Flat-Panel HDTV Choices: LCD vs. Plasma HDTV – Part 4 (Image Processing, Screen Burn-In, and High Altitude)
Plasma and LCD TV’s lead the HDTV revolution. For the past several years, Plasma TV’s were the gold standard in the HD format, and, to an extent, they continue to be today, though the gap has been nearly closed by the LCD format.
The differences between Plasma HDTV and LCD HDTV’s are numerous. To pick out what best suits your TV needs it’s good to have these few things in mind, if you know the basics you can make a wise buying decision.
Image Processing: Flat-panel HDTVs don’t just take a signal and send it straight to the screen. They run all sorts of image processing on it first, that is designed to enhance some of the attributes above, and fill in any gaps in the transition that may have occurred. Good image processing typically does scaling work since much of the content that’s available is not yet put out in full 1080p, but instead in 1080i. A 720p set will use software to down-convert the original 1080i signal by half, and then upconvert that to 720p. A full 1080p set will process the 1080i signal, doubling it to make it display progressively. To the extent that HDTV manufacturers give good explanations and images depicting what all their processing does for the image, we try to include that on individual product detail pages. We don’t give an edge in this department to either LCD or Plasma, but for good image processing, we highly recommend sticking with the list of brands mentioned above as these all take image processing very seriously, and the quality of the software used can have a big impact on the final picture you get.
Screen Burn-in: One complaint about plasma technology has been that still images left on the screen can burn in and leave a ghost image. This was problematic especially for things like video games which tend to keep a stationary score counter on the screen, or sports on TV that tend to keep a box up with scores and stats. In recent years the major plasma manufacturers have introduced new technology to prevent this from happening, and burn-in is no longer a real issue in our view.
High Altitude: Because plasma technology depends on gas compressed in tiny cells, people living at very high altitudes have reported issues. The problem is that as the air pressure goes down the gas in each pixels cell expands, and no longer behaves a intended when power is supplied. Complaints have ranged from strange whistling or buzzing noises emanating from the plasmas, all the way to TVs not displaying correct color. The first thing to note when you read about high altitude and plasma, is that the effects only happen at high altitudes, and by high, we’re talking about higher altitudes than Denver Colorado, the highest altitude city in the US. Unless you are way up in the mountains, this is not going to be a problem for you at all and should not be a deterrent to choosing plasma.
- Related Post :
- Flat-Panel HDTV Choices: LCD vs. Plasma HDTV – Part 1 (Picture Quality, Price, and Power Consumption)
- Flat-Panel HDTV Choices: LCD vs. Plasma HDTV – Part 2 (Contras Ratio, Color Gamut, and Resolution)
- Flat-Panel HDTV Choices: LCD vs. Plasma HDTV – Part 3 (Response Time, Refresh Rate and Frame Rate)
- What Different of DLP, Plasma TVs, LCD, and HDTV
- LCD Flat Panel TV
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