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.