration if you care about picture quality.

Some of my friends own plasmas, despite my goading, are watching them how they came out of the box.

They insist that I tell them the truth and stop screwing with them on why my plasma looks better. I keep telling them it's just a good, properly adjusted LCD but they aren't having any.

Horse. Water. Drink.

(I have nothing against plasma - for all I know, they ended up making one that didn't audibly scream at my elevation. They hadn't the last time I bought a set, so I got an LCD. I might have gotten an LCD anyway though. If someone were making a decent DLP anymore I would have gotten that. Kiss plasma and LCD goodbye, a good DLP just nails it.)

Like a phone, don't use your TV right out of box. Adjust it. Watch with your eyes and not with your preconceived notions.

The number one thing in color TV is still color. You get far more information from that than you do dot resolution or anything else. And next comes contrast.

Specs are lies. Best example - if you were to instantaneously experience a 1:50,000 change in brightness, you would literally go blind.

The marketing departments have customers chasing their tails over what the tech is and what the numbers are.

None of that really matters - it's all about quality.
 
Dngrsone said:
I don't like people arguing. Particularly when they are arguing the same. exact. point... over and over again, like little dogs worrying at a rag that used to be a stuffed toy.

Enough already, the horse is beyond dead, its freakin' Alpo!

... and then they start all over again.
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So I take it that you don't want to know why VHS was better than Beta.

Fine.

(rotf)
 
How do you calibrate a TV? I have software to color calibrate a monitor - both CRT and LCD. You have to attach a device to the screen of the monitor and run the program.
 
Ideally you do that same thing with assistance from a local professional. The B&O plasma TVs had the sensor built-in attached to a small motor - every so often it would spin into place and update the calibration - very cool. I wrote to a number of TV makers suggesting a USB device and a TV app for that. The few that bothered to answer said that there was no demand for such a thing. Google for TV calibration CD - those will help get you quite far. Been a while since I bought mine, maybe Gmash is current and can recommend a good one?

TV calibration without an app requires you to adjust things by hand. There are several thousand combinations of adjustments on my Samsung for example, fewer on lower priced models - but even my budget Samsung benefited from the attempt.
 
Dngrsone said:
That's hilarious because I know you are being facetious.
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No, actually serious. :D

I had the first Beta and the second and the broadcast Beta (worked at a TV station).

99+% of the entire VHS/Beta war is stuffed with myths and nonsense.

Technically they're virtually identical - if you run VHS at the same slow speed and use a high quality tape (very few did either).

VHS is superior for the same exact reason that it took over the market - 2 hour tapes. Hollywood ate that up, half the rental distribution costs - and so did consumers.

Lol - all true. :D

OK and yeah - I was being facetious.

But you know, in for a penny... :D
 
Beta wasn't reliable. It took after the infamous U-Matic loading system. It failed often chewing up many a tape back when. When it did work I didn't really notice any difference in picture. But the units failed too often to be useful.

VHS had one issue I dealt with 99% the time, the inability to rewind. Simple fix was take a rag and isopropyl alcohol and clean the little 'tire' between the reels, good for another ten years. I still have a later model VCR if only for backward compatibility (and the fact that movies on VHS second hand are one dollar a pop!)
 
The most common calibration discs are probably the Disney WOW and Spears and Munsil.

http://www.spearsandmunsil.com/2nd-edition-articles/


http://www.amazon.com/Disney-WOW-World-Wonder-Blu-ray/dp/B0045ASBLG

There are more advanced ones with the little plastic squares of different colors you look through to adjust the colors. I think most of the Pixar blu-ray discs have some basic calibration patterns. Not positive, but I think AVS Forum has a free one you can download on there somewhere.

Of course the professionals use a colorimeter and access to the service menu. Though most people wouldn't spend $250-$300 for a professional calibration, especially on a low or mid range TV.

Nice article that touches on a few options:

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/reviewed-blu-ray-setup-discs-for-your-hdtv/
 
nickdalzell said:
Beta wasn't reliable. It took after the infamous U-Matic loading system. It failed often chewing up many a tape back when. When it did work I didn't really notice any difference in picture. But the units failed too often to be useful.
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Sony SL-C6 mark II. We rented one in about '82, and I can remember the Sony engineer carving pieces out of the loading ring with a file, and it still wasn't right. Think we exchanged it for a Sanyo Beta, and that one was fine, no more chewed tapes. Tapes were expensive then as well.

Technically I think there's nothing inherently wrong with the "U" lacing system, basically it's just a large wheel that goes round, and IMO less complicated than VHS's "M" lacing system, which used sliding tape guides. Broadcasters have used Betacam for decades, and mechanically Betacam is very much the same as Betamax, just the tape speed is much faster. Electronically they're very different. It's only the last few years that many broadcasters have stopped using Betacam and gone over to solid state.

BTW in about 2000, I found a Sony professional Betacam SP deck by a bin. It had been dumped, took it home, found there was nothing wrong with it, and sold it on Ebay for £200 (about $300).

nickdalzell said:
VHS had one issue I dealt with 99% the time, the inability to rewind. Simple fix was take a rag and isopropyl alcohol and clean the little 'tire' between the reels, good for another ten years. I still have a later model VCR if only for backward compatibility (and the fact that movies on VHS second hand are one dollar a pop!)
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That was a common problem on many VHSs. Another one with the early ones, like top loaders, was the end of tape light bulb burning out, the symptom being is always ejecting the tape. Later decks used an infra-red beam from an LED for end of tape detection. VHS tapes had a transparent leader, and the deck used a light beam to detect end of tape. Beta used a foil leader, and detected it inductively.
 
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I think maybe it's me.... But!! Stomp stomp hisssssss
The me
Isn't the me that I see!!
You know what I mean?
 
In my experience I've had more loading jams on the U-load vs m-load. If it didn't jam it caught the tape on one or two guides and missed the last and attempted to continue anyway leading to shredded tapes.

Burnt out light bulb on old top loader easily fixed by ripping bulb out and soldering the two wires together.
 
nickdalzell said:
In my experience I've had more loading jams on the U-load vs m-load. If it didn't jam it caught the tape on one or two guides and missed the last and attempted to continue anyway leading to shredded tapes.

Burnt out light bulb on old top loader easily fixed by ripping bulb out and soldering the two wires together.
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Thing with doing that though, it won't detect the end or start of tape. Audio cassettes rely on tension, the reels stopping and going tight for end of tape. The whole idea of the light beam(bulb or LED) and transparent leaders, foil leaders on Beta, is that it can shut off rewinding or fast-forward before it goes tight and the reels stop, doing that with a fast winding video, could probably snap the tape.

But on the other hand, I don't think there's many people using 32+ year old top loading videos any more. LOL The numerous rubber drive belts, idlers and tyres have probably long since perished. Like trying to find a good drive belt kit for a JVC HR-3300 or a Sony SL-C5.

Here, just can't buy new VHS tapes or decks at all now, while cassettes are still quite common for audiobooks and education.
 
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