The AI-generated cat pictures thread
#8851
Boost Pope
iTrader: (8)
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Chicago. (The less-murder part.)
Posts: 33,039
Total Cats: 6,604
I'm confused.
Both the "Viera" brand and the "G20" designation appear to cover both Plasma and LCD models, however they only seem to have plasmas currently available at the 55" and up class. I'd be looking specifically for something in the 55-60" range, if I were in fact looking for a new TV, which I'm not.
I've never been a huge fan of plasma displays. Granted, I used to have one on my desk at work (I think it was a 25" or so in 4:3), but that was before big LCDs were practical, and only because I was able to "liberate" it from the leftover demo stock of a vendor we'd parted ways with. It worked very well for AutoCAD and large spreadsheets.
In the context of a television set, every plasma display I have ever seen had phenomenally good black levels, vivid color saturation, great contrast, impressive response time, and horrid color / motion artifacts.
If you feed it a SD analog signal (or a digital recording of a SD signal), then you get all sorts of blocking artifacts anywhere there's fuzz or analog noise.
If you feed it a perfectly clear 1080p signal over HDMI, then you get ringing artifacts around high-contrast edges, and really weird color artifacts across areas of smooth color gradient, which remind me of a cross between composite dot-crawl and what happens when you store a photograph (or any other image with a large color space and lots of gradual shaded transitions) as a 256 color .GIF file.
LCDs, by comparison, seem to have improved a lot over the years. It's actually been a while since I paid close attention to one, despite the fact that I've stayed in quite a lot of hotels that had them. I don't find them nearly as offensive, really. The LED-based units that support localized dimming seem like they'd do well to ameliorate one of the biggest deficiencies of LCD technology (you can have good blacks or bright colors, but not both) though as I said, I've not really taken the time to really hyper-analyze them.
One thing which I have noticed a lot of, especially in store displays I've happened to walk past, is that a lot of sets seem to be doing some magic frame-doubling (eg, upscaling to 120Hz, 240Hz, etc) in an attempt to make everything look like a live football game on ESPN-HD. I find this nauseating, personally.
The biggest deciding factor, however, is what the picture looks like when fed a non-optimal signal. A lot of what I tend to watch originated on film in the 1970s / 80s, was indifferently telecined onto 1" type-C videotape (analog composite) in the 1990s, transferred onto a DVD in the '00s, and then squashed into a low-bitrate codec (eg, DiVX) by some teenager in his mom's basement.
The real charm of a purely analog display technology (such as the three-CRT rear-projector which I have now) is that it doesn't try to perform any kind of rescaling / compensation / enhancement / etc on the incoming source at all, and thus displays this sort of signal with ease, introducing no artifacts at all along the way. The worst thing it's ever done is have a little bit of upward flagging in the upper-right corner of the red gun, and now that the TV is installed in a new home with the screen facing southwest, even that seems to have gone away.
Quod habet fistulae est optimum qualitas!
*propono imaginem simulatis
Both the "Viera" brand and the "G20" designation appear to cover both Plasma and LCD models, however they only seem to have plasmas currently available at the 55" and up class. I'd be looking specifically for something in the 55-60" range, if I were in fact looking for a new TV, which I'm not.
I've never been a huge fan of plasma displays. Granted, I used to have one on my desk at work (I think it was a 25" or so in 4:3), but that was before big LCDs were practical, and only because I was able to "liberate" it from the leftover demo stock of a vendor we'd parted ways with. It worked very well for AutoCAD and large spreadsheets.
In the context of a television set, every plasma display I have ever seen had phenomenally good black levels, vivid color saturation, great contrast, impressive response time, and horrid color / motion artifacts.
If you feed it a SD analog signal (or a digital recording of a SD signal), then you get all sorts of blocking artifacts anywhere there's fuzz or analog noise.
If you feed it a perfectly clear 1080p signal over HDMI, then you get ringing artifacts around high-contrast edges, and really weird color artifacts across areas of smooth color gradient, which remind me of a cross between composite dot-crawl and what happens when you store a photograph (or any other image with a large color space and lots of gradual shaded transitions) as a 256 color .GIF file.
LCDs, by comparison, seem to have improved a lot over the years. It's actually been a while since I paid close attention to one, despite the fact that I've stayed in quite a lot of hotels that had them. I don't find them nearly as offensive, really. The LED-based units that support localized dimming seem like they'd do well to ameliorate one of the biggest deficiencies of LCD technology (you can have good blacks or bright colors, but not both) though as I said, I've not really taken the time to really hyper-analyze them.
One thing which I have noticed a lot of, especially in store displays I've happened to walk past, is that a lot of sets seem to be doing some magic frame-doubling (eg, upscaling to 120Hz, 240Hz, etc) in an attempt to make everything look like a live football game on ESPN-HD. I find this nauseating, personally.
The biggest deciding factor, however, is what the picture looks like when fed a non-optimal signal. A lot of what I tend to watch originated on film in the 1970s / 80s, was indifferently telecined onto 1" type-C videotape (analog composite) in the 1990s, transferred onto a DVD in the '00s, and then squashed into a low-bitrate codec (eg, DiVX) by some teenager in his mom's basement.
The real charm of a purely analog display technology (such as the three-CRT rear-projector which I have now) is that it doesn't try to perform any kind of rescaling / compensation / enhancement / etc on the incoming source at all, and thus displays this sort of signal with ease, introducing no artifacts at all along the way. The worst thing it's ever done is have a little bit of upward flagging in the upper-right corner of the red gun, and now that the TV is installed in a new home with the screen facing southwest, even that seems to have gone away.
