Are Plasma TV's still good for gaming in 2019?

B

biggles

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 25, 2005
Messages
2,212
It used to be the case that Plasmas were better than LCD's due to better blacks. The other day I was playing the Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 on my old Samsung pn518500. This was a top of the line Plasma several years ago. The Genesis collection plays by default in 4:3 aspect ratio. After a few hours I noticed image retention. It does not look like permanent burn-in since I watched regular TV afterwards in order to see if it would go away, and it apparently did go away.

So, I decided to play this game in 16:9 stretched to reduce the risk of burn-in. Game looks strange stretched that way.

Are the newer LCD's up to Plasma TV in picture quality? With 4K and HDR, maybe they are? They are cheap enough and the lightweight part is appealing. Then I could play in 4:3 without worrying about burn-in. Here is one example:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...68a917d5900&pf_rd_r=QD1RD0D2865TGF21E4FW&th=1

Also, I have a PS4 with Gran Turismo Sport, that would look lots better with HDR, correct?
 
Not really with that TV. HDR is mostly bs marketing on low end TVs. They don't get bright enough and not 10 bit panels. Save you money for a Qled from Samsung or OLED from LG if you want something near plasma black levels. Check out rtings.com for TVs reviews.
 
Last edited:
You want to stay away from televisions that are edge lit like the one you linked. For HDR you'll want an OLED or a LCD with FALD. OLED is the only panel type that can match the black levels of a plasma while far outclassing the picture quality. The nice thing about OLED is that the individual pixels turn off when there is pure black, so there is no risk of image retention if you play a game in 4:3 pillarbox.

If you're not looking to spend QLED or OLED money, there are still decent options available at a lower price point. From TCL, you want the R617.
https://www.amazon.com/TCL-55R617-55-Inch-Ultra-Smart/dp/B079N9HDNQ/

On the slightly more expensive side there is the Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB (make sure to look at the one that advertises DisplayHDR 1000). It $1,000 USD for 43", though, and at that price per inch you could buy a 55" OLED.
https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Momentum-436M6VBPAB-DisplayHDR-Adaptive/dp/B07D5S3QCS/

Speaking of OLED, NewEgg has the 55" B8 (2018 model) on sale for $1,070 right now.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16889007663

If you wait a bit, LG is releasing a 49" OLED this year if you don't want such a large screen. We don't know what pricing is going to be like yet, though. The "low end" 55" B8 was $2,000 when it came out, if I'm not mistaken, so the 49" will probably be over $1,000.
 
Armenius said:
The nice thing about OLED is that the individual pixels turn off when there is pure black, so there is no risk of image retention if you play a game in 4:3 pillarbox.
Click to expand...

There is absolutely a risk. The off pixels aren't wearing down like the rest of the pixels. Eventually you will notice a contrast between the worn and non-worn pixels. Look at OLED phones that have a permanent black nav bar. After a year or so they end up looking like this:

XoUjLFD.png


Of course with a TV you aren't usually displaying permanent letterbox/pillarbox content, so it isn't as big of an issue.
 
biggles said:
It used to be the case that Plasmas were better than LCD's due to better blacks. The other day I was playing the Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 on my old Samsung pn518500. This was a top of the line Plasma several years ago. The Genesis collection plays by default in 4:3 aspect ratio. After a few hours I noticed image retention. It does not look like permanent burn-in since I watched regular TV afterwards in order to see if it would go away, and it apparently did go away.

So, I decided to play this game in 16:9 stretched to reduce the risk of burn-in. Game looks strange stretched that way.

Are the newer LCD's up to Plasma TV in picture quality? With 4K and HDR, maybe they are? They are cheap enough and the lightweight part is appealing. Then I could play in 4:3 without worrying about burn-in. Here is one example:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...68a917d5900&pf_rd_r=QD1RD0D2865TGF21E4FW&th=1

Also, I have a PS4 with Gran Turismo Sport, that would look lots better with HDR, correct?
Click to expand...

Permanent image retention on a late model plasma is only an issue, if you do something like fall asleep to a Blu-ray menu screen every night.

