Here's a handy guide to help you make an educated purchasing decision
(Reprinted from Etronics)
SHOPPER'S GUIDE TO VIDEO DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY
What is Plasma?
Plasma Televisions/monitors apply voltage to any of more than a million tiny chambers filled with neon, xenon, krypton, or argon, or a combination of these gasses. Using a matrix of wires to "address" specific chambers, the gasses ionize into plasma that emits ultraviolet light. Light strikes red, green, or blue phosphors coated on the inside of the chambers, and a pixel emits that respective colored light.
-Max. Resolution: 1366 x 768
-Burn-in Can Occur
-Side-view Image remains the Same
-Lifespan: 50,000 Hours
What is LCD?
LCD (Liquid-crystal display) televisions work passively, shining a light behind the LCD panel. They include the same number of pixels as a plasma display, but the pixels are colored red, green, and blue. When voltage is applied to a pixel, using a matrix of wires, the pixel becomes dark and light can not show through it.
-Max. Resolution: 1600 x 1200
-Burn-in Can Not Occur
-Side-view loses Contrast & Brightness
-Lifespan: 60,000 Hours
What is DLP?
The technology inside DLP is often referred to as either "micro-mirrors", or DMD. It works this way: build a few hundred thousand tiny mirrors, and line them up in 800 rows of 600 mirrors each. Now attach a hinge to each of those 480,000 mirrors. Attach each of those 480,000 hinges to it's own very tiny motor! Power each motor with electrostatic energy! The motors tilt their mirrors up to 20 degrees at incredible speeds. This allows the mirrors to modulate light from a lamp, and send the "modulated signal" out through a lens, on to a screen. The most amazing part of DLP micro mirrors, is the scale of size. The 480,000 mirrors (actually 580,000 are used), hinges and motors are packed onto a "wafer" a bit larger than your thumbnail.
- Max. Resolution: 1280 x 720
- 5ms Refresh Rate
- Sharper Image
What is HDTV?
HDTV provides pictures with several times the clarity of DVDs and over 5 times the resolution of a regular television picture.
HDTV provides vivid color, including a wide range of hues (such as subtle purples and reds) without any bleeding at the edges of the image.
HDTV images are as detailed as a high-resolution photograph. It is like looking through a window. When watching a TV program in HD, you will be amazed at the sharpness of the picture. You can even pick up the specks of different colors in an actor’s eyes, or see individual sweat drops on a football player--details you could never see through regular television.
All HDTV programming can provide 5.1 channel Dolby Digital Surround Sound--just like true theatre sound.
HDTV refers to a complete product/system with the following minimum performance attributes:
* Display Scanning Format: Has active vertical scanning lines of 720 progressive (720p), 1080 interlaced (1080i),or higher
* Receiver: Receives ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions and decodes all ATSC Table 3 video formats
* Audio: Receives and reproduces, and/or outputs Dolby Digital audio
What is EDTV?
EDTV refers to a complete product/system with the following minimum performance attributes:
* Display Scanning Format: Has active vertical scanning lines of 480 progressive (480p) or higher
* Receiver: Receives ATSC terrestrial digital transmissions and decodes all ATSC Table 3 video formats
* Audio: Receives and reproduces, and/or outputs Dolby Digital audio
What is Burn-in?
Burn-in occurs when an image is left on the screen too long, like if you pause a DVD for a long time. Once burn in happens, you will always see a ghostly outline of the Burnt-in image no matter what you are watching. This is because some pixels on the TV can no longer create as much light as others, so they will always appear darker. Most commonly this occurs from playing video games for too long or from watching letterboxed material too often. The easiest way to avoid this problem is to limit videogame time and to watch material in a full screen format as much as possible.
Burn-in is a consideration with Plasma TVs, but not LCDs. Plasma TVs, like traditional CRT TVs create their own light. They make light by exciting a chemical coating inside the screen called "phosphors". The burn-in issue happens when you continually ask some of these phosphors to make light while others nearby are basically sleeping. LCDs on the other hand create a picture by blocking light from an outside source (basically a powerful light bulb). This makes it impossible for burn-in to happen on a LCD screen
What is Response time?
Response time is the amount of time it takes for a liquid crystal cell to go from active (black) to inactive (white) and back to active (black) again. It is measured in milliseconds or (ms). Lower numbers mean faster transitions (ie. 16 ms is faster than 25 ms.) and therefore less visible image artifacts.
