Compare Plasma Tv. When you're choosing between plasma and LCD TVs, you're actually choosing between two competing technologies...

Compare Plasma TV

When you're choosing between plasma and LCD TVs, you're actually choosing between two competing technologies, both of which achieve similar things (i.e., crystal-clear, colour-filled pictures) and come in similar packages (i.e., super-model-thin cases).

Lcd TV

To complicate the decision-making process further, price is rapidly becoming a non-issue here. Despite all these similarities, these technologies differ as to how they process and display incoming video/computer signals.


Plasma TV

Plasma technology consists hundreds of thousands of individual pixel cells, which allow electric pulses to excite rare natural gases causing them to glow and, thus, produce light.

Whether spread across a flat-panel screen or placed in the heart of a projector, all LCDs are pretty much the same. A matrix of thin-film transistors (TFTs) supplies voltage to liquid-crystal-filled cells sandwiched between two sheets of glass. When hit with an electrical charge, the crystals untwist to an exact degree to filter white light generated by a lamp behind the screen (for flat-panel TVs) or one shining through a small LCD chip (for projection TVs).

While plasma displays are especially good for moving images, LCD technology is better at displaying static images with particular crispness and even colouration.

LCD technology is not prone to screen "burn-in" or "ghosting" the way plasma technology is. On plasma displays, static images will begin to "burn-in," or permanently discolor the pixels displaying it, after only a short time-just 15 minutes or so, in some cases. Though such "burn-in" can be reduced or "washed out," doing so reduces the overall lifespan of the display unit itself.

Because LCDs use florescent backlighting to produce images, they require substantially less power to operate than plasmas do. LCD displays consume about half the power that plasma displays consume. The reason: Plasmas use a lot of electricity lighting each and every pixel you see on a screen-even the dark ones. These are truly power-hungry devices.