plasma or lcd?

1.  Why would you put a flat-screen TV (plasma or otherwise) in a TV cabinet?  They're supposed to be wall or table-top mounted.

2.  My current TV isnt working as a room heater for >2 years now - should I ask for a replacement?  Winter is coming up and it would be good to have a dual-purpose appliance.

Friend has a Panny-42 plasma-play PS2 all the time(even leaves the screen on overnight)-had the 'status bar' of the game burned into in 2 years flat-might be new screens have moved forward.

Well, This is another one my long list of hobbies - Actually, I love reading on electronics. The debate between an LCD and a Plasma and that of a Full HD / HD Ready just goes on and on.

Firstly, let me address the LCD versus Plasma bit:

Even though they look the same when switched off to a naked eye, the in built technology is totally different. A plasma screen a cluster of pixels - each pixel is an individual set of gas bubbles of light emitting gasses. When the bubble is taken close to an electric field, it gets excited and emits light. Within each pixel there are 4 bubbles - one for RED, another for BLUE and 2 for GREEN. The reason why there are 2 for GREEN is because the green colour has the a low frequency and always needs a boost. the same ratio is also seen on the sensor of a digital camera. So, Plasma is this complex array of pixels of gas filled bubbles (4 per pixel) - Now you know how difficult these things are to build - Leave to our Japanese friends.

LCDs is also a cluster of pixels - The starting range of the LCDs is the simple ones that we see on the calculators and digital watches. The way they work is totally different. Imagine the windows of your house - When the windows are closed, there is no light and when they are completely open, the entire hall brightens up - Depending on how much the window is open or closed, the light intensity would vary - The same logic is applied in the case of an LCD - There is a backlight (which is quite similar to the tubelights we use. The backlight emits  light. Each pixel has 4 Windows (I have already explained the number 4 before). Depending on how much each of the window opens, the light get passed through the pixel. Now Windows in our houses are controlled by a hand - In case of an LCD display, they are controlled by Liquid Crystals (and hence the name LCD) which close when excited by an electric charge and are otherwise open. Pixel by Pixel, the image is formed.

It is very difficult to make a plasma screen that is too small - because the gas inside each bubble is pressurised to a certain level and a normal screen as such needs to have fixed count of pixels - That is why, plasmas start from 42" upwards and are ideally suited for very large projections. In addition, to charge each and every gas bubble with enough electricity to make it emit light makes it consume more power. In addition, if the plasma screen is displaying static images for a long time, the gasses get aligned to the specific image and hence the burn-in effect - These are essentially some of the drawbacks of plasma screens. The advantages of a plasma are that since each pixel has it'e own charge, gas etc, once properly controlled, it always gives an exceptionally good color saturation, black level perfornance and they are very fast - The Pixels take absolutely no time to change from one state / color to other state / color - This is the reason why Plasmas don't have any trailing effect and are more suitable for watching fast-moving action.

The LCDs on the other hand have verious short falls of their own - Imagine 4 times the number of pixels (or windows) that keep blocking and emitting light - When the windows are completely closed, they might still "Leak" some light and that is the reason why LCDs have poorer contrast ratios and black levels. Secondly, imagine a half closed window, depending on the angle from which you see at the window, the level of brightness and contrast changes - This is the reason why LCDs have a narrower angle of view. The Closing and Opening of the windows aka pixels is not as fast - they take some time and hence they have the trailing effect in them - Something that makes an LCD more suitable to watch static images on and less of moving action. The advantages of the LCD being that it is an extremely simple contruction when compared to a plasma and it consumes less power (about 30 to 40 percent leser than a Plasma). They also have a longer life as the source of light is our good old robust tubelight that has been boosted to survive a lifetime.

Modern Plasmas no longer have major burn-in problems and they are growingly ecofriendly - However, if you abuse the plasma screen by keeping the unit on a static image for 2 to 3 days continuously, then, in all probabilities, you deserve the damages - That is something that a TV is not supposed to be

Modern LCDs are also getting advanced with time - The response time (ala the delay to shut and close the window) is getting faster and better. The windows are being packed in such a way that they leak lesser light and enhance the contrast plus the viewing angle.

I will soon explain you about Full HD and HD Ready...

Regards,

K Prasad

480p, 480i, 720p, 720i, 1080i, 1080p - These are the numbers that are associated with any TV that is hitting the market - What significance do they hold - let me explain.

A current DVD player emits it's signal at 480 horizontal lines of resolution - that is termed as Standard Definiton or SD. Now, why can't they just call it 480 and what have an i and a p have to do?? Well, that has got to do with the way the signal is scanned - i stands for interlaced and p stands for progressive scan. In an interlaced picture, every alternate line is projected on the screen twice and this happens at such a speed that you cannot notice it - This was done because the earlier signal processing units were not fast enough to process the entire signal at a single so - So, what did the geeks do - they interlaced the image. Then came better processors that are advanced enough to process the entire image in a single go. The image by image processing and feeding to the screen is the Progressive scanning.

