So from what I'm reading plasma are better TVs. However they use more energy. I also cant put them in a well lit room.
I feel like I type this every other week one of these threads pop up. Search much? I have a 70" Plasma in the living room, 65" in the bedroom. 55" LED in the office and 46" LCD in the guest bedroom along with a new 37" LED in the master bath. By far, I like my LED the most. Once you get the settings right (to where it doesn't look real life, or the "Soap Opera" look), it just blows away all other TV's imo. All of mine are Samsung. I would love to put the LED in the den, but since we have surround sound built into the roof and walls it's too much of a pain in the ass to move. I don't game or anything, but Blue Rays just explode on the LED's, and the viewing angles are awesome, unlike the Plasma. I love them all, but if I had to pick one it would be LED.
I have a LG 3D 55 LED. I fell in love with the "soap opera" look the moment I laid eyes on it. It looks like I'm watching a live shoot of the movie. Simply marvelous. I can see the actors pores, wrinkles, drops of sweat, finger prints, and every little strand of hair etc. I popped in a DVD just to compare, and the picture is dull, grainy and washed out. You can't see all the fine details like you would with a blu ray. Very happy with my tv and blu ray, I'll never go back to DVD.
Nobody can tell you how long your TV is going to last. I have a 7 year old Hitachi plasma that's still running strong, a 27" ProScan CRT that died after 6 years, a 26" Olevia LCD, that's running strong after about 6 years, a Vizio 26" LCD that croaked after maybe 4-5 years and was just replaced by a Samsung 26" LED a bit over a month or so ago. My parents had a 46" Samsung LCD die on them after about 2-3 years and they replaced it with a 46" LG LCD. Plasmas do tend to lose their "brilliance" or "pop" as time goes on, but it's a gradual change - at least this used to be the case - I'm guessing it still is. Do your own research instead of relying on salespeople that are out to sell merchandise. Not all plasmas are better than LCD's/LED's and not all LCD's/LED's are better than plasmas. There are some LCD's that put out better picture than LED's. There are different kinds of LED's : edge-lit with and without local dimming, full-array with and without local dimming, etc. Many of these are actually worse than LCD's, while others blow it away. Then again an LED is nothing more than an LCD that uses LED's to "light up" the image, so you're really comparing LCD with LCD. As for energy usage, generally-speaking, an LCD-LED TV will use less energy than a plasma. Over the course of a year, and under "normal" settings and usage on the tv's, we're talking about a savings of about $20-$100 per year. But on the other hand, there are several LCD's that'll run you more per year than plasmas do. Again, this was the case when I researched this about a year or two ago. The whole TV industry is a joke of buzz words and nonsense nomenclature for the most part with people running up to grab the latest "higher number" technology or the latest acronym/abbreviation they decide to throw at you. They do it because they need to sell tv's to you at a faster rate than once every decade to be somewhat profitable.
My roommate watched terrible USA shows. He paused one on my plasma... now I see USA in the bottom right corner all the time. Other than that, I love my plasma. I've had it since 07. Only problem is sometimes when I turn on a movie, I have to let it warm up or you get a bunch of green little dots in the dark black areas.
I bought a Samsung Plasma 50 inch in Dec. 2008 and i like it. It is still a great picture. True blacks. Biggest drawback IMO is that they get hot and can make the room temperature a couple of degrees hotter than you want them to be.
