As photograhers, which type of TV do you want/own?

[fotomeow]

Originally Posted by MartinP

I don't watch TV. Among my social group it does seem I'm the only one without TV and cable though, so maybe I'm weird.

It would be interesting to know why the OP wants to watch a television instead of actually doing stuff?

Originally Posted by Paul T.

Ah, the good old internet, the perfect venue to pick fault with other people's lifestyles!

I drink coffee. I've heard some idiots drink tea. What is up with them?

In fact, Paul, the other gents comment was fundamentally inaccurate in the first place.
Why would they presume that the OP doesn't "actually do stuff".
This echoes some other responses implying that people who dont watch TV are intellectually/morally superior.
Its ridiculous.
The thread topic is not the pros and cons of TV or the people who watch them,
but rather the TVs performance in and of itself in the opinion of visually trained amateur and pro RF users.
I am just trying to keep the thread on point.

[j.scooter]

There is a wealth of information regarding TVs over at http://www.avsforum.com/

[Trius]

We have a 50" Panasonic plasma. I chose plasma because of the colour fidelity and viewing angle. Room brightness isn't really a problem, but we have no direct light to deal with, just filtered, diffuse daylight.

I recently had a tech come in just to do a check and cleaning, part of an extended warranty which we are cancelling anyway. His opinion is that Panasonic is at the top for plasma, and he did not have good things to say about Samsung in terms of getting replacement panels should they fail. And they do, though he didn't mention the rate.

He also jotted down all my colour and brightness/contrast settings. Guess I did a good job of setting it up -- I must be a photographer or something.

[fotomeow]

Originally Posted by Trius

We have a 50" Panasonic plasma. I chose plasma because of the colour fidelity and viewing angle. Room brightness isn't really a problem, but we have no direct light to deal with, just filtered, diffuse daylight.

I recently had a tech come in just to do a check and cleaning, part of an extended warranty which we are cancelling anyway. His opinion is that Panasonic is at the top for plasma, and he did not have good things to say about Samsung in terms of getting replacement panels should they fail. And they do, though he didn't mention the rate.

He also jotted down all my colour and brightness/contrast settings. Guess I did a good job of setting it up -- I must be a photographer or something.

Sounds like you nailed the TV settings on your own. I was at Best Buy playing with the color/contrast/brightness/etc settings via remote.
I felt like I would be able to optimize the settings on my own at home as well. However, if I didn't have a photographers eye,
Best Buy would be "willing" to send a tech to my home for $200 to optimize the settings for me. How generous (!!?)

[bigeye]

Originally Posted by photomoof

"Channels? We ain't got no channels. We don't need no cannnels! I don't have to show you any stinkin' channels!" Ads? What are ads?

So many Luddites in this tread. Not sure I would have much in common with folks who don't watch movies... but I guess if they owned a mountain bike.

"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" in HD is a terrible experience. Maybe I am a Luddite, but it looks awful.

.

[Trius]

Originally Posted by fotomeow

Sounds like you nailed the TV settings on your own. I was at Best Buy playing with the color/contrast/brightness/etc settings via remote.
I felt like I would be able to optimize the settings on my own at home as well. However, if I didn't have a photographers eye,
Best Buy would be "willing" to send a tech to my home for $200 to optimize the settings for me. How generous (!!?)

If the 'tech' had certification (can't remember the exact acronym right now,) it would be worth if for a lot of people. There are additional settings in the service menu that allow tweaking of the geometry, as well as other things. My contract didn't include that, and I doubt that the Best Buy service would either. But unless the set is really out of spec, you can probably live with using the consumer menus and calibrating those yourself.

[scottgee1]

I voted 'None of the above' because I have yet to see a plasma/LCD/LED set that didn't scream "PIXELS!!!!". I suspect the manufacturers have figured out how to beta test their products on us whilst extracting large sums of money from our pockets.

We have one of the last wide screen WEGA Trinitron tube sets Sony offered. Picked it up from a Craig's List seller a few years ago. Wrestled may be a better description; it weighs well more than 200 pounds -- the glass content in those big tubes is substantial.

When correctly adjusted, colors are realistic, contrast balanced and details clear. Completely reliable and a joy to watch.

hth!/

[DougFord]

Same here. I'm still rock'n my '03 Sony kv34xbr910 CRT. The 200lbs + is an anti-theft feature, I reckon.
Live sports
Movies
...electrons traversing the vacuum.

[MRohlfing]

I don't have a TV. All 5 TVs belong to my wife.

[Michiel Fokkema]

I think a CRT still looks way better then any of those flat things. Like film still looks way better then digital.

[burancap]

Indeed!

The most beautiful (and most functional) TV ever made was a CRT!

I have a pair of THESE: http://www.google.com/search?q=bang+...g&ved=0CGAQsAQ

[elude]

No TV. Most programs are dumb as **** anyway.

[jaredangle]

I had no TV for years – unlike most American families who have one or more TV in every room of the house except the bathroom, my parents have always been a one television family. When I moved out of the house 4 years ago, I didn't bother getting a TV even though I could afford it. I just used my laptop for movies, and took my game system over to a friend's house if I wanted to play video games. I took the plunge in March though, and bought a Philips 32" LCD HDTV for $250. It's all I need (and much more than I need).

[Trius]

Originally Posted by elude

No TV. Most programs are dumb as **** anyway.