Humanity always thought big and TVs too gained in size. with increased size, came the next challenge - you need more resolution to avoid a pixelleted look of the image. They initially tried to jack up the signals to 540 lines of resolution - it worked to a certain extent.

Something you will see in a portable TV is that the image is always much crisper and clearer and the researchers made a note of the same. The solution to large screens was to enhance the resolution - as an initial step to double it - so, the 540 became 1080 - the p and the i continue to remain the way they are.

In between, there was a more pragmatic approach taken wherein people felt that what would be an ideal count of pixels beyond which the human eye cannot see any difference - the answer was 720 lines of resolution on a TV that is double the size of a 21" TV or on a 42" screen. Researchers have found out that the least measurable angle for a human eye is 2 arc minutes (just as a meter is diveded into 100 cms, a degree is divide into minutes and a 3D degree into arc minutes). So, they concluded that beyond a distance of 6 feet (the preferred viewing position in most houses), it doesn't make any sense whatsoever to go anything beyond 720 lines of resolution.

While the two different streams of research continued, those working on 1080 claimed their study to be superior as the TV would then be capable of displaying better images even from closer distances (most people need some or other argument like that to justify their madness to method). They also justified that work is better done on 1080 than on 720 as there is a future scope of even bigger screens - things bigger than a 42" display.

That explains 720i and p which is now termed as HD ready and 1080i and p which explains full HD.

As with any marketing team, they went overboard marketing the 1080 because bigger numbers sell better and the firms need something to boast about - infact, as of today there are Full HD TVs that are available at sizes as low as 15" which are being used on computers and laptops - you need a microscope to see the pixels lol

Great informations Prasad. Thank you very much

So, should a person go for Full HD or a HD Ready? The answer is simple - If you are going for a screensize of more than 55" then, go for a Full HD otherwise, you ain't getting anything extra. Secondly, if you are planning for a 40" - 50" TV and prefer watching from a close distance (which is not recommended anyway), then you should consider a Full HD.

For anything below 37", Full HD is sheer waste - better go for HD ready, save some monies - buy a smaller TV for your bedroom / donate it to charity / don't forget me and pass on the savings to me lol .

In terms of whether to go for a Plasma / LCD - purely on picture quality factor, plasmas are still better than LCDs - LCDs are improving by the day. The latest version of LED TVs is a brilliant implementation wherein each pixel has it's own light source thereby reducing the leakage and enhancing the contract and vividness of the picture. However, the LED displays and even some high end LCDs cost a bomb - 75K upwards.

Plasmas on the other hand are much cheaper (since firms have expertised building them over the past many years). They consume more of electricity, but, it is about 50% higher than that of an LCD. Plasmas are heavier and LCDs are lighter - it doesn't matter as you are not going to carry your TV along on a day to day basis OR change the location so frequently.

You can decide accordingly.

I personally am an extremely satisfied customer of Panasonic 42" HD Ready Plasma - the viewing distance in my case is close to 12" !!

Regards,

K Prasad

great info prasad,you gave me confidence to buy a plasma,but an lG though!,the panel looks better in lg plasma as also the picture,can you tell me your model number and also kindly clarify the fullhd- hdready difference and also the better one to view tv from dish at short distance,is it the plasma or lcd??????

thanks in advance  

my budget is 65 k and size requirement is 42 plus,which one and which brand to go far,i had shortlisted lg plasma for 41k,lg lcd jazztheatre 42 for 62k,samsung 42 -6 series for 72 k(of these kg model has a 5.1channel sound,the rest its 2 or 3,both lg and samsung madel have the same contrast ratio150000is to 1) 

which one to go far,my viewing will only be tv from sundirect and dvds

Trust me Bala, I am a bit confused on what to recommend you - Since you said, you would like to watch TV from close distance (something which is not at all recommended), the argument goes for a Full HD TV. However, there is not much FullHD content that is available in the market - To get the best out of a FullHD TV, you need a blueray player or a PS3. To top it up you need the Blueray Discs which are hardly available are extremely costly.

From the boardcast perspective, the Standard Definition has penetrated so much in India that just to undo it and change to HD is a mammoth task. Sun TV is the only provider which provides a few channels on HD and it costs a whopping 5000 bucks month !!! to top it up, the signal is only HD Ready as I understand and that too not all channels are HD !!

Actually, the HD Ready Plasmas fit the bill under the current day context in a better way.

The LG Model you are talking about is not Full HD. I would advice you to consider Panasonic 42" Full HD model (TH-P42S10D) The real advantage with the panasonic brand of LCDs and Plasmas is that the Panels are "Made in Japan" and the quality of the panel is unmatched - the sheer fact that it has passed the quality tests in Japan makes it a better buy over LG. Japanese Panels are leaps ahead on quality with exceptionally lower failure rates. This one retails for about 60K in Mumbai and should fit your budget.