According to Consumers Electronics Association survey, the one piece of home entertainment that is this year's most desired electronic Chrismas gift is a plasma TV. They look nice, give an impressive size picture, slim enough to hang like a picture on a wall, but however there is one technology out now that may make some think twice of looking back at plasma '“ LCD TVs. It is not up until recently that LCD TV's have finally become commercially available in stores above 40". Now, Sharp has released a 45" LCD along with Samsung with a 46" LCD.
While smaller LCD screens have been available for quite a while now since the first colour screen laptops, the larger sets are now ready to compete with plasma. First the resolution - Most plasma's have a resolution of 848x480 and a few higher end models with 1280x768. These LCD TV's are 1920x1080, which is important for the HDTV 1080's higher resolution. However with plasma, the 1080i/p HDTV resolution must be scaled down thus resulting in a picture not significantly better than standard definition TV. Even with low definition TV, the higher resolution LCD TVs do post-processing to eliminate or significantly reduce the 'Screen door' effect that lower resolution Plasma TV's suffer from.
The LCD's are lighter weighting only 48lb (Sharp model) compared with a typical weight of 80lb for 42" plasma. Screen burn-in is an issue for plasma's phosphors with still images shown for a long period of time. Examples include bright channel logos (such as VH-1's large bright logo) and scrolling bars on news channels where screen burn-in shows up as a dark ghost image. LCD does not suffer from screen-burn. LCD's retain their brightness longer and its bulbs can be replaced if necessary. Unfortunately, there are no bulbs in a plasma to replace. Plasma TVs use more electricity and also buzz at high altitudes. Finally, LCD produces a brighter, sharper and more vivid colour image than plasma and does not suffer as bad from washing out in sun-lit or brightly lit areas.
On the other hand, LCD's do have a few drawbacks. First the price of $6,100 to $8,000 depending on whether the product is purchased online or in a store. High end 50" plasma's can be easily obtained for around $5,000. The largest commercially available LCD is Samsung's 46" TV where as much larger Plasma's are available, although larger LCD prototypes have already been demonstrated. Finally, higher end plasma sets with high contrast ratios produce deeper blacks than LCD.
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Don't do it. Before you drop all that money on a 42-inch plasma TV, consider dropping it on a different kind of flat-screen TV, one that until this month wasn't even in the running: an LCD. Of course, liquid-crystal display screens aren't anything new; they've graced laptops, camcorders and cameras for years. But until recently you couldn't buy flat-panel LCDs with screen sizes above 40 inches, not even if you were Bill Gates. They just didn't exist. It finally dawned on two of the world's biggest LCD makers, Samsung and Sharp, to spend a few million bucks to upgrade the screen-size capacity of their factories. The fruits of their labors, the world's largest commercially available LCD screens, have just arrived: a 45-inch LCD from Sharp (the LC-45GX6U), and a 46-incher from Samsung (the LT-P468W). Apart from their sheer neighbor-humbling size, the biggest breakthrough is these screens' resolution: 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels. That's the highest resolution of any flat-panel TV (including the gorgeous new 42-inch LCD sets from Sony and Philips). You're getting more than 2 million tiny color dots. Compare that number with the 786,000 pixels on a typical 42-inch plasma HDTV, 345,000 on one of those $2,500 "enhanced definition" plasmas, and only 300,000 on a standard TV. No wonder these are very, very sharp screens. Now, high-definition geeks may be protesting at this point. "But that's more resolution than anyone's broadcasting yet!" And true enough, all those extra dots don't make DVDs or today's high-definition broadcasts (known as 1080i and 720p signals) look any sharper. Read the full rather lengthy story here. |
Even here in Ireland, Plasma TV's seem to be in the majority of pubs and some homes that saved up for a large set. I asked quite a number of people why they would prefer plasma over other sets. The reasons to avoid other technologies seem to be same since the other technologies first started or from their last experience. For example, most think of front projection as a washed out image like that seen at presentations shown in a lit room. Most assume rear projection TV's are as bulky as CRT's apart from the weight. Finally, most say that LCD suffers from motion blurring and poor colour rendering, although this was mainly the case for cheaper and early LCD screens.
It will be interesting to see how the big LCD TV's get
on. Also, once Sony gets their 'black' projection screens into commercial
production, front projection will also become a good competing alternative to
Plasma, LCD, Front projection and other large sets even when viewing in a brightly lit
room is the main requirement.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about Plasma, LCD, projectors and other large TV screen technology in our Satellite, HD-TV, Blu-ray and HD-DVD Forum.
Source: C|net News - Consumer Products
