What TV For a Bright Room?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Do I want LCD or Plasma for a really bright bedroom. Looking at a 40’ set.

Thanks

2

LCD is typically better when you can’t reduce/control the ambient light.

3

I just picked up a 50" plasma(P S1). I have it placed near a window, with the window light shooting across the face of the tv. My previous tv, a 27" CRT, had horrendous glare during daylight hours.

I also read during my HDtv research that plasmas, even though being better tvs overall, suffered more than LCD in well lit conditions. Imagine my surprise to see much less glare on this tv than on my CRT. In fact, all the curtain/blind improvements I was planning on for this HD are on the backburner now. It hardly seems necessary.

I’ll know more Sunday when I watch football. But today I had about an hour of pre-sunset light and no problems.

4

Seconding Ryan’s post. I like the look of plasma over LCD generally but I’ve never bought a plasma because they reflect light like crazy and it drives me bonkers.

5

Plasma is great as long as you can avoid direct light, so a room on the northeast side of the house is often suitable. I’ll take a plasma over LCD any day, given an ideal setting…it’s just really hard to get an ideal setting for plasma unless your house is laid out ideally or you’re building a media room.

7

People complain because it is, objectively, worse than an LCD in bright conditions. Comparisons to CRT’s seem irrelevant, given that no one buys CRT’s anymore.

If the original poster’s “really bright” bedroom means a fair amount of light, the LCD (with matte screen, good contrast and brightness characteristics) will be much better than a plasma.

For pure picture quality issues (color, motion, black levels) plasmas tend to be superior.

8

I compared to a CRT for a couple of reasons:

  1. That’s my direct experience
  2. I have no idea what the original poster is migrating from, it could very well be a CRT for all we know
  3. Since he’s asking which to choose, I assume he has no direct experience with plasma or LCD, otherwise he’d be able to answer his own question(he’d know if an LCD could handle the amount of light for example)
9

If it’s really bright, perhaps you should consider sleeping in a different room.

10

Thanks for tips. Just to clarify, this is a tv for the bedroom with gets a lot of direct sunlight. Since its the bedroom though I’ll mostly be watching in the mornings or evenings so it’s not as bad as it could be. I have an LCD in my main living room and have never had problems but it’s a fairly dark room on the opposite side of the house.

Thanks again.