You want to buy a flat screen TV and you are not being able to decide whether to go for Plasma vs LCD TV. At the very first instance, you should know that the question of burn-in is not a problem as it was before with Plasma TVs. It could be said that it is not as bad as it was with the older Plasma TV models. In order that you may decide on which type of TV you are going to buy, there are three questions which you need to answer. Few guidelines are presented below.
Reflections and Glare from the Screen
The first question is if the room where you going to watch the TV is well lit or dark. This brings up the question of ambient light. The light in the room is one of the most important factors in choosing Plasma vs LCD TV or the other way around. The quality of images in a Plasma TV lowers as the amount of ambient light in the room increases. LCD TVs generally perform better in a well lit room when compared to plasma TVs.
Plasma and LCD TV offer different picture quality, and depends on the amount of ambient light present in the room. A Plasma TV offers a better quality of the images in a low ambient light environment. A much better picture quality is offered by Plasma TV in a dark room, having a better contrast ratio, and dark black levels in comparison to a LCD TV. If you watch a Plasma TV in a well lit room, the picture would look dimmer than what you will find in a LCD TV. This is mainly due to the glare and reflections from the ambient light.
But this slight problem in Plasma TVs has been somewhat taken care of. With anti-glare screen being used in some of the best Plasma TVs, the effect of ambient light on image quality has been greatly reduced. The screen in a Plasma TV is made of glass, and a special treatment to that glass panel makes the screen to resist glare and reflections from lights. The anti-glare treatment given to the glass screen lowers the reflectivity of the glass to a great extent. When watching the TV in a dimly lit room, you do not get the surrounding lights reflected from the screen of your Plasma TV on to your eyes. If you intend to watch TV with the room lights on, it is a good idea to buy a Plasma TV with anti-glare coating. The top Plasma TVs available in the market today use anti-glare screens for the purpose to reduce reflections from the ambient light in the room.
Plasma vs LCD TV Response Time
Generally speaking if you are watching content with high speed scenes a plasma TV will offer an advantage versus LCD TV. This is because its response time is lower. This puts the Plasma TV right on top for sports, and games. If you watch fast moving scenes as sports on a LCD TV, you will see a blur around the edges of the moving objects. Note however that if you use to play games a lot of time, a plasma TV is not such a great idea because of it's susceptibility to burn-in. There are LCD TVs on the market now with fast response time, and one could get a model with response time of 5ms or lower. You just have to keep in mind that if crisp picture is important for you, a low response time (high refresh rate) is a feature you should be looking for.
Screen Size
If you like a large flat panel, Plasma TV offers a slight price advantage over LCD TVs. Also, presently there are no Plasma TVs in the market below 42 inches, but it is likely that we will soon see Plasma TVs with 32 inch screen size. So basically if you want a small HDTV your only option is an LCD TV.
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