LCD TVs vs Plasma TVs

There are definitely differences between LCD TVs - for example picture and sound quality can vary considerably.

The sames is true for Plasma TVs also. Some TVs might look great in a showroom when they are showing a specially produced demo DVD, but may look nothing like as good when you get it home with a normal TV signal.

In terms of choosing between LCD and Plasma HDTVs which should you buy?

LCD TVs now outsell Plasma TVs by a considerable margin., especialy as the size of LCDs has increased and the price has continued to come down.

Historically, a plasma HDTV choice was the obvious choice if you wanted a flat-screen that was 40 inches or bigger.

However, as LCD technology has improved, LCD HDTVs have become (a lot) bigger and most of the major manufacturers now produce many more LCD TVs, whereas the number of plasma TVs to choose from has decreased.

To understand the LCD vs plasma HDTV question, we need to look at the way the two technologies work.

LCD TVs

LCD HDTVs work by shining a light behind an LCD panel made up of a fixed number of pixels. Each pixel is either red, blue or green and is switched on or off when a voltage is applied to it. When voltage is applied to a pixel, it is switched off, meaning that light can't shine through it.

The main advantage of LCD vs plasma HDTV is that LCD panels don't suffer from what's called burn-in. This is a feature of plasma TVs where they are used to watch TV stations with logos permanently displayed on-screen or where they are used for video gaming with games that have static images such as a cockpit on flight simulators. The image literally 'burns-in' the screen meaning that even when the image is not present you can still see a faint trace of it on screen. So for video gamers in particular, LCD is a better choice than plasma.

Plasma TVs

Plasma HDTVs have over a million chambers which house one or a combination of gasses. When a voltage is applied to one of these chambers the gas ionizes and emits ultra-violet light. This light strikes red, green or plue phophors coated on the inside of the chamber and a pixel emits this color light.

Plasma HDTVs tend to have better contrast than LCDs because, even when a pixel on an LCD panel is switched off it doesn't block all the light coming through and therefore the pixel isn't completely black. Plasma HDTVs also tend to have a wider viewing angle than LCDs, as on LCD HDTVs the contrast and colour of the image can change when the screen is viewed from different angles.