Conventional wisdom often dictates that when it comes to plasma TV size, the bigger the better. However, that is not the case.
The most obvious drawback of plasma screen TV size is the cost of the set itself, which increases with size, often quite disproportionately so, with only slightly larger displays costing a whole lot more. But a more hidden cost is the price of the electricity needed to operate your wonderful plasma flat screen TV.
Plasma televisions have gotten a bad reputation for being power hogs. Generally speaking, plasma TV power consumption is higher than that of LCD TVs. But, it’s interesting to note the good old CRT televisions (a.k.a. tubes) are just as power hungry as plasma TVs… per square inch of screen size that is. So the takeaway from all of this is that the larger your plasma screen, the larger your electric bill will be. Therefore, it’s to your definite advantage to not go overboard with the plasma flatscreen size you’re looking to buy.
And besides overreaching beyond your budget, by going overboard I mean getting a screen that’s the wrong size for the room it’s going to be placed in. Plasma flat screen TVs, and other large screen TVs for that matter, have a minimum optimal viewing range. If you get too close the image starts looking pixelated. As a general guideline, the viewing distance should be no less than one and a half times the diagonal size of the screen. So for example, for a 50 inch plasma TV the minimum distance is 75 inches, or 6′3″, for a 42 inch plasma TV it’s 5′3″, and for a big 70 inch plasma TV it is 8′9″. Therefore before you make your purchase, make sure have enough viewing distance.
Large screen TVs also have a maximum recommended viewing distance, beyond which the immersive quality of the large screen starts getting lost. And that distance is roughly three times the diagonal length of the screen.
The television market is flooded with different technologies, and that’s because no TV technology is perfect. Every technology, including that of plasma television has its strengths and weaknesses, its advantages and disadvantages.
In this post I detail the most important advantages and disadvantages of plasma flat screen TV technology to help you make an informed decision and figure out if a plasma television is the right choice for you.
Advantages:
Plasma televisions are thin and can be mounted on a wall.
Are slimmer and weigh less than rear projection televisions, and of course much less than CRT televisions.
Produce better color accuracy, brightness and contrast than any other TV technology except for CRTs.
Have a great viewing angle. Unlike LCD televisions, plasma TVs can be viewed from extreme side angles without picture degradation.
No motion blur due to high refresh rates and fast pixel response times. This makes plasma televisions superior at displaying fast motion video such as action movies and sports programming.
Disadvantages:
Plasma televisions are susceptible to screen burn-in. Burn-in occurs because the light emitting phosphor material in plasma screens degrades with use, loosing its luminosity. Therefore, if some areas of the screen are constantly made to emit higher levels of brightness than other areas, the phosphor degrades unevenly across the screen resulting in “ghost” images. Newer model plasma televisions contain technology to mitigate this problem, however screen burn-in for plasma displays can still occur under extreme conditions. Plasma televisions therefore should not be used if long periods of static image display is required.
As mentioned above, the light emitting phosphor in plasma screens loses its luminosity over time, and therefore, regardless of screen burn-in, a plasma TV will dim with use. For newer model plasma TVs this effect may become noticeable after 10 years of 8 hours a day of use, so for normal household viewing it may not be a big problem.
Susceptibility to large area flicker, where image flicker becomes noticeable within large areas of similar color.
Susceptible to reflection glare.
Consume more electricity on average than LCD TVs.
Because plasma television screens contain pressurized gas, they will have trouble operating at high altitudes where the pressure is low. The typical plasma TV will do just fine below 6000 feet, with some models rated for higher altitude operations. If you live at high altitude, check the rating of the plasma television you intend to buy.
Plasma screen technology is based on the same principles that make fluorescent light bulbs work. Each pixel (light dot) on a plasma display is essentially a tiny fluorescent bulb. Each pixel generates its light by using electrodes to apply a potential voltage to an inert gas (xenon, neon, and helium) trapped in small cell, thereby ionizing it (stripping it of its electrodes) and forming what’s called plasma.
The plasma ions then rush to the electrodes and collide, emitting ultraviolet light in the process. The ultraviolet light is then absorbed by a phosphor material coating the plasma cells.
Phosphor materials have the property of emitting visible light once struck by ultraviolet photons, and that’s how the pixels of a plasma display get their color.
The brightness of a pixel in a plasma screen is controlled by flickering it thousands of times a second, much faster than a human can notice. The percentage of time the pixel is “on” determines it’s apparent brightens to the human eye.
Before the advent of the plasma flat screen TV, CTR televisions (cathode ray tube televisions) dominated the television market. CTRs are inexpensive to manufacture and produce bright and sharp pictures of great quality. However they do suffer form great drawbacks. First among those is their bulkiness. CRT TVs weigh a ton and are very deep, requiring quite a lot of space behind the screen. This drawback severely hinders their ease of transport and choice of placement. The bulkiness of CRT television technology also limits their practical screen size. While it is theoretically possible to manufacture CRT screens of any dimension, the tremendous weight and size of large screens would make their placement in a home quite awkward or even impossible.
Plasma screen technology is the first widespread television technology to tackle the drawbacks of CRTs head-on while still retaining a high quality picture. Plasma televisions are thin and much lighter than CRTs. Therefore, plasma televisions can be manufactured with large screen sizes that can be conveniently mounted against a wall.
Rudimentary plasma display technology was invented in 1964, and was widely used for monochrome digital displays in the 1970s and then in monochrome computer plasma monitors in the 80s and 90s. Large screen plasma TVs started appearing on the market not until 1997 with both Fujitsu and Philips introducing a 42-inch plasma flat screen TV. Those early large screen plasmas were expensive though, costing about $15,000 per set. But since then, prices have come down sharply as larger and larger screen sizes became available.
