Hi Guys,
Iam sure most of you guys interested in plasma are into buying either of the above or the Panasonic C10/X10.
I have already done a LG vs Panasonic comparison which I demoed in the showroom.
This review is between my LG PQ60 and addagalla's Samsung B450.
My Setup:
Hathway cable with Humax Set top Box - Hyderabad scheme.
Laptop with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, SD Divx videos, HD Mkvs and 1080p wall papers.
Addagalla's setup:
TATA Sky connection normal set top box without component.
The Laptop I took with me (fortunately had it in hand while returning from office)
The Demo took place within 20 minutes and is fairly accurate.
Observations:
Cable:
TATA Sky is far better than the Hathway connection I have!
The comparison is pointless. The Sky scales very well beyond 32" which is what I think is the limit to the hathway hyderabad.
My hathway signal shows 80% quality and 70% strength. The same signal looked much better with my 29" CRT. Now this is going to dustbin next month.
The only two channels which looked better in my connection was NDTV Lumire and Kalaingar TV.. Lumire was absent in TATA sky and kalaingar TV was not as good as hathway.. TATA Sky beats all other channels hands down..
The reason Iam not attributing this to TV is because, with the same TATA sky source, It is really hard for the LG to screw-up the picture this hard as the picture with my hathway cable.
Noise is minimal in both these machines compared to panasonics.
SD:
SD movies connected with PC to samsung was great. Black levels are comparable to panasonics. White levels, still LG has an edge. Overall contrast level is same due to that. The difference is, In a completely dark room, You will find the TV not blending with the surroundings. Not to confuse.., the black levels of LG is still much better than LCDs.
In the scaling department, LG seems to have a slight edge. Really pathetic 700mb Divx files looked slightly better in the LG in terms of smoothness.
SD Image engine looked almost same in the machines. Both better than the panasonic engine for SD handling IMO.
Gamma behaves the same way in boh TVs. High gamma results in better scenes in bright scenes and not so good picture in dark scenes. Low/Meduin gamma is ideal.
HD:
Black level is the distinguishning factor again.
Shadow details are same.
In some scenes both in SD and HD, I saw high colour saturation with "movie" mode in samsung. addagalla seems to like it that way but "standard" looked more natural to me.
Also the black contents are too much in some scenes. This could be because of the settings I had in the player optimised for LG.
I saw (from 4 feet) that some TATA sky scenes had edge sharpening attempt by the TV clearly visible. Looked better from normal viewing distance though.
Sound:
LG here. The samsung definitely needs an external speaker set. One of the worst I heard even in flat panel speakers.
Image Retention:
adda claims that he could not see any visible IR. I did not run any screen long enough for an IR so cannot comment. Actually you cannot see the temporary IR without hunting for it.
PQ60 had it for the first 2 months and now it is greatly reduced.
Scaling:
The very brief demo looked like LG had an edge in scaling. No confirmation here.
Others:
TATA sky has a notorious delay when changing channels. Takes 3 seconds at times. A blue screen comes for those 3 seconds.
The Black level difference make a difference to picture. Not at the level of LCDs vs Plasmas, But it does make a difference. It will be pronounced when you see the TVs side by side at home. You won't miss a lot with LG but.
Keep this is mind when finalising. For some this can be a dealbreaker but for some it is just another feature miss.
The granularity of the Brightness/Colour/Contrast etc are not lineaar in the LG for some reason (The volume too is nt lenear!). What it means is, while a contrast of 100 in LG and Samsung are same, 50 is not same. the LG sheds out a lot of contrast between 100 and 70 itself and very slowly after that. It means, a samsung at 50% contrast is same as LG with 60%.
Humming noise in samsung. It was not happening at the time I was doing the demo, so cannot comment. But with a bad speaker, it could be
The USB Picture/Music playback is an excellent feature in LG. The picture playback is the most useful. Slideshow, fwd, backward etc can be controlled by remote.
The USB movie playback has limited functionality. You cannot change the aspect ratio or picture settings. So this will become useful only after 3-4 months of use. It plays only SD.
The USB playback while very handy should not be the deciding factor. have a look at both the TVs, Convince yourself that you can compromise a bit of black level for USB and some savings and then jump in.
Glare:
No glare in both in home environment (period). You can just forget this aspect in the showroom. There is a bit of glare only when the TV is switched off.
Conclusion:
Not much other than the already defined guideline.
Samsung for black levels.
LG for Menu, White Levels, USB, sound.
Almost same in SD image engine, Colour, contrast, HD picture reproduction.
The DNie and XD are equally bad and better kept in 'off'.
B450 actually compares to PQ30 in features and look (even misses an USB port of the PQ30) and costs ~6k more than PQ30. Your decision should depend on If the enhanced black level means this much to you. You will also need an external speaker and a DVD player adding to the cost.
If you already have external speakers and an upscaling DVD player, you are probably not going to use the extra features the LG has to offer and samsung is a no brainer.
Will post high resolution pictures of my TV with Hathway on monday evening.
