Is there some saying to the effect that the more you know, the more you know what you don't know?
Well there should be.
Recently I have been thinking about replacing my venerable 42" plasma TV with a newer model. That has me lurking in the (overwhelming) AVSforum's again and pondering the many features that differentiate plasma TV's.
Why pay 50% more for a Pioneer Plasma than a Panasonic plasma with the same screen resolution? the answer to that question is falling off a cliff into a sea of technical discussions about colors, contrast and reproducing an image accurately.
Did you know there are people that will come to your house and calibrate your TV? Who knew! And who knew how freaking complicated the process is. I am sure that I am not the only consumer who thought white was white and black was, well, black. How silly of me.
As the TV search got bogged down, I started to think about replacing my venerable PC monitor. It is 22" and has a resolution of 1600x1080. It has been a great monitor but pixels = productivity. I thought maybe it was time to move up to a 1900x1200 24" LCD.
Choosing a new monitor had me hunting for monitor reviews, which are surprisingly rare. Turns out the best monitor reviews are from the EU -- TFTcentral and xbitlabs. (TFTcentral even has a nice primer.)
Why is this 24" Samsung monitor, the 245T, 50% more than this Samsung 24" monitor, the 2493HM? The engineer in me thought there had to be a reason which led me to fall off the same silly cliff -- color and image reproduction.
Turns out the older 245T uses a different panel technology from the newer 2493HM which accounts for the price differences. But you would never know that by looking at Samsung's website as they actually say it is the same panel. Without detailed monitor reviews, it would be impossible to make a educated decision.
I suspect most consumers make their decisions based on price and "features". Quite frankly they would have to. Learning about color gamut and gamma curves has been interesting but it is also totally overwhelming. Not only is white not white and black not black but the same is true for red, green and blue. There are all kinds of details in reproducing color. And apparently its not just plasma tvs that are supposed to be calibrated -- the same is true for LCD monitors as well.
In the end, it appears that cost does impact quality and the salient question is how much performance you can afford. The good news is that the way prices continue to fall, if you cannot afford it this year, you probably can next year. Our $3,000 plasma TV from 4+ years ago is now worth about $500.
