So… been checking ‘the scene’ re: flatscreen-TV’s, speaking to experts, engineers, old TV repairmen.

One engineer still uses one of the last Sony Trinitron CRT’s as a reference. Result? Only plasma comes close to the best CRT ever sold.
“Forget the numbers, look at the picture. Not a few of the numbers touted by sales-folk and the brochures are too slight for the human eye and brain to see. That 42″ plasma with ‘only’ 720 resolution in the vertical-plane you are undecided about? At 3 metres viewing-distance, at your age, you physically can’t see the difference to a 1080 HD resolution whilst watching TV, you’ll likely only notice a slight difference if you run a blueray DVD. It is NOT worth paying twice the price for that slight, occasional, difference a genuine HD TV will give you. CRT’s disappeared because they couldn’t physically make the ever-bigger screens the market demanded, not because the picture quality was inferior to plasma and LCD. I’d just love to see someone develop a new CRT screen using the technology we have today, laser-etching the mask on the screen, for example, I’m sure we could make higher-than HD-standard resolution 16:9 widescreens in glass, albeit only in small-screen format, with a dozen laser-guns each lighting-up a segment of the screen, allowing us to make a screen almost as a flat as we now have, maybe we could go as far as 600Hz refresh – it depends on how fast each ‘colour-spot’ can lose it’s glow and go dark again. NO plasma or LCD would get close! Plasma is superior to LCD, even a LED one, don’t believe the plasma is on the way out, that’s sales-hype, there are new plasma ‘bulbs’ being developed, brighter, faster, and using less current to drive them. Over 40″ even LED-LCD’s use nearly as much current as a good plasma, the backlighting current goes up exponentionally for every inch of screen, not linearly. If these new plasmas DO use less current than before the large-screen LCD can be the one that disappears from the stores, NOT the plasmas! But whatever type you buy use good connections, peripherals (VCR/DVD/cables/aerials) the adage is ‘crap in-crap out’.”

So, I might be buying that Panasonic TX-P42X10Y after all. The cost of the doubled-power consumption can be allayed by switching-off at the main plug ever night, to save the 43W all my units on standby are costing me, and defrosting the fridge twice as often.

I’d have you know the plasmas are 600Hz, meaning 5 times faster and contrast ratio on the Pioneer is 1,000,000-2,000,000 to 1.