Iam sure most of you guys interested in plasma are into buying either of the above or the Panasonic C10/X10.
I have already done a LG vs Panasonic comparison which I demoed in the showroom.
This review is between my LG PQ60 and addagalla's Samsung B450.
My Setup:
Hathway cable with Humax Set top Box - Hyderabad scheme.
Laptop with Media Player Classic Home Cinema, SD Divx videos, HD Mkvs and 1080p wall papers.
Addagalla's setup:
TATA Sky connection normal set top box without component.
The Laptop I took with me (fortunately had it in hand while returning from office)
The Demo took place within 20 minutes and is fairly accurate.
Observations:
Cable:
TATA Sky is far better than the Hathway connection I have!
The comparison is pointless. The Sky scales very well beyond 32" which is what I think is the limit to the hathway hyderabad.
My hathway signal shows 80% quality and 70% strength. The same signal looked much better with my 29" CRT. Now this is going to dustbin next month.
The only two channels which looked better in my connection was NDTV Lumire and Kalaingar TV.. Lumire was absent in TATA sky and kalaingar TV was not as good as hathway.. TATA Sky beats all other channels hands down..
The reason Iam not attributing this to TV is because, with the same TATA sky source, It is really hard for the LG to screw-up the picture this hard as the picture with my hathway cable.
Noise is minimal in both these machines compared to panasonics.
SD:
SD movies connected with PC to samsung was great. Black levels are comparable to panasonics. White levels, still LG has an edge. Overall contrast level is same due to that. The difference is, In a completely dark room, You will find the TV not blending with the surroundings. Not to confuse.., the black levels of LG is still much better than LCDs.
In the scaling department, LG seems to have a slight edge. Really pathetic 700mb Divx files looked slightly better in the LG in terms of smoothness.
SD Image engine looked almost same in the machines. Both better than the panasonic engine for SD handling IMO.
Gamma behaves the same way in boh TVs. High gamma results in better scenes in bright scenes and not so good picture in dark scenes. Low/Meduin gamma is ideal.
HD:
Black level is the distinguishning factor again.
Shadow details are same.
In some scenes both in SD and HD, I saw high colour saturation with "movie" mode in samsung. addagalla seems to like it that way but "standard" looked more natural to me.
Also the black contents are too much in some scenes. This could be because of the settings I had in the player optimised for LG.
I saw (from 4 feet) that some TATA sky scenes had edge sharpening attempt by the TV clearly visible. Looked better from normal viewing distance though.
Sound:
LG here. The samsung definitely needs an external speaker set. One of the worst I heard even in flat panel speakers.
Image Retention:
adda claims that he could not see any visible IR. I did not run any screen long enough for an IR so cannot comment. Actually you cannot see the temporary IR without hunting for it.
PQ60 had it for the first 2 months and now it is greatly reduced.
Scaling:
The very brief demo looked like LG had an edge in scaling. No confirmation here.
Others:
TATA sky has a notorious delay when changing channels. Takes 3 seconds at times. A blue screen comes for those 3 seconds.
The Black level difference make a difference to picture. Not at the level of LCDs vs Plasmas, But it does make a difference. It will be pronounced when you see the TVs side by side at home. You won't miss a lot with LG but.
Keep this is mind when finalising. For some this can be a dealbreaker but for some it is just another feature miss.
The granularity of the Brightness/Colour/Contrast etc are not lineaar in the LG for some reason (The volume too is nt lenear!). What it means is, while a contrast of 100 in LG and Samsung are same, 50 is not same. the LG sheds out a lot of contrast between 100 and 70 itself and very slowly after that. It means, a samsung at 50% contrast is same as LG with 60%.
Humming noise in samsung. It was not happening at the time I was doing the demo, so cannot comment. But with a bad speaker, it could be
The USB Picture/Music playback is an excellent feature in LG. The picture playback is the most useful. Slideshow, fwd, backward etc can be controlled by remote.
The USB movie playback has limited functionality. You cannot change the aspect ratio or picture settings. So this will become useful only after 3-4 months of use. It plays only SD.
The USB playback while very handy should not be the deciding factor. have a look at both the TVs, Convince yourself that you can compromise a bit of black level for USB and some savings and then jump in.
Glare:
No glare in both in home environment (period). You can just forget this aspect in the showroom. There is a bit of glare only when the TV is switched off.
Conclusion:
Not much other than the already defined guideline.
Samsung for black levels.
LG for Menu, White Levels, USB, sound.
Almost same in SD image engine, Colour, contrast, HD picture reproduction.
The DNie and XD are equally bad and better kept in 'off'.
B450 actually compares to PQ30 in features and look (even misses an USB port of the PQ30) and costs ~6k more than PQ30. Your decision should depend on If the enhanced black level means this much to you. You will also need an external speaker and a DVD player adding to the cost.
If you already have external speakers and an upscaling DVD player, you are probably not going to use the extra features the LG has to offer and samsung is a no brainer.
Will post high resolution pictures of my TV with Hathway on monday evening.
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