For anybody that truly cared about picture quality above all else, Plasma ruled for many years. This is easily validated by going back to reviews/AV forum discu

For anybody that truly cared about picture quality above all else, Plasma ruled for many years. This is easily validated by going back to reviews/AV forum discussions of Pioneer and Panasonic plasmas around 2008 -> 2012. One big thing to also remember, that I think gets forgotten is that in that time period there was still a huge amount of SD content being produced/viewed, in the era before vaguely decent post-processing, Plasma made much of this material watchable/enjoyable on the larger screen sizes. LCDs would generally produce an awful mess, especially with the early/janky picture processing they employed when viewing SD content, especially 24fps content - many plasmas had native 24fps modes, specifically designed for handling lower frame rate content. Lots of those Pioneer/Panasonic plasmas all had "hidden" service menus that allowed people tweak/calibrate all sorts of picture variables to their hearts content as well, which rightly or wrongly, probably also helped give them a certain love within cinephile type groups.