The problem with Plasma for gaming, is that most Plasma have a whole lot of input lag. Some of the top end Panasonics had some of the most input lag I have ever seen.
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
There is absolutely a risk. The off pixels aren't wearing down like the rest of the pixels. Eventually you will notice a contrast between the worn and non-worn pixels. Look at OLED phones that have a permanent black nav bar. After a year or so they end up looking like this:

View attachment 158373

Of course with a TV you aren't usually displaying permanent letterbox/pillarbox content, so it isn't as big of an issue.
Click to expand...

Going to drop my two cents in as an OLED user for about 2.5 years now. I have two LG OLEDs (C6 and B6) with approximately 4000 hours of use between the two of them which includes hundreds of hours of gameplay with static HUDs. My TVs do not possess any signs of burn-in and have rarely had image retention. I'm not saying burn-in doesn't happen, because it does, but it doesn't happen as easily as some people may think.
 
Armenius said:
You want to stay away from televisions that are edge lit like the one you linked. For HDR you'll want an OLED or a LCD with FALD. OLED is the only panel type that can match the black levels of a plasma while far outclassing the picture quality. The nice thing about OLED is that the individual pixels turn off when there is pure black, so there is no risk of image retention if you play a game in 4:3 pillarbox.

If you're not looking to spend QLED or OLED money, there are still decent options available at a lower price point. From TCL, you want the R617.
https://www.amazon.com/TCL-55R617-55-Inch-Ultra-Smart/dp/B079N9HDNQ/

On the slightly more expensive side there is the Philips Momentum 436M6VBPAB (make sure to look at the one that advertises DisplayHDR 1000). It $1,000 USD for 43", though, and at that price per inch you could buy a 55" OLED.
https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Momentum-436M6VBPAB-DisplayHDR-Adaptive/dp/B07D5S3QCS/

Speaking of OLED, NewEgg has the 55" B8 (2018 model) on sale for $1,070 right now.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16889007663

If you wait a bit, LG is releasing a 49" OLED this year if you don't want such a large screen. We don't know what pricing is going to be like yet, though. The "low end" 55" B8 was $2,000 when it came out, if I'm not mistaken, so the 49" will probably be over $1,000.
Click to expand...
Damn it lol. You are tempting me to buy that OLED.
 
exlink said:
Going to drop my two cents in as an OLED user for about 2.5 years now. I have two LG OLEDs (C6 and B6) with approximately 4000 hours of use between the two of them which includes hundreds of hours of gameplay with static HUDs. My TVs do not possess any signs of burn-in and have rarely had image retention. I'm not saying burn-in doesn't happen, because it does, but it doesn't happen as easily as some people may think.
Click to expand...

I can second this. I have an 65" E6 LG oled that I got back in 2017 with no signs of burn-in whatsoever. I have about a 50:50 split of time between gaming and movies/TV.
 
Armenius said:
The nice thing about OLED is that the individual pixels turn off when there is pure black, so there is no risk of image retention if you play a game in 4:3 pillarbox..
Click to expand...

That is not how it works, this will end poorly.
 
IIRC one of the big problems with Plasma is input lag. Which generally isn't great for gaming. The input lag was so bad that there were options in blu-ray players and receivers to delay audio against the video so that it would properly sync up while using Plasmas.
 
supastar1568 said:
I can second this. I have an 65" E6 LG oled that I got back in 2017 with no signs of burn-in whatsoever. I have about a 50:50 split of time between gaming and movies/TV.
Click to expand...

With Oled it is where you setup your TV and the lighting in the room. If you need excessive amounts of brightness on your panel you force the panel (almost all of them supposedly the last few panels are slightly better) to work a lot harder. That will cause burn in most of the time.

If you can control these "problems" then your Oled should have less to no "problems" regarding burn in.

On the UK website avforum.com they never had the problem (burn in) either. With websites that do reviews you never know if that sample is representative on what is sold in stores.
 
supastar1568 said:
I can second this. I have an 65" E6 LG oled that I got back in 2017 with no signs of burn-in whatsoever. I have about a 50:50 split of time between gaming and movies/TV.
Click to expand...

Same here, have an LG B7A that was purchased in 2017... only time image retention was an issue was when it accidentally got turned on when I was at work (cats + harmony touch = bad). A thin white line was retained from sitting on a blu ray menu. Ran the built in pixel refresher and it was fine after. Obviously that was kind of a unique situation, and I since learned to turn on the screen lock for my remote. OLED is gorgeous, and will stay that way as long as your responsible and turn your TV off when not in use.
 
