Know your needs and room before picking LCD or plasma
By Seán Captain The New York Times
Published: September 14, 2006
In the old days of digital television, a year or two ago, choices were simple. If the screen measured less than 37 inches diagonally, it would be a liquid crystal display panel. From about 37 to 50 inches, it would probably be a plasma panel. And larger sizes would be rear- or front-projection sets.
But as flat panels have grown, categories have blurred. For 60-inch, or 152- centimeter, screens, plasmas starting about $3,000 are an alternative to projection models starting about $2,000. A bigger rivalry exists between LCD and plasma panels of about 40 inches, where prices are virtually identical. For example, the most popular plasma from LG Electronics, the 42-inch 42PC3D, sells for $2,000; and its 42-inch LCD, the 42LC2D, sells for $2,100. (Model numbers and availability may differ slightly in Europe and Asia.)
So which television type is better: LCD or plasma?
The first step in answering that is to get past antiquated stereotypes. Plasma, for instance, is still haunted by burn-in – the tendency to retain marks from images displayed on the screen for too long.
But for modern plasmas, burn-in usually disappears after a few hours of displaying other content, according to David Katzmaier, a senior editor for home video and audio at the online technology publisher CNET. In fact, plasmas are sturdier overall than they used to be. Many new screens are expected to last 60,000 hours before losing half their brightness – the standard measure of a screen’s lifetime. Modern LCDs are also rated for 60,000 hours. That is more than 23 years of watching TV seven hours a day, every day.
One stereotype does hold: LCDs are brighter than plasma panels and can better compete with strong ambient light. And LCD screens do not reflect room light, as most plasmas do (though manufacturers are beginning to fix that problem). So sellers recommend LCDs for viewing in brightly lit rooms.
“The last thing we want is for someone to get a plasma and get a really horrible glare on it and take it back,” said John Zittrauer, a sales representative at a Best Buy store in New York City.
But LCDs are too bright for many settings. “I could take away 25 percent of the light on an LCD panel and still have a blindingly bright picture,” said Kevin Miller, a home theater consultant who also writes TV reviews for CNET.
At CNET’s test center in New York City, Miller and Katzmaier were reviewing the 42-inch Vizio L42 HDTV LCD which sells for about $1,600. To optimize picture quality, they reduced the back light intensity to 10 on a scale of 1 to 100. (The default level is 90.)
More important than brightness, according to Katzmaier and Miller, is the contrast ratio – the range between the brightest and darkest tones the screen can produce. To demonstrate, they showed two best-in-class TVs: Sony’s 40-inch KDL-40XBR2 LCD ($3,500) and Pioneer’s 50-inch PDP 5070HD plasma ($4,000). While both had been adjusted to produce the same light output, the Pioneer’s screen looked brighter and showed more depth and more detail.
Contrast ratio is the most important aspect of screen quality, according to research by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Although plasma can produce more contrast than LCD, it does not always do so. Sony’s LCD showed better contrast than a 42-inch Hitachi 42HDS69 plasma ($2,499) in the lab. And a plasma’s contrast advantage fades away – literally – in bright rooms, where the ambient light overpowers dark tones.
After contrast, color saturation and accuracy are the next most important quality factors. Though plasma panels used to beat LCDs on these measures, the technologies are now about equal.
But colors look best when viewing the Sony – or any LCD – head on. The screen faded slightly when viewed from the side.
Plasma, in comparison, looks the same from any angle. So it is good for big screens viewed by crowds – say, in a sports bar. But even most LCDs show top-quality images within about a 30- degree arc. “That would be the width of the couch for most people,” said Al Griffin, senior reviews editor at Sound & Vision magazine.
The fourth criterion is resolution – the number of pixels that make up an image. In 42-inch sets, most plasmas and LCDs provide 768 screen lines, from top to bottom. But plasmas have 1,024 pixels per line, while LCDs have 1,280 or even 1,366 pixels. That makes 42-inch LCDs better for the high detail in video games, said Zittrauer of Best Buy. But for movies or sports, he feels plasma’s better contrast ratio outweighs its resolution deficit.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/13/business/ptbasic14.php