Quod habet fistulae est optimum qualitas!
*propono imaginem simulatis
#8852
Elite Member
iTrader: (9)
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chesterfield, NJ
Posts: 6,898
Total Cats: 399
EDIT: nevermind, I'll google it at home, firearm sites are blocked here at work anyway. Arsenal.
I have my paperwork to get my permits for my first firearm here, hopefully I'll have enough time this Friday to stop by the local PD and turn them in. I want a 1911.
#8853
Boost Pope
iTrader: (8)
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Chicago. (The less-murder part.)
Posts: 33,039
Total Cats: 6,604
An addendum to my above rant:
Why is there such a massive difference in display quality between plasma TVs and LCD TVs? I understand the differences in things like black level, contrast, saturation, and whatnot (all static parameters) but why do they seem to exhibit such wildly different dynamic artifacts in response to noise, color gradients, fog/smoke, etc? Both are fixed-resolution technologies, so shouldn't the DSP algorithms doing the rescaling, motion-compensation and so on be fundamentally the same?
Is this for concealed-carry, or just to own any gun in general?
Judging from the engraving on the slide, I'd say that it's an Arsenal Firearms model AF2011-A1. http://www.arsenalfirearms.com/produ...-barrel-pistol
Why is there such a massive difference in display quality between plasma TVs and LCD TVs? I understand the differences in things like black level, contrast, saturation, and whatnot (all static parameters) but why do they seem to exhibit such wildly different dynamic artifacts in response to noise, color gradients, fog/smoke, etc? Both are fixed-resolution technologies, so shouldn't the DSP algorithms doing the rescaling, motion-compensation and so on be fundamentally the same?
#8854
Elite Member
iTrader: (9)
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chesterfield, NJ
Posts: 6,898
Total Cats: 399
I live in NJ. It's to "own any gun in general", I just like the look of the 1911. But I drive a miata so I'd probably buy it in 9mm.
Ahh cool, that site isn't blocked. Thanks!
EDIT again: I wonder how difficult it would be to take two rock island 1911's and weld them bitches together. I'm decent with a Tig. muahaha. Dumb. Awesome.
Judging from the engraving on the slide, I'd say that it's an Arsenal Firearms model AF2011-A1. http://www.arsenalfirearms.com/produ...-barrel-pistol
EDIT again: I wonder how difficult it would be to take two rock island 1911's and weld them bitches together. I'm decent with a Tig. muahaha. Dumb. Awesome.
#8855
Elite Member
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Posts: 3,214
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Yes, I do mean the plasma. Try 600 Hz. And none of the LCD latency.
My most accurate yardstick for a proper display system is a) the goal kick and b) medium range free kicks during a soccer match.
If you can see the ball sail perfectly, you're good. LCD tvs sometimes have trouble, you see a blurred line, or certain frames may hang.
On the other hand, it's cool to see the ball distort when the goalie punches it after a corner kick.
Oh, the G20 Plasma only uses something like 128 watts.. That's another plus.
My most accurate yardstick for a proper display system is a) the goal kick and b) medium range free kicks during a soccer match.
If you can see the ball sail perfectly, you're good. LCD tvs sometimes have trouble, you see a blurred line, or certain frames may hang.
On the other hand, it's cool to see the ball distort when the goalie punches it after a corner kick.
Oh, the G20 Plasma only uses something like 128 watts.. That's another plus.
#8856
Boost Pope
iTrader: (8)
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Chicago. (The less-murder part.)
Posts: 33,039
Total Cats: 6,604
My most accurate yardstick for a proper display system is a) the goal kick and b) medium range free kicks during a soccer match.
If you can see the ball sail perfectly, you're good. LCD tvs sometimes have trouble, you see a blurred line, or certain frames may hang.
If you can see the ball sail perfectly, you're good. LCD tvs sometimes have trouble, you see a blurred line, or certain frames may hang.
By comparison, I couldn't care less about football, regardless of whether the ball in question is round and principally kicked with the foot, or oblong and principally carried in the hands. I'm much more interested in how the display performs at native scanrates, when fed less-than-optimum source material, such as a compressed digital recording of an analog transfer of an old film.
So, remind me again why the east-coat crew are always accusing us in CA of having a communist government? Here in the land of fruits and nuts, you're required to have a Handgun Safety Certificate, but aside from that you can buy as many handguns as you like.
Concealed carry is tricky, but believe it or not, we actually still have a lot of open-carry counties.
#8857
Elite Member
iTrader: (10)
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Athens, Greece
Posts: 5,978
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I have a 50" LG plasma TV (50PV350). I got it for 500 euros, ie $650, so a total steal. I can't see any artifacts, however, like all plasma displays, it tends to have memory effects on the panel if you let an image stay static for too long (like say, watching the news).
#8858
So, remind me again why the east-coat crew are always accusing us in CA of having a communist government? Here in the land of fruits and nuts, you're required to have a Handgun Safety Certificate, but aside from that you can buy as many handguns as you like.
Concealed carry is tricky, but believe it or not, we actually still have a lot of open-carry counties.
Concealed carry is tricky, but believe it or not, we actually still have a lot of open-carry counties.
#8860
Elite Member
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Posts: 3,214
Total Cats: 1,687
I have a 50" LG plasma TV (50PV350). I got it for 500 euros, ie $650, so a total steal. I can't see any artifacts, however, like all plasma displays, it tends to have memory effects on the panel if you let an image stay static for too long (like say, watching the news).
It'll clear right up.