SD Plasmas vs HD Plasmas

[Ant]

I am very confused at the moment as to whether to buy a SD or a HD
plasma. Certainly several of the posts that I have read in this forum
state one or the other,

Granted SD plasmas are cheaper than HD plasmas but can anyone answer
some questions for me and please excuse my lack of knowledge in this
area.

1. I recently went a saw the SD Fujitsu and it looked great even when
a HD broadcast was running. My question, will a HD broadcast still be
able to be viewed on a SD set and will there be a big difference? By
big difference I mean will the picture still be clear and watchable.

2. HD sets cost more than SD. If I were to buy a SD set which one(s)
are the best.

3. What is the lifespan of a plasma. I've heard that they are now
60,000 hours?

Thanks

[loudtalker]

Yes. Most SD panels can display a HD input, if not all of them, although it will be scaled back internally to the native resolution of the panel(SD).
In terms of good SD panels, The Fuji is a great panel, and I really like the Marantz 4220V. Stick to a Japanese built set and you shouldn't have to many problems.

But to throw a real spanner in the works, here is my reasoning why a HD panel is still better. All SD panels on the Australian market are NTSC based panels, with a resolution of 480 vertical lines. Seeing that our digital television broadcasts are a minimum of 576 vertical lines, you are throwing away roughly 20% of the picture to begin with. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Although its true that there is much more image interpolation done in a HD panel, its doens very well by the most of them, so the scaling isn't really an issue (and if it is, then a get an external scaler to scale the image to the plasmas native resolution).

Plasma lifespan is not a huge issue. Its a phosphor based product, meaning that just like a regular television, it will lose its intensity over time. The 60,000 hr figure is one that commonly quoted, but no-one really mentions that its a half-life. the set will last a lot longer, but thats how long it takes be lose half the intensity of its brightness. after 120,000hrs, its down another half to a quarter of its original light output. to give a rough indication, 60,000 hrs is equivalent to 20 years at 8hrs a day, or 8 odd years running non-stop. given that most people upgrade their televisions every 6-8 years (and that figure is shrinking...), there's no great cause for concern. what is of concern is build quality however. I've only ever worked with Japanese built plasma panels, and they have been extremely reliable. far more reliable than certain European tubed televisions I shan't mention by name.

[mclaren]

I thought this was going to turn out to be another stupid debate with no win arguments from many sides about SD vs HD as they always are but loudtalker could not have been said any better . Youve summed it perfectly mate .

And to cut out allot of crap , if your happy with the picture you see either SD or HD , just buy it . Some are happy with a Ford others are happy with a Merc , just stick with value for money .

[Arcadia]

i was reading here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=415792, this guy reckons he did some calculations, and pal is really only 430 lines and ntsc 360, and so pal scales better to 480 native resolution.