This isn't dumb as *** ... not only is it delivered in HD, but all their programming is shot in HD. It makes a difference, and a lot of the content is inspiring and good for the soul/spirit.

[dct]

Originally Posted by Michiel Fokkema

I think a CRT still looks way better then any of those flat things. Like film still looks way better then digital.

And not only the viewing device. There are also still bad digital movie productions around. Example: I own Waterworld in both LD and DVD edition. The movie contains a great amount of beautyful landscape impressions on the sea.

Of course, the digital 720x576px resolution of the DVD-Video is technically slightly better than the 640×576px of the Laserdisc medium (PAL output). And it fits 16:9 properly. But in slow pans on cloudy sky and blue ocean you see many ugly pixel artifacts on the DVD edition which you don't have on the LD edition.
This negative digital effects are visible both on my analog CRT backpro (RGB connection) as well as on a new LED/LCD screen (HDMI connection). The playback decoder device doesn't help here: This artifacts are visible using both DVD player or HD screen image decoder.

Just one more example why digital is still an emerging technology, if you are looking at good optical quality. I don't own yet Blue-rayDisc technology in my home cinema setup and cannot speak for that.

[bobbyrab]

Just one more example why digital is still an emerging technology, if you are looking at good optical quality. I don't own yet Blue-rayDisc technology in my home cinema setup and cannot speak for that.[/quote]

Speaking as a photographer that still prefers the aesthetic of film over digital, any HD TV, be it LCD or plasma needs to be fed an HD channel, or better still view a Bluray disk, to see it's full potential. Particularly Bluray, it's so much better than a CRT set, but they're not quite as good as CRT when fed lesser signals.

[andersju]

Originally Posted by hipsterdufus

I find that many people who don't watch TV love to talk about how they don't watch TV.

The Onion: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television

[LChanyungco]

I've been waiting for smell-O-vision for years.

[gb hill]

I have a 36" Phillips Magnavox that belonged to my uncle. It's a CRT which I feel is a better picture than most flat screen tv's I've seen. I hate HD & got tired of renting DVD's when right in middle of the movie the picture freezes & the picture pixilates into pieces. happens on cable too. I miss those days seeing the message "OOPS THE FILM BROKE".

[Trius]

Pixellation? I see that maybe three times a year when atmospheric conditions reduce the satellite signal to the processing threshold, and I've never seen it on a DVD that I owned. Rented DVDs were another issue, sometimes they were so scratched as to be unplayable for their entire duration. But that's not a fault of the medium.

[fotomeow]

Well, I just bit the bullet and ordered a Panasonic plasma that was on sale at a great price at a local dealer. Should be interesting to pop my SD card straight into the TV for some 50" images! TV will be here later this week.

[Trius]

Hope you like it! I can pop you my settings in a PM if you would like. I used the Spears & Munsi BluRay calibration disc to help with that.

Earl

[Ronny]

Leica Monochrom and B&W TV.
Just kidding.

[MartinP]

Originally Posted by fotomeow

In fact, Paul, the other gents comment was fundamentally inaccurate in the first place.
Why would they presume that the OP doesn't "actually do stuff".
This echoes some other responses implying that people who dont watch TV are intellectually/morally superior.
Its ridiculous.
The thread topic is not the pros and cons of TV or the people who watch them,
but rather the TVs performance in and of itself in the opinion of visually trained amateur and pro RF users.
I am just trying to keep the thread on point.

Ooooo!!! I'm not a gent

I should perhaps have put a smiley after the "instead of doing stuff" bit. I did not mean that anyone watches tv for seven hours a day (or whatever time there is after working, sleeping, bathing etc). For any sane person watching tv and having a life are not mutually exclusive, but it is an activity that takes time out of the already full day. Grading contact-sheets and watching X-Men 97 are probably not best done simultaneously.

The last option on the ballot was "None of the above, why?" - I read this as implying that a photographer is somehow expected to have a television. Why might that be? I was expecting possible answers with reasons including a big tv giving the most cinema-like view to well crafted cinematography, for example. Or some cable-channel with darkroom or digital programming, that sort of thing. But no-one has come up with a reason why photographers specifically would appreciate television in general, though there have been some interesting observations on the technical side of things.

I'll willingly accept that I am weird and anti-social in not watching tv, as I have misinterpreted the whole question.

[CK Dexter Haven]

I have a 58" Samsung plasma.
My sister has LCD. My father recently bought a smaller Samsung 3D LCD or LED(?)..... They're sharp. But, i really dislike it those two technologies. There's something about the LED/LCD rendering that just looks so 'digital.' Plasma is certainly smoother and more 'filmic,' without being 'soft.'

Plasma is it. My set is more than five years old, but i've never seen anything that would lead me to believe "refresh rate" is a significant factor with plasma. And, i watch a ton of sports and 'action.' Maybe that spec is more important with LCD/LED? I dunno.

There's also a pretty significant difference in the source, though. He has Fios, which isn't available to me in NYC (imagine that). Cable is horrible. I can always see artifacts and compression in the picture - some channels or programs are worse than others, but none are as consistently clean as the Fios signal. I know i'm losing a lot of IQ from my plasma, just because of that factor.

Lastly - do not skimp and use component cables. Get HDMI cables for your sources. Big difference. I'm pretty sure you don't need expensive ones, but definitely get them.