That's obvious. All manufacturers will promote the settings that result in the best sales - that applies to plasma to. But the same applies to plasma. Unless you're trying to tell me that plasma manufacturers want their TVs to look crap to customers?
Sorry this is so long, I hate doing this style of replying but I wanted to give you good answers instead of dumb sarcasm or one line replies.
LCD televisions will usually have their brightness settings maximized to blot out the sun to attract attention. Plasma and CRT televisions can't hit those same levels of brightness output regardless of what setting the manufacturer imposes. Showroom conditions are deceptive and made to sell televisions to uninformed consumers, you can't reliably judge a television based on the criteria observed there. Colour accuracy, contrast and several other things will be completely out of the norm in a showroom. I don't recommend someone buy a plasma that way either. The average consumer probably couldn't notice a legitimate difference between either one unless they were watching a hockey game so in the end this only really matters to a small portion of the market.
Again, I dispute that. Plasmas are cheaper, have excellent contrast and viewing angles. But the picture isn't as sharp and movement doesn't look as natural (despite the higher refresh rates).
You're welcome to your opinion but I think if you do some objective research you'll see its slightly misinformed. Picture sharpness isn't defined by the display technology alone, there are several factors. Movement looks perfectly natural on a plasma, that's why they are the most recommended option for sports while LCD televisions still struggle with interpolation and processing to attempt to correct the problem. Viewing angles are also based a few factors but typically better on plasmas when you start to approach middle tier models though again this is really more of a set by set thing.
I also had to live with the annoying spotlighting effect that's very common in LCD/LED televisions even when I could find one that produced acceptable blacks. I find Vizio and the newer Samsungs have the best output in this area but the former is dogged by quality control problems and Samsung has some very slow processing which results in heavy input lag for gaming.
LED HDTVs have come down in price nowadays, having better brightness and comparable viewing angles; they also now have better black levels. I have a 42" LED 100Hz TV attached to my computer and a 47" LED 3DTV in my main room - both were top end models. I compared the picture quality of both directly to the plasma models on display - from the cheapest to the most expensive - and they were both noticeably better. We can each pull out particular models that have advantages over the competing technology but my purchasing decisions are based explicitly on quality, not price.
I'm glad you're happy with your purchases but it seems more that you don't like the idea of something superior existing than you are interested in talking about the best quality televisions. That article is pretty vague and has no actual benchmarks, there are many that disagree with it. AVSForum has some good reviews from professional calibrators as well. I own two LCD televisions, not plasmas but I've had the pleasure of observing both in actual dark room conditions and seen the professionally calibrated benchmark results on several websites. I doubt you did any actual calibration or comparison beyond eyeballing them in a store. There's nothing really wrong with buying a television that way, I'm not trying to put you down or something but we're talking about a slightly broader scale than personal observation. Both LCD and plasma have their inherent limitations that personal opinion can't trump.
If I bought a plasma tomorrow and a better LCD television came along I'd happily recommend it to people but the only competition going on there is usually at high end prices on the 50+ inch models. My LCD televisions are perfectly viewable and offer great quality but better options do exist, both in the LCD market itself and on the plasma side. If someone asked me to recommend a television for a very bright room with a lot of natural sunlight then I'd recommend an LCD because it just makes sense. But if someone asks me what has the best overall picture quality for all types of media in a normal viewing environment then right now its plasma. I haven't seen the CES roundup yet so maybe that will be changing in the future, we will see.
This comment was edited on Feb 9, 2012, 16:39.