Some strange rez Hitachi Plasma $750 AR

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wasupdog

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http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_...eyword=hitachi&sid=I0084400010000100383&aff=Y

42" hitachi plasma that gets good consumer and also pretty good av guide reviews. there is a full thread on slickdeals going on right now for all of the gory details about what rez it does and doesn't display due to hitachi's proprietary/weird chip up and downsampling technology. it's advertised as HD1080 supposedly as the equivalent of 1080p but it is not a true 1080p. from what i can gather, it's not a 1080p but nonetheless all of the consumer and pro reviews are positive, and those are mostly from the ppl that paid around $1300-1400 and from the pro review standpoint that this would retail for around $1700 or so, so for $750 i would say this is a deal. one of the pro reviews on slickdeals states that you don't need 1080p for plasmas unless they are 50" or greater cus u probably wouldn't notice the difference. personally, i don't know enough about this topic to state whether this is true or not.

at sears it is $899 and if u use a sears card there is a mail in $150 rebate. i'm debating whether i should jump on this or wait to get the cheapest nice quality 50" lcd panny which goes for double this price currently.

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=624623
 
It says 1280x1080.

Which is essentially a little better than 1080i (which is 1920x540). If you don't plan on using it as a desktop monitor, and the contrast ratios are right, then this is a very good deal.
 
javisaman said:
It says 1280x1080.

Which is essentially a little better than 1080i (which is 1920x540). If you don't plan on using it as a desktop monitor, and the contrast ratios are right, then this is a very good deal.
Click to expand...

1080i is still 1920x1080 however one frame draws 1/2 the lines, and the other frame draws the rest.

It is called interlacing.
 
so do plasmas still have burn in issues? if i used this as a monitor for my htpc would it burn in the taskbar? and how are plasmas for sdtv?
 
Spazilton said:
1080i is still 1920x1080 however one frame draws 1/2 the lines, and the other frame draws the rest.

It is called interlacing.
Click to expand...

1080i only exists as a native resolution on CRTs. What you just described is the 1080i format itself, not the resolution of the plasmas / LCDs screens. Most "1080i" displays are 1280x720 or 1024x768 but prefer to advertise themselves as "1080 HD" because most consumers don't notice that little i/p in the specs.
 
mnewxcv said:
so do plasmas still have burn in issues? if i used this as a monitor for my htpc would it burn in the taskbar? and how are plasmas for sdtv?
Click to expand...

Yes the do, to various degrees. I have 9 month old HP Plasma (42") and I can definitely see side bars from watching SD programs prevalently for few hours a day. Since the SD signal generates thick black frames on both sides of picture, any true wide screen signal has these regions much brighter than the rest of picture.

I would not buy plasma again seeing that modern LCD panels are close/identical in PQ department and don't have any burn problems like plasmas do.
 
a few clarifications about 1080i. Like MasterTactician said, it exists natively only on CRT TVs, and in that case it is not 1920x1080, it ends up being roughly 1500x540p because of limitations in ATSC & interconnect bandwidth, digital tv codecs, and the tv itself (signal processing, phosphor pitch, beam width, optics...).

On a fixed-resolution display, 1080i can mean anything that isn't full 1920x1080p, including:
1024x768p, 1365x768p, 1280x720p, 1024x720p, 1024x1024p, 1024x1080p and 1280x1080p (that's basically every resolution you'll find out there in flat-panel TVs under 1920x1080p).

The 'beauty' of Hitachi's resolution is that depending on the input, you're only doing difficult scaling on one axis. 1024x768, 1920x1080p, 1280x720p (simple 3:2) and 1080i, will all look pretty good.
 
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