A Few Facts Worth Noting about Plasma and LCD Televisions
Flat panel displays encompass a growing number of technologies enabling video displays that are lighter and much thinner than traditional television and video displays that use cathode ray tubes; they are usually less than 4 inches thick. They can be divided into two general categories; volatile or static.
Plasma and Lcd Televisions – Volatile
Volatile displays require constant power output to refresh the image on screen many times a second. The image appears steady because the images are refreshed more often than the human eye can perceive. Some examples of volatile flat panel displays are: plasma displays, liquid crystal displays, organic light-emitting displays, light-emitting diode displays, electroluminescent displays, surface-conduction electron-emitter displays, field emission displays, and nano-emissive displays.
Plasma and Lcd Television – Static
Static flat panel displays rely on materials whose color states are bistable. This means that the image they hold requires no energy to maintain, but instead requires energy to change. This results in a much more energy efficient display, but with a tendency towards slow refresh rates which are undesirable in an interactive display. Some examples of static flat panel displays are; electrophoretic displays, bichromal ball displays, interferometric modulator displays, cholesteric displays, and bistable nematic liquid crystal displays.
Plasma and Lcd Television – How Plasma Works
Plasmas break pixels into sealed red, green, and blue sub-pixels, or cells that contain an inert gas. When an electric current, that is a derivative of the video signal, excites the gas, it causes the colored phosphors in each sub-pixel to glow. By driving each sub-pixel to the desired level, the signal determines the pixels exact color and brightness. By putting enough of these pixels close enough together, an image is created. To stay ready to respond to the signal, the plasma cells inside plasma lcd televisions remain partially on at all times, meaning that some light is inevitable, even when the signal tells the cell it wants black. Some of the major manufactures of plasma lcd televisions have re-engineered their sets to reduce this “idling” brightness by 80%. The result is mind-boggling, with the blackest blacks ever being produced in the history of television.
There are certain downsides to Plasma and LCD television, especially plasma televisions which suffer from leaving images for a longer time when connected to a video. The worst part is that such images can even get permanently etched on the plasma television screen and thus ruin your viewing pleasure. Nevertheless, this is generally not enough to put off buyers who obviously find the more expensive LCD televisions to be less attractive propositions and thus may still opt for plasma televisions.
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