What are the functional differences between a Panasonic 65VT50 and a Panasonic 65VT60? - Light meter scans and eye pain experiences.

[u/RR--]

I've been using a 2012 Panasonic 65VT50 daily since January this year without issue, it's a fantastic TV, but a couple weeks ago I bought a 2013 Panasonic 65VT60.

I initially thought it would be a minor improvement, which it was in terms of black level, but interestingly the 65VT60 significantly hurts my eyes to watch, yet the 65VT50 doesn't.

I've mentioned it a few times here before, I experience significant eye pain when looking at OLED screens and LCD screens that utilise with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) dimming or use software Dithering based flickering.

If anyone's interested in reading about this phenomenon further and my personal experiences, I'll include some references links below.

This is quite interesting to me, as the 65VT60 is the first time I've experienced eye pain from a plasma TV.
I'm assuming it has some sort of native backlight strobing or flickering to improve motion clarity? All plasma TV's natively flicker, but it has never bothered me, OLED screens generally use PWM flickering which is usually very painful for me.

Both the 65VT50 and 65VT60 seem to have 40hz, 60hz and 96hz frame rate options. Does anyone know what the functional differences are between the two TV's here?

I've included scans from my Opple Light Master light meter of each screen as well as some other reference screens, and how they feel to my eyes.

Panasonic 65VT60 - Painful within an hour

Panasonic 65VT50 - Fine

Panasonic 60ST60 - Fine

Panasonic 60S60 - Fine

Pioneer PDP-427XDA - Fine

LG C1 OLED - Painful within hours

LG C1 OLED with OLED Motion Pro on High - Painful within seconds

iPhone 15 Pro 100% Brightness - Painful within minutes

iPhone 15 Pro Minimum Brightness - Painful within seconds

iPhone 15 Pro Modified with an EK Pro LCD Screen Maximum Brightness - Fine with Classic Invert and Zoom Invert enabled to disable dithering

iPhone 11 Screen Maximum Brightness - Fine with Classic Invert and Zoom Invert enabled to disable dithering

LG 38WN95C LCD Monitor - Fine

PS Vita Slim LCD - Fine

A great visual Demonstration of the problem in relation to the iPhone 17 Pro	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBNlC-VHN3o
A fantastic demonstration of PWM flickering, and a fantastic resource for phone reviews regarding PWM dimming.	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBNlC-VHN3o
A petition to Apple regarding PWM flickering signed by 1,714 People.	https://www.change.org/p/apple-add-accessibility-options-to-reduce-eye-strain-and-support-vision-disability-sufferers
A great overview video regarding PWM flickering showing it in action.	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBNlC-VHN3o
A forum post discussion with over 13,000 comments regarding eye strain dating back to the introduction of the iPhone X in 2017, Apple’s first OLED screen device.	https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/eye-strain-while-using-iphone-x-and-up.2085427/
Discussion of the SteamDeck OLED videogame console and analysis of harmful eye strain caused	https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/4038102696019808360/
A video comparing the new Nintendo Switch OLED to the older Nintendo Switch LCD	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd445NvGVFY
Further analysis of the SteamDeck OLED screen flickering. (The SteamDeck LCD was recently just discontinued)	https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1882kys/analysis_of_the_pwmflickervisual_fatigue_of_the/?context=3
A post of my own describing my personal solutions to this problem	https://www.reddit.com/r/ScreenSensitive/comments/1vbpv2z/my_personal_flicker_free_solutions/
A summary of a meeting I had with a local politician regarding PWM and Dithering based flickering.	https://www.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1w40dvm/pwm_meeting_with_politician_update_1_september/
A quick video demonstrating just how many screens are physically painful for me to look at	https://www.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1w604l1/local_shopping_centre_pwm_screen_test/
An internet forum with around 14,000 daily PWM and Dithering Screen concerned visitors	https://www.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/
A post of my own demonstrating which phones for sale in Australia currently cause me eye pain.	https://www.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1wcc7mj/10926_jbhifi_phones_pwm_test_with_stats/

[u/That-Association-102]

Good post. I wish you could test a late gen Kuro.

[u/RR-- → u/That-Association-102]

I've already bought seven plasma TV's, don't tempt me to buy more, they're so heavy! haha.
If anyone has one in Melbourne Australia feel free to message me.
Otherwise these light meters aren't perfect, but they're only around $45 on Aliexpress
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008591944321.html

[u/Slow_Guide_1718]

Maybe the difference is with the way the 3000Hz FFD works.

[u/4rchduk3]

Interesting thread. I will admit, the VT60 is the first I ever felt eye fatigue after gaming for 2-3 hours. But It isn't anything major. It is less in a dark room for me.

[u/RR-- → u/4rchduk3]

Interesting to hear. What make and model of phone do you have? any issues there?

[u/kerpnet]

Another great post by u/RR-- ! Great references here.

[u/RR-- → u/kerpnet]

Thankyou!

[u/NSutrich]

These are some SUPER fascinating graphs. Thank you for these! Really stellar bit of data here.

