Today there are really only 2 mass market options for flat panel displays: Plasma<\/a> or LCD<\/a>.\u00a0 Sure there are OLED<\/a> sets, but the size\/cost rule them out for most situations. Looking forward we see SED<\/a> and FED<\/a> technologies on the way, but I wouldn’t hold off on a purchase as there will always be something better coming soon.<\/p>\n Panasonic has a relatively good comparison of Plasma and LCD<\/a> as they sell both.\u00a0 I’m not sure I agree entirely with the conclusions they draw, but the data is basically sound.\u00a0 If we look at the Plasma cross section diagram from Panasonic:<\/p>\n So typical of almost all video display devices, the colour image is made up of red, green and blue.\u00a0 With Plasma we’ve got effectively one electron gun per colour cell, and 3 of those cells make up one pixel.\u00a0 If you remember CRTs<\/a>, we had a single electron gun that scanned the visible surface and excited the phosphor to leave an image.<\/p>\n The LCD cross section from the same source shows how different things are here.\u00a0 The light source is not an electron gun, but some form of back light.\u00a0 The same red, green, blue triad is used to represent a single pixel.<\/p>\n Let me now try to focus on some more practical shopping advice.\u00a0 One key thing to keep in mind is that both technologies are continuing to change (and improve), so what was true a few years ago may not be now.\u00a0 If we go back a few years, large LCD panels were very expensive<\/a> – so generally Plasmas had the larger displays locked up.\u00a0 This has been changing, and LCDs seem to be the more popular display at this point no matter what size.<\/p>\n In terms of resolution – you probably want a native 1920×1080.\u00a0 I say native, because some displays advertise that they “accept” or are “compatible with” a wide range of resolutions, but actually have some odd ball native panel resolution.\u00a0 Both technologies were guilty of this, Plasma being more so with 1080p displays which did have 1080 lines but were not 1920 pixels wide.\u00a0 The only time I’d consider a 1280×720 display was if gaming was your #1 activity, as many games are natively 720p and scaling up to the larger resolution may introduce image artifacts.<\/p>\n You want at least 2 HDMI inputs, and possibly more.\u00a0 You would like those inputs to be HDMI 1.3a<\/a>, but there really isn’t an easy way to determine that in some situations – if you are buying a relatively recent model you can safely assume the HDMI level is a non-issue.\u00a0 Please don’t get fooled into buying expensive HDMI cables – check out the prices at tartancable.com<\/a> (a 6foot 28AWG cable is $5).<\/p>\n Many LCD displays now have a 120Hz update<\/a> “feature”.\u00a0 This is in part to try to address some of the refresh rate issue, but it has also become a way to provide smoother motion.\u00a0 One caution here is that this is video processing magic – they are interpolating additional frames.\u00a0 If you watch a lot of live sports (football), this might be a good feature.\u00a0 If you watch movies, the frame rate you care about is the ability to accept 24fps input<\/a> and display it without too much conversion.<\/p>\n If you’ve done some comparison shopping already, you may have come across the Pioneer KURO<\/a> (a Plasma).\u00a0 It is one of the best<\/a> flat panel displays out there now.\u00a0 While the black level is one of the key elements that they push as its benefit (generally Plasmas have better black detail than LCD) the KURO also has very nice colour.\u00a0 While Plasma doesn’t have the refresh rate issues of LCDs, they do have some image retention issues but most of the current generation are relatively resistant to this.\u00a0 Plasma panels tend to run a bit hotter than LCDs and many have (quiet) cooling fans.\u00a0 Also due to details of their construction, they may not be suitable at higher altitudes.<\/p>\n Looking at LCDs, they have Plasma beat for thickness – LCDs will generally have a thinner profile if this matters to you.\u00a0 LCD panels of the same size, tend to be lighter than the equivalent Plasma.\u00a0 The black level of an LCD will not match best Plasma panels, but many of you sit in front of LCD monitors all day and are used to this limitation.\u00a0 Except in extreme cases, LCD will not suffer from burn in issues, as well LCDs run relatively cool and don’t need fans for cooling.<\/p>\n Which one would I buy?\u00a0 If money were no object, I’d be looking at the KURO.\u00a0 Of course there are drawbacks to the KURO due to the screen surface being a little delicate.\u00a0 I’d probably be fairly attracted in general to Plasma displays due to the better black level (having a CRT projector background).\u00a0 There are some pretty nice LCD displays out there too, I’d consider the Sharp Aquos<\/a> or Sony Bravia<\/a> lines.\u00a0 With either technology there will be an element of “you get what you pay for”, so if you go too cheap you may regret it.\u00a0 In a similar light, be careful of buying last years model – the technology is changing rapidly and a year does make a difference.<\/p>\n Which one is right for you?\u00a0 That is something you’ll need to puzzle out for yourself, but I’m happy to field comments and try to help guide people to useful data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been a home theater nut for about a decade now.\u00a0 I can be blamed (or credited?) for getting a few of my friends hooked as well.\u00a0 While I’ve invested a lot of time reading about audio and video, and I love to talk about the subject – it is only a hobby. A fair … Continue reading “Plasma vs. LCD”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-theater","category-soap-box"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/plasmacross.gif\" "\\"plasmacross\\"")
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