Looking at television from the eye of a photographer

[Wilynn]

Hi guys,

I'm buying a new television. I'm thinking of going with a plasma TV, although that part of this issue is still up in the air. Up till now I've been using a television that was built back in 1994. It uses the old school television tube. As a dedicated amateur street photographer, I'd be a fool if I didn't solicit the opinion of other shutterbugs out there.

My question, what features should a camera enthusiast look for when buying a new television? I'm not saying that there are features a shutterbug should look for when buying a TV. (Maybe there are, maybe there aren't.) But I just thought I'd ask some of you out there who have experience mixing photography and a modern television in with their lifestyle. I understand that some of you use your LCD or plasma TV to view the pictures you took, though as someone who has been using an older television, that concept is totally foreign to me.
In case you're wondering, my computer is a 2006 edition Dell XPS 400 desktop and I use Windows XP.


03-12-2008 11:23 AM

 

[JerryPH]

Well, you want a TV with a 256,000 ISO rating, and at least 10MP and of course all cameras are LCD, so you want at least a 2" screen....

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: I'M KIDDING! :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

TV chocie has NOTHING to do with photography! This is another world and you need to maybe do your own research as to what your needs are.

 

[Big Mike]

I don't really know much about new TVs either...I still have an old 27" tube that I've had for 10 years.

Obviously, there is the whole HD thing. Seems that if you are going to buy something new, make sure it's HD compatible...but I think that most of them are now anyway.

One thing that intrigues me is the idea of a home entertainment network. You get something like a 'media centre PC' and run all your equipment off of the PC or network.

This way you can use your TV to surf the web. You can have your music and video collection on a harddrive and watch or listen to anything on the TV, stereo or computer monitor. You can use a computer harddrive as a PVR to record TV etc.

It would probably cost quite a bit to set that all up...but it would certainly be pretty cool.

 

[MissMia]

I'd wait for a while. Reports on the AV side say Plasma is dead and the prices should start falling soon. Several major manufacturers are dropping their Plasma lines for LCD.

 

[Alex_B]

Also, image quality of TV-sets is always pretty poor compared to a photographic print or when looking at digital images on a proper colour calibrated high-res screen

 

[Scurra]

Plasma is dead, most of the large manufacturers have opted to go with LCD these days, and if you go with an HD LCD display looking at photos on it will be no different to looking at photos on your PC monitor.

I just bought a 32" Sharp Aquos HD LCD myself... I'm very happy with it, but I haven't used it for anything photo related yet.

 

[Alex_B]

oh, yes, i was referring to plasma.

LCD can be a lot better. But i would read reviews regarding the particular models you are interested in .

 

[Tangerini]

I'd wait for a while. Reports on the AV side say Plasma is dead and the prices should start falling soon. Several major manufacturers are dropping their Plasma lines for LCD.

I agree, so unless you don't mind buying something that will be obsolete before you even buy it, then I would suggest investing in an LCD.
Plasma screens suffer from a couple of problems that LCDs don't. One of the major problems being burn-in - when static images on screen get permanently "burnt in" to the screen - say like a tv station logo, or worse the black bars on the side of the picture when watching 4:3 aspect on a 16:9 set.

Good luck with your purchase!

 

[Mav]

Just bought a 1080p 42" "Vizio" LCD TV from Costco. I never watch TV - it was for my wife. Picking a TV these days is sorta like picking lenses - you get what you pay for. At the same $1000 price point as the Vizio (+/- $100-200) the sharpest brightest sets also had the most aliasing and artifacting, like when you see ghosts of some text on the screen appearing elsewhere because of the aggressive filters they use to get the sharpness. The softer sets had much better aliasing and artifacting performance, but of course were softer and not as sharp. Step all the way up to the $1800 Sony though (still 42"), and you get a crystal clear picture with great sharpness, brightness, and minimal artifacting and other distortions and it looks almost perfect.

Do I care enough about TV picture quality to spend $1800 vs $1000? No.
Would my wife even notice the difference unless I pointed it out? No.
Therefore I bought the cheapo Vizio, and it's fine.

I do like nice camera lenses though. :mrgreen:

For Christmas I'm going to have to get an upconvert DVD player that'll actually run the set at 1080p rather than 480 or whatever it does. I saw a 480p vs 1080p demo in Best Buy on a set and the clarity of the 1080p DVD was amazing, but of course they'll intentionally do everything they can to make the 480p picture look as crummy as possible, and do everything they can to make the 1080p as crystal clear as possible, so who knows?

 

[JIP]

This http://www.avforums.com/forums/index.php? might be a good place to go to learn about televisions. I know when I bought mine I went there for a while but one word of warning the people there seem to have endless streams of money to spend on televisions and electronics.

 

[Big Mike]

one word of warning the people there seem to have endless streams of money to spend on televisions and electronics.

Ya...but they probably have point & shoot digital cameras.

 

[Mav]

And they joke about the freaks on photog forums that have thousands invested in their equipment but have crappy old 27" tube TVs, or the guy that bought a crappy Vizio 42" LCD at Costco of all places, heh eh. (I have some older 27 and 25" Sony WEGA tube tv's too)

 

[gendarmee]

The good old CRT's still have the best picture quality, though bulky, just in case you watch football or tennis and ya want to follow the ball move, an LCD would have a trail behind the ball. Plasma displays have a short life..If one uses a plasma for 12 hours a day it would last ya 5 1/2 years.. and black doesn't look black in dim light, slow refresh rate on plasma

If an LCD, get something with the fastest refresh rate & highest contrast ratio 5ms-1 with LG is the fastest refresh rate at the moment i guess compared to samsung's 8ms-1

But then if one is looking for picture quality just get good old 100 hz CRT.
But if one has to decide between plasma and rear projection one should choose Plasma

 

[Mav]

^ Yeah that's what I noticed on the LCDs vs my 27" Sony WEGA. Action stuff lagged, more aliasing, and the black wasn't as black. The picture quality just didn't seem to be as good unless I wanted to spend $1800 on the Sony model. No thanks.

 

[Fiendish Astronaut]

CRTs are still the best. I don't think LCD's make for good pictures though - the LCD manufacturers just started to move into the TV market because the computer monitor market had become saturated. Having said that technology might have moved on - but there are still some shockingly bad LCDs out there that just cannot handle picture movement. As for colours, if you're in the US than it probably doesn't matter because NTSC really is an awful awful standard. Engineers who have to deal with it over here say it means Never The Same Colour - not sure what it really means though!