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Comment by karolist | Hacker News Reader

I've been hunting and buying old (~2008-2012) Panasonic plasma TV's off my local craigslist alternative. They were the best in business as far as plasma screens go and the build quality is insane. Colour reproduction is very natural and deep blacks are just wow, only the OLEDs beat it but I'm not sold on the longevity of OLED screens yet. For example I bought Panasonic TH-42PZ85EA for $30, plugged in an STB for IPTV in one port, Chromecast in another and that's all the smart features I need, there's still a 3rd HDMI port in case you'd want to plug in a game console.

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agreed! the pioneer kuro line was considered the high-end during this era. owned one myself. skin tones were blotchy compared to the Sony Trinitron I also had at the time but otherwise pretty good, far superior to LCD.

Isn't plasma screen susceptible to burn-out?

What search terms do you use?

It is but much of that is overblown because of really old plasma screens - early 2000s and such. Some manufacturers dealt with it better than others. If you're buying an old plasma without burn-in after ~10 years of use with minimal attention you'll be OK. I make sure not to leave paused frame for longer than 30m periods and enable screensavers where possible. You sometimes can see contours of an image after turning off the TV if the image was still for some time but they fade away quickly and not cause any artefacts. Chromecast has a screensaver, my STB as well. Things like channel logos are not a problem even after long viewing sessions. I've had Panasonic and LG plasmas. They do draw much more power (150-300W) and in case of active cooling you can hear the fans just slightly but otherwise, to me, it's a steal at these prices for this image quality.

EDIT: I search for "panasonic plasma" and make sure it's at least 1920x1080 screen and try to buy it under $50, so far I've bought a few for family and one for the holiday cabin.

Thanks for the tips! I see someone selling '11gen 200Hz' plasma, where does that stand?

I personally can vouch for old Panasonics, anything else is probably not worth the hassle. Just make sure it's FHD screen, has HDMI ports and it's a Panasonic - you can't go wrong. 11gen probably refers to G11, which you want to target at the oldest, the TV I've wrote about is a G11 panel.

www.avforums.com/threads/g11-panasonic-plasma-release.754974/

Plasma & burn-in: I have a '13 Panasonic Viera VT60 with 10,000 hours, no real burn in. I've got a '08 Viera and it's fine, too. I actually bought it with a vertical line malfunctioning, and it's seemingly sorted itself out (looks fine now). No dead pixels, no burn in, tens of thousands hours.

If I watch 24 hours of CS:GO, the white scoreboard text will be visible, but if I turn to max brightness/contrast and play Mad Max for 24 hours, it's always come back to normal.

The panels do get hot, though. That part's always been real.

Hey, would you mind telling how's owning VT60 in 2021? Would you buy one as a real OLED alternative? I see it has some smart features like "apps" and that is kinda a red flag to me, sooooo... "how is it?" Thanks!

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