Thursday, January 10, 2008

Plasma Pros and Cons

Plasmas have wide viewing angles, meaning you can sit off-center and still see a very good picture. They have high contrast ratios, excellent color, deep blacks, fast response times for viewing scenes with a lot of motion such as sports, and generally lower prices than LCDs above 42 inches. Today’s plasmas have a long life expectancy. Many of the top tier brands are now rated at 60,000 hours, which is equal to over 16 years of use when operating the set 10 hours a day, every day.

Plasma disadvantages are few. In the early days, the most common criticism was that they suffered from “burn-in,” meaning that when a static image such as a video game logo is on the screen for too long, its shadow may linger even after it’s gone. Burn-in really is the uneven wear of the phosphors within the plasma panel. The risk of burn in has been greatly reduced by the set makers and can be minimized with a simple precaution. Like with LCD, upon unpacking and connecting the set, change the “picture mode setting” from factory preset (usually Vivid) to Movie, Cinema or Standard (depending on the TV) and lower the contrast (also called the “picture control”) to about one half level for the best picture.

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