"Commercial" plasma screens the real deal for HT?

The Commercial plasmas tend to have two main differences; Coating; FCC Class A so silver coating is OK. Consumer requires FCC Class B, so a different coating material is used to decrease emissions through the front glass.

Commercial plasmas tend to have BNC connections, a higher grade video true 75 OHM connection as opposed to the RCA connects which are audio actually if you go back to their origins.

There are only three manufacturers of plasma glass and the rest get from these three; the comment above about commercial plasmas being made for still images is incorrect; there is no "still image" glass factory.

And yes those bells and whistles are not present on commercial plasmas. EDTV plasmas are usually better than HD plasmas for 480p DVD source, as one- to one pixel mapping introduces less artifact than upconversion. Thats the big picture so to speak.

Finally an opinion; front projectors are great if you have room and certainly more cinemtaic; however, I really dont find the PQ to be as good as plasma and also moany of the FPs do not have enough lumens to generate the light needed for optimal PQ. Even at CES this year, some manufacturers aimed three FPs at a time to one spot same source just to get the lumens necessary.

1. ISF calibration does not always produce the "best" results. The above post is correct in that a set can be tweaked to "ISF School" perfection, which an individual isnt going to hit exactly. One of the threads on avsforum discusses this in detail, and offers "The steaming rat method" with comments about that vs ISF calibration with someone who has gone in both directions. Sometimes tuned perfection just isnt as appealing as adjusting the set to get a looking through the window real life skin texture type orientation, guided by steps, set up disks etc. Individual mileage may vary, so to speak. The concept that everyone agrees on what looks best obviously isnt true.

2. I have never seen a plasma with motion artifact and there are no differences in the scalers or glass used in commercial vs consumer plasmas with the exception of the coating I mentioned due to FCC classification. Motion artifact has been an inherent problem with Flat Panel LCD displays and is most obvious in sporting events to me. BUT- LCDs have gotten better on this.

There is a thread about burn in at the top of the plasma forum at avsforum.com. A few things;

1. I have had my plasma for over 2 years and I dont see any burn in on my plasma.

2. A set is most vulnerable to burn in during the first hundred hours of use or so ( NOT an exact figure)

3. Leaving up black bars for extended periods of time CAN cause asymetric phosphor wear. I am using that term not because I am taking the SAT soon ( that was 20 years ago), but to stress that uneven phospor wear is the true danger. With black bars, that uneveness is defined as the stuff inside the black bars wears differently than the non-firing pixel black bar areas of the screen. The pixel phosphors have a time to half brightness, or a half life for all of you chemistry guys. With normal viewing, this occurs evenly over time. Constant black bars disrupts this so uneven phosphorescence occurs. Watching movies with bars, which I do frequently, will not cause this. Leaving this up for days on end might. Also, adjustments on the DVD player may change the area of these bars. Or by using the just or zoom mode they can be eliminated entirely. I leave them for movies because thats the way the movie was cut.

If you get this type of problem, use the reverso screen which turns black to white and white to black--kinda like turning jeans inside out before washing them. That can even things up.

After image burn in- a different thing entirely is what you see at the airports where old schedules can be seen on the screen even though the video data is not being actively transmitted as such. If you see this-- DONT FREAK! It is often temporary in the home setting and goes away.

The above poster is talking about the Panasonic wobbler, an anti-burn in feature like he says.

Again- check the master burn in thread at avsforum.com

Mine did too. The better solution is to get BNC native connects on one end and RCA on the other. The free apaptors were 50 OHM instead of the optimal 75 ohm. I have 6 in a drawer somewhere.

Thats pretty much a buy now do not pass go price. I havent seen it that low from authorized resllers ( internet included) but obviously that doesnt include the wall mount or table stand I would suppose.