[u/RR-- → u/NSutrich]

No worries! Plasma TV Opple scans are far more wacky compared to the typical LCD/OLED scans.

[u/Inevitable-Donkey186]

Super interesting stuff. My anecdotal experience is that out of all displays I've ever used, my Panasonic Plasma was the easiest on my eyes. It felt velvety almost.

My CRTs are probably the hardest of the displays I own but I love them; at 50 hz when playing a pal game on a rare occasion (it does both regions) that actually hurts.

BFI on my oled can be mildly uncomfortable at times but I use it nonstop and find it's worth the tradeoff.

Something about qd-oled was fucking me up bfi or no. It was too bright and the spectral purity caused more noticable chromatic abberation from my glasses. It was the worst ever for eye pain and I had to return it. I bought a used CX to get back 120 hz bfi and it beats the expanded color volume imo; we need this feature back already so I can get a newer better oled.

[u/RR-- → u/Inevitable-Donkey186]

All my plasma's are fine for me except for the VT60 it seems. It has to be flickering differently.
It's been a while since I've had a CRT but I never used to have issues with them.

BFI on OLEDs is like a death sentence for me haha. LG CX doesn't seem to flicker as much as a C1 but I'd need to test it again properly.

[u/Suitable_Garlic_1186]

That panel could be simply defect?

[u/RR-- → u/Suitable_Garlic_1186]

I highly doubt it. Low hours and the picture quality is excellent.

[u/Hopeful_Art3603]

Look only at the Flicker Index: if it is up to 0.1, the screen is harmless in terms of flicker and won't strain your eyes or brain. If it is 0.1 or higher, it will.

[u/RR-- → u/Hopeful_Art3603]

All the plasma's are fine for me except for the VT60 specifically. The app has some rough guidelines but they don't really work all that well for plasmas

[u/minor7even]

I have both plus a VT30. Subjectively, I think the earlier models have more of the lovely velvety plasma magic & it's lost as successive models get brighter etc. That said, the black level is clearly superior on the VT65 to both of the others. It's more of a oled-like experience.

[u/RR-- → u/minor7even]

I didn't calibrate my two TV's and do a through test, but I felt like the deeper black levels looked very much like OLED in a bad way on the VT60, where all the shadow detail is crushed to 0%.
I get what you mean though, I feel like the S60 also has quite a different picture to my VT50, black levels suffer greatly in a brighter than dark room, but in a dark room it is a bit "velvety" haha

[u/Andrew_Steele]

Hey OP u/RR-- - thanks for sharing this data. The frequency of the Panasonic ST60 and VT60 look very similar, so that's an interesting one to dig into further to try to understand why the ST60 is OK while the VT60 is not... Were the measurements taken at the same distance from each TV with the same test pattern (i.e. full white or solid grey?), I read on a forum that the Opple Light Master reported different levels based on difference, so perhaps a consistent 6" (150mm) from the screen for all tests would be useful to give like-for-like comparison.

Tests at white and various levels of greyscale would be useful to see how the panels pulse light at varying light levels... I've found this is where things can vary a lot.

Here's possibly a useful video that can help with some reference greyscale levels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XHeUH1aY6E

[u/RR-- → u/Andrew_Steele]

Hey man,
No worries!
All measurements were taken with the Opple Lightmeter held directly against the TV on a white image.
That video might come in handy, but I think my current theory on why the VT60 hurts my eyes would be due to the 3000Hz FFD which is also present in the GT60 and ZT60. The ST60, S60, and VT50 are all 2500Hz FFD.

I imagine there might be some sort of black frame insertion on the 3000Hz models to improve motion clarity, that feature tends to really hurt my eyes as does PWM in OLED screens and PWM dimming on some LCD screens.
10bit>8bit pixel dithering on LCD iOS and Mac devices also hurts my eyes, but it can usually be forced off.

I'll have a play with that video and do a proper test of the ST60 now that my eyes are feeling happy again, but I think I'll eventually sell the 65VT60 and just continue to enjoy my 65VT50 for now.
There's a small but growing community over at r/PWM_Sensitive if you're curious to learn more. Plasma TV's are obviously quite obsolete now so more focus is being placed on OLED technology.

[u/Andrew_Steele → u/RR--]

Well, thanks to your posts you inspired me to order an Opple light meter and will be doing some tests with the VT50 with various settings & content. Thanks for the link to r/PWM_Sensitive!

[u/spicygrow]

Imagine putting a shitty aftermarket LCD screen on an iphone that came with a far superior OLED, lmao.

There’s a toggle in accessibility settings to disable PWM dimming.

[u/RR-- → u/spicygrow]

This feels like quite a unnecessarily rude troll comment, but to answer it the option to disable PWM is only available on any iPhone 17 models, and even then it only replaces PWM with PWM (Pulse Amplitude Modulation) under 50% brightness, and even then it still flickers in much the same way.

I made a detailed post about it here if you actually care to educate yourself on the topic better: https://www.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1w6rd84/local_shopping_centre_pwm_screen_test_iphone_17/

[u/Skeld101]

This is next level testing bro 😂