Flat Panel TV’s: Plasma Vs LCD Which is Better?

Flat Panel TV’s: Plasma Vs LCD Which is Better? Noreen July 29

Today is the age of Flat Panel TV’s…..and if your in the market for a new TV, you must have seen and heard of Plasma TV’s and LCD TV’s. Now what’s the difference you may ask. Is there a difference in the picture quality? Which consumes more power? Which costs more…and WHICH IS BETTER FOR YOU?

It’s a tough choice especially with both technologies improving everyday and different manufacturers excelling in different areas. Well with a little research on both I hope to help you understand what Plasma TV’s and LCD TV’s and note their differences so you can assess which is better for you. At the end of the day though you need to look at each manufacturer and the product itself as it the analysis may vary.

What is Plasma and LCD?

Simply put Plasma and LCD are two technologies used to produce a flat panel screen or television. Plasma and LCD Tv’s may look similar, but the flat screen and thin profile is where the similarities end.

Plasma flat screen technology consists of hundreds of thousands of individual pixel cells, which allow electric pulses (stemming from electrodes) to excite rare natural gases-usually xenon and neon-causing them to glow and produce light. This light illuminates the proper balance of red, green, or blue phosphors contained in each cell to display the proper color sequence from the light. Each pixel cell is essentially an individual microscopic florescent light bulb, receiving instruction from software contained on the rear electrostatic silicon board. Look very closely at a plasma TV and you can actually see the individual pixel cell coloration of red, green, and blue bars. You can also see the black ribs which separate each.

LCD or Liquid Crystal Display screens are in layman’s terms sandwiches made up of liquid crystal pushed in the space between two glass plates. A matrix of thin-film transistors (TFTs) supplies voltage to liquid-crystal-filled cells sandwiched between two sheets of glass. When hit with an electrical charge, the crystals untwist to an exact degree to filter white light generated by a lamp behind the screen (for flat-panel TVs) or one projecting through a small LCD chip (for projection TVs). LCD monitors reproduce colors through a process of subtraction: They block out particular color wavelengths from the spectrum of white light until they’re left with just the right color. And, it’s the intensity of light permitted to pass through this liquid-crystal matrix that enables LCD televisions to display images chock-full of colors-or gradations of them.