Last week, while thinking about my nice federal tax refund, a buddy was rushed off to the hospital with heart trouble and I had a “life’s too short” moment of weakness. I bought a flat panel TV for the sun room (calling it that sounds fancier than saying “porch”). Amazon sent me a notice that Panasonic had a deal on a 42-inch plasma HDTV with a free Blu-ray player, and thanks to some Amex reward points it cost me only $470 out of pocket.
The TV arrived, I set it up, made some adjustments, and my initial reaction was quite enthusiastic and positive, but after a while I noticed something odd. Strange yellow-green streaks. Then TCM showed Casablanca and the streaks were everywhere! On the Roku player I looked at portions of more black-and-white movies, and every one of them had raging yellow-green trails to the left of objects and there were blue trails on the right. Even with stationary scenes, all I had to do was move my eyes and I’d see flashing colors. They reminded me of the notorious rainbow effect in single-chip DLP projectors. I did a Google search and learned that the problem is called phosphor lag, and it’s built into every plasma display, as explained at this link.
How could I not have known about this?? I keep up with most of the tech sites and blogs, I watch Tekzilla and its HD Nation segments, etc., and I thought I knew all of the advantages and disadvantages of plasma vs. lcd/ccfl vs. lcd/led, but obviously I didn’t. Consumer Reports warns about DLP rainbows, but says nothing about plasma lag, so I added a comment about it on their Web site. Maybe it’s true that the effect is seen by only 1% of people, but to me it’s so relentlessly bothersome that black-and-white material simply isn’t watchable, and I watch a lot of stuff in black-and-white.
I’ve never returned anything to Amazon before, and when I called them I was pleased they immediately agreed to take the set back and pay for shipping. I’m waiting for the freight company that dropped it off to call and arrange a pickup. Once it’s been returned to the warehouse and my money has been refunded, I’ll look into getting a 40-inch LCD HDTV.
bummer.