forget about CRTs...

[Kremlar]

I have an old 42" commercial Panasonic plasma that I absolutely love. It's only 480p, but the picture is just great - not as sharp as the latest LCDs but it just has a certain depth about it that I've always liked.

I've had this plasma for 10+ years - my first flat panel display. Bought it without speakers but added them after. It's been solid as a rock for me, most recently installed in my master bedroom.

Decided to get a Fire TV Stick for my master bedroom but the plasma does not have HDMI. Funny how a $35 purchase can trigger a $500 purchase. So, I replaced my trusty old plasma with a new Insignia 55".

Anyway, I always though the Panasonic plasma would rock as a display for my old Commodore/Amiga stuff and I was right! Brought it down to my basement home/office and mounted it to the wall. Tested with my C64 (composite), Amiga 600 and also my Amiga 4000T (RGB > VGA and also RGB > VGA > BNC) and the display performs great. There's also an NTSC/PAL switch in the menu options but I haven't tested PAL. All Amiga modes I tried seem good.

My model has VGA, composite/svideo and BNC which is switchable from RGB to component. I believe there's a DVI card available as well but I never owned one.

Anyway, I love it and would definitely choose this over an old CRT or new LCD for a low res retro display. My model is a 42PWD6UY but I'm sure there are others in this series that would perform just as well.

It doesn't do the picture justice, but here are a couple of pics:

http://www.techav.com/misc/retro/plasma1.jpg

http://www.techav.com/misc/retro/plasma2.jpg

http://www.techav.com/misc/retro/plasma3.jpg

http://www.techav.com/misc/retro/plasma4.jpg

http://www.techav.com/misc/retro/plasma5.jpg

http://www.techav.com/misc/retro/plasma6.jpg

The C64 and Amiga Workbench pics show a pattern on the screen but it's not there in person - image is very smooth.

I thought this was worth sharing so cross-posted to a few different forums.

[Rhomaios]

I had a 30 something inch LCD Samsung with S-video support (it came out ca. 2008), and I thought all the retro stuff looked great on it: NES, 7800, Genesis. It wasn't the best at polygons, so the N64 was a little pixelated, and it didn't handle last gen stuff either (i.e. PS2/Xbox), but retro looked gorgeous. It died last year, and after going back to CRTs, I can never do LCD again. So the modern stuff doesn't look great. I'm OK with that, because the stuff before the PS2 all look phenomenal. Even better than the LCD. Plus, I can play light gun games on it, and s-video is everywhere. Not so with modern TVs. I just can't do this modern thing anymore.

 

I will hand it to you that the plasma looks great with the computers. Very crisp look.

[Keatah]

I lost patience with tweaking and tuning CRTs sometime back in the 2005-2006 epoch. And I would have none other than a modern LCD (or OLED when they perfect it) for my gaming and simulation purposes.

 

Resistance to burn-in and geometry/color consistency are the trump cards. When the software says to illuminate pixel 447x971 78,34,200 it does so. Today, and 2 years later, exactly. No drift, no errors. I suppose a plasma would fit the bill for all my needs except simulation and desktop, there are too many static images in those applications.

[Kremlar]

 

 

I lost patience with tweaking and tuning CRTs sometime back in the 2005-2006 epoch. And I would have none other than a modern LCD (or OLED when they perfect it) for my gaming and simulation purposes.

 

True. While a good CRT has upsides it has many downsides as well. I buddy of mine who is huge into home theater stuck with a CRT front projector for quite a while because, while the LCD and DLP projectors had many upsides, he was obsessed with the downsides compared to his CRT. Now that he finally moved to LCD/DLP I don't think he could ever go back. Although the LCDs/DLPs didn't have the black level his CRT had, the brightness, geometry and resolution blew the CRT away. There's comfort in what you are familiar with I guess.

[7800fan]

I have a 32" VIZIO LCD that has worked well for me. 2011 I think, one of the last models that still had S-Video. It also has VGA port for my DC and component plus 2 HDMI and composite (separate channel from S-Video, some cheap TV shares composite and S-Video and doesn't play nice)

 

It also remembers 4:3 and 16:9 setting on each of the input so I have 4:3 always on composite and S-Video plus VGA while leaving 16:9 for RF in and HDMI from my BD player.

 

Haven't seen any LCD TV with S-Video or VGA lately and many don't even have composite either, leaving just HDMI, component, and RF (digital only), I wouldn't be surprised if component goes away in the next few years since those big cheese behind BD standard has mandated no more component on BD players and DVD player are becoming scare.

[motrucker]

I have a 32" VIZIO LCD that has worked well for me. 2011 I think, one of the last models that still had S-Video. It also has VGA port for my DC and component plus 2 HDMI and composite (separate channel from S-Video, some cheap TV shares composite and S-Video and doesn't play nice)

 

It also remembers 4:3 and 16:9 setting on each of the input so I have 4:3 always on composite and S-Video plus VGA while leaving 16:9 for RF in and HDMI from my BD player.

 

Haven't seen any LCD TV with S-Video or VGA lately and many don't even have composite either, leaving just HDMI, component, and RF (digital only), I wouldn't be surprised if component goes away in the next few years since those big cheese behind BD standard has mandated no more component on BD players and DVD player are becoming scare.

I have a 32" AOC LED monitor that I originally bought for my PC. I have since tried it with my older computers and game machines, with mixed results. I have gone back to a Commodore 1080 CRT monitor for the C-64, but I use the AOC for most other machines, including the C-128 (with an added card).