As a general matter, I would rather game on a 1080P Plasma or an OLED than any 4K LCD. But, depending on which model you are using, the input lag may be considerable. I use a Panasonic VT60 plasma which was the last one they made. It has a game mode that cuts input lag considerably and it makes for very playable first person shooters. Without game mode, forget it.

You need to look at the input lag for your specific TV. An OLED won't do you any good if there is so much input lag that competitive games are unplayable.

Also, it depends on what kind of games you play. I find, for example, that more Quake like games like Overwatch are easily playable on my TV. Games that require a little more precision are a little bit harder. You can definitely get your game on with a TV with reasonably good input lag--the image quality of a Plasma or especially a more recent OLED will be far superior than any monitor, but you won't be topping the leader boards against people with fast LCD monitors jammed right up against their eyeballs.
 
Also I will add that a lot of what people call burn in is actually image rentention that does go away. If you play the same game over and over, you will have some image retention that will show up in lighter scenes but it will resolve itself over time.

Banners on TV channels are a different story. If you watch CNN for an hour or so every day for example you will have a CNN logo in the bottom right of your screen. It is faint but it is there. The reason is that by watching it every day you are just reinforcing the image retention so that it never resolves. In some cases if you do it enough it really is permanent, but it is hard to tell because if you are watching over and over you don't know if it is really permanent or if you just keep adding more image retention.

In my experience, you can totally abuse a plasma with games, you can fall asleep with a menu, you can do all of those things and it will resolve itself over the course of normal full screen movie watching over time. I gamed hard on one plasma and re-tasked it as my bedroom TV and not a trace of gaming evidence is on that screen. But logo's from television stations are killer.
 
One more comment. Another solution is using your OLED/Plasma connected PC for the actual gaming, but if you need to "manage" the computer, for example, if you are managing your music or video library or doing some kind of task that involves having the windows operating on the screen for some period of time, I find the better safer solution is to remote log into that PC from a laptop and control it remotely. That way you aren't crushing your screen with mundane tasks. I feel like any time I have anything but full screen video on my plasma, I am on the clock.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
IIRC one of the big problems with Plasma is input lag. Which generally isn't great for gaming. The input lag was so bad that there were options in blu-ray players and receivers to delay audio against the video so that it would properly sync up while using Plasmas.
Click to expand...
Not on the Plasmas I used.
The Panasonic 42PZ80B and the larger 50" version were both great.
The 42" was used for gaming for years on my PC before I moved to a projector.
I gave it to my cousins who still use it as their main PC gaming display and love it.
 
I only recently upgraded from a 65" Panasonic VT60 Plasma to a 75" Samsung Q9FN QLED for res. The VT60 was good for me. I'm not some like uber competitive gamer on lag. I did swap out an ST60 just to get the figure down catching the VT60 on sale. I'd certainly have been game for a 4k version! I noticed IR more easily on stuff like Sony BluRay or Netflix, white on black etc, than games. Meh didn't matter.

I thought I'd be OLED or bust but wanting greater than 65" to not sidegrade the size I eventually caved due to the crushing price. Still getting my bearings on how much i like the Q9FN, but of course the size and res and stuff are nice. Halos on certain content watching from the side (snuggle spot lol, ofc gf couldn't care less). Plasmas were nice!
 
texuspete00 said:
I only recently upgraded from a 65" Panasonic VT60 Plasma to a 75" Samsung Q9FN QLED for res. The VT60 was good for me. I'm not some like uber competitive gamer on lag. I did swap out an ST60 just to get the figure down catching the VT60 on sale. I'd certainly have been game for a 4k version! I noticed IR more easily on stuff like Sony BluRay or Netflix, white on black etc, than games. Meh didn't matter.

I thought I'd be OLED or bust but wanting greater than 65" to not sidegrade the size I eventually caved due to the crushing price. Still getting my bearings on how much i like the Q9FN, but of course the size and res and stuff are nice. Halos on certain content watching from the side (snuggle spot lol, ofc gf couldn't care less). Plasmas were nice!
Click to expand...

I still have my VT50. Even if I upgrade, I don't think I'd get rid of it. Solely for the 3D support. Not that I care that much...but some stuff is still neat to view from time to time. The issue is where do I put a second 65 inch set? That's what's keeping me from upgrading. Which, is nice. I don't really need a new TV. I barely use it and it would just be wasteful.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top