How Plasma TVs and LCD TVs Differ – Pros and Cons – Plasma and LCD Technologies Explained
To the uninitiated, LCD TVs and Plasma TVs look like they’re essentially the same thing. Nothing could be further from the truth! Once you look past the slim profiles and pancake-flat screens, the similarities end. In fact, the two technologies have considerable differences, so lets quickly take a brief look at both.
LCD Televisions (Liquid Crystal Display)
LCD TV’s utilize liquid crystal display technology for its visual output. An LCD is made up of numerous monochrome or colored pixels that are illuminated by a reflector or light source. Color LCD TVs feature three cells (known as sub-pixels) for each actual picture. There is one TCL Google TV sub-pixel for each of the colors red, green and blue, the TV has fine control of each individual sub-pixel resulting in millions of possible colors. This makes for a much higher definition picture when compared to legacy television systems.
The pros of modern LCD Televisions include:
- Lighter than Plasma screen TVs
- Slim Profile, can be mounted on a wall
- Outstanding color range (millions) to a high degree of accuracy
- Inherently progressive. With millions of miniature transistors within an LCD Television system that can be controlled individually by the “brains” of the display controller, LCD TVs can handle progressive-scan sources with ease.
- No Burn In. Other TV models rely on phosphors which can experience a state called “burn in”. This is where ghost images are permanently burned into the screen.
- A large range of connectivity options such as High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Composite Video, PC In and S-Video
- High Resolution – LCDs can handle much higher resolutions than legacy television systems with the highest resolution 1,920×1,080 pixels.
Incidentally, 1080p is known as “Full High Definition” (1,920×1,080) and 720p “High Definition” (1,280×720).
Cons of LCD Televisions:
- Poor black color, black is shown more as a a grey in LCD TV’s
- Low Contrast ration – This is the ratio between the lowest and highest intensity. Plasma TVs perform better in this area.
- Limited Viewing Angle – LCD Televisions feature a poor viewing angle, although there has been some significant improvement in this area recently