Reviewing Plasma Tv's: The Advantages And Disadvantages

By Author: Alex Bradbury
Total Articles: 21
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Plasma TV's are just one of the many choices that you have when buying a television set. Apart from the classic CRT TV sets, other variations are available such as the HDTV, RPTV (Rear projection television), LCD TV and the LED TV. Getting to choose from these can be quite overwhelming especially if you don't understand what their differences are.

Plasma TV's are different from the other types of TV sets mainly because of the technology it uses. Most TV sets today are distinguished by their flat screen surface and more streamlined design. From the outside, they may look similar; the difference between them is what happens inside.

The technology that plasma TV screens utilize involves the use of hundreds and thousands of individual pixels. These pixel cells contain rare natural gasses such as xenon or neon and are connected to individual electrodes. Electrical pulses excite the natural gases and cause the cell to glow and produce light. Each pixel cell is, in essence, a microscopic light bulb that receives instruction from built-in software on how much light to give off. Pixel cells in plasma TV's are separated ...
... by tiny black ribs in an alternating red, green and blue matrix pattern.

In terms of picture quality, plasma TV's offer a better choice especially in normal and low lighting conditions. The use of plasma technology almost always makes it preferred for night time viewing. But on the other hand, plasma TV's don't perform as good in bright, lighted rooms or when used for outdoor viewing during the daytime.

Plasma displays also has the advantage over LCD displays when viewing fast moving video playback. Plasma TV's offer less trailer effect that happens when the pixels are not fast enough to change from light to dark. This leads to an image suffering from motion lag when viewing fast action scenes particularly in films and sporting events.

One notable disadvantage of plasma TV's can be noticed in the case of burn-in on the screen. Early models suffered characteristically from burn-ins or ghosting when a video image was paused for as little as 15 minutes, but with advanced anti-burn in technology, this has become less of a concern. For newer models, permanent burn in on the screen usually happens when a static image is displayed continuously for 10 hours or more. But since this does not happen with normal viewing, the case of burn in on plasma displays now is not such a problem.

Another advantage is that plasma technology is more cost effective when producing larger size screens, most very large televisions are now plasma although LCD technology is catching up. Plasma TV's are also considered more reliable the larger they become while other technologies each suffer from size related problems.
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