[Pete Putman]

After receiving a few emails about this topic I decided to set up an account and log on to read the discussions.

I would be very careful using consumer plasmas in a post suite. Unless Panasonic’s driver and controller designs have changed a lot in the past two years, the gamma performance of consumer models is not nearly as consistent as the pro displays, particularly at the high end of a grayscale. My TH42PZ80U’s brightness control has a dramatic effect on gamma performance, something I’ve never seen on the pro models.

I also wanted to clear up a misconception – plasma monitors are not analog displays (LCDs are). Plasma monitors have two states – on, and off. They use a technique similar to pulse-width modulation to recreate grayscales (weighted on-off cycles) and can run at very high switching rates, easily in excess of 600 Hz.

The issue with 3D plasma displays is phosphor decay during the off cycle. The newest consumer plasmas use a shorter duration phosphor, which I do not believe the 20-series plasmas do.

As for any differences between black levels on 20-series and the VT models, I haven’t measured a significant difference. I did spend some time at VTP back in May measuring a brand-new TH42PF20U and can say that it offers similar black level and contrast performance to an 11-series, with similar color gamut. The gamma settings appeared to be a bit shallower than the 11-series.

It is true that none of these models have color management. No surprise there; they were intended as general purpose digital sign monitors. But my experiments showed that they work very well as reference-grade monitors, provided the dynamic range is set up correctly. Color management for critical applications can be done with the Davio product. For less critical applications, a simple calibration does the trick. The main issue is in the tracking of the blue channel.

As for LCD vs. plasma, I have yet to see any LCD monitor that can achieve the black levels of a plasma monitor. Even the PVML230 series monitors black levels were 3x as high as the average black on a TH42PF11, and the L230 monitors used local area dimmed LEDs.

You can also see higher blacks on the Dolby 42-inch LCD with high dynamic range (the old Brightside Technologies local area dimming system). While that monitor has excellent color accuracy, it does suffer from off-axis contrast flattening. And if you are editing or correcting Scope content viewed with a hard letterbox matte, you will see haloing and light spill over the matte with bright objects. You won’t see that on a plasma monitor.

I would be curious to see to what extent plasma is being adopted into post houses and color correction suites. I’ve done two presentations at VTP so far on using plasma as a reference monitor – is there continued interest in this topic that would warrant additional presentations?