Flat Panel Televisions

Flat screens: LCD and Plasma; buying guide

Before making an investing in a new TV, take a minute to learn about the different options that you may find in your local TV shop. As you may already know, the most popular technologies are LCD and Plasma televisions.

Nowadays you can walk into any electronic's store and find that traditional televisions (CRT) have almost disappeared. Now, any self-respected shopper will get one of the famous "Flat Panels," LCD and Plasma are the most popular, although there are emerging technologies like OLED and SED that promise better resolutions and lower power consumption, among other benefits. However, that's a bit in the future, for now we should focus our attention to our new best friends, LCD and Plasma televisions.

And the questions that is on everybody's mind is... What is better, Plasma or LCD? and on this you can find a lot of information everywhere, sometimes it can be confusing, so here's the brief version.

Plasma and LCD technologies are similar, but they differ in key aspects, as we will see.

Plasma tv's are based on individual pixels, or single dots of lights that fill your screen, there are hundreds-of-thousands of pixels in any given Plasma Tv, so they give you the idea of a continuous, sharp image.

Now for what's important for you. Plasma televisions usually have high contrast ratios, which is the difference between the whites and the blacks. The higher the contrast ratio, the better. I've seen tv's with contrast rations as high as 8000:1, that's an amazing array of shades of gray in between!

So What's better, LCD or Plasma?

It is important to remind the reader that Plasma and LCD are two different technologies, and I wouldn't say that one is necessary better than the other, they're just... different, and offer a different set of advantages and disadvantages.

Both, LCD and Plasma have:

The same resolution. You have High definition Plasmas and High definitions LCD's.
The same picture quality. The difference in picture quality is minimal.
The same sizes. Until recently, Plasma TVs where known to be bigger, but now you can find the size you need in both technologies.
A close price range. It used to be that prices where so different between lcd's and plasmas, but now the price gap is closing.

Lcd and Plasma differences:

LCD televisions display whiter whites
The trick is that crystals move away to let the light go through, that's how you get pure white. However, when the same crystals are rendering "black" they move to block the light, and in theory this is Ok, but in reality some light passes through the blocking crystals so LCD black levels are not "pure black", kind of what you see when you enter a room, during the day, with the curtains down. That's why on LCD televisions blacks sometimes look like a dark shade of gray or blue.

Plasma televisions display blacker blacks
Plasmas have the opposite effect, to display the color black, plasma television only need to stop sending electricity to a specific pixel on the screen, when there's no charge going through, there's no light. And like magic, you get a more defined and pure level of black.

What about Resolution?

Resolution is the amount of detail you can get on your high-definition Television. The higher the resolution the sharper, more detailed image you can get. In the world of HD television there are 3 main resolutions: 780p, 1080i, and 1080p. However, only Blue-ray disks and some high-end video games can render a full 1080 resolution. Usually everybody can get a nice HD experience at 780p.

1080i or 1080p? In today's high-definition TVs (P)stands for progressive, and the (i) for Interlaced. Progressive offers a smother image transitions, specially when displaying movement, like sports or action movies.

"BEFORE YOU BUY" TIPS FOR FLAT PANEL TVs

If you're shopping for a Flat Panel TV, there are some very important things you need to know before you buy. You'll find these cool-looking Tvs in big numbers and a wide range of sizes. Flat panels are the most popular, fastest growing TV market in the U.S.

Tip#1 - Do some comparison shopping online
You'll be amazed to find the differences in prices from vendor to vendor; you can save as much as 30% just by shopping around for your next TV. Some good places to start your search are Froogle.com and Ecost.com

Tip#2 - Read Reviews!
Is not a secret that some TV models just don't work as you'd expect, even on well-known brands. Sometimes a specific model come out with some glitches or inconveniences that will annoy you at the very least. Honest reviews from actual owners will save you trouble. Some great sites to find reviews are Cnet.com and Consumer Reports.

Tip#3 - Determine the right size
With cheaper, bigger Flat Screens TVs coming out every month, it's hard to determine which one you'd enjoy more. Keep in mind that not always bigger is better. How much space do you have in your TV room, or your entertainment center may determine what's best for you. Very important is the distance you put between the TV and the viewer:

Suggested Viewing Distance
Size of your TV	Distance
19	4.75 Feet
22	5.50 Feet
26	6.50 Feet
32	8.00 Feet
36	9.00 Feet
40	10.00 Feet
42	10.50 Feet
50	12.50 Feet
56	14.00 Feet
60	15.00 Feet
72+	18.00 Feet

Tip#4 - If you can... wait!
Prices on LCD's and other flat panel televisions are dropping very fast. If you find a TV you like, and wait a month, chances are you'll get a price drop between 10 and 20% lower than the previous month. Of course, don't find yourself waiting for ever, when you find the TV you like, at a good price, go for it!

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VIDEO IN THE 21st CENTURY

When I went to the store to buy my LCD Flat Screen TV there where lots of options and price ranges, I remember that I had a budget but after just looking at the different models they had, my budget quickly to became a thing of the past.

It's easy to loose track of what you need when you see all the things you like, TV manufacturers know this and are always trying to come up with the latest and the coolest. Actually until recently, everything was pretty standard, all you could choose what size and picture quality, right? well that's not precisely truth any more.

The next generation of TVs will have extra-cool features like internet access! yeah internet in your TV, but wait, I'm not talking about "surfing" the web on your TV, that's so 1990's, what these new Televisions will have is Internet connectivity so you can watch online TV.

Many service providers like NETFLIX offer the possibility to watch online, they have thousands of movies and series ready to watch 24 hours a day. Now, traditionally this means that you have to watch on you computer monitor, and like most of us, you'd agree this is not very desirable. To fix this, Netflix offers a "box" that can broadcast netflix content right into your living room TV. And now many LCD and flat screen TV's are being packed with this feature built-in. Even more, in some models you can watch a wide array of Internet Television and Movies.

 Another Internet video service that was making a lot of noise was JOOST, but they lost steam time ago and now they're trying to come back with a vengeance, only time will determine if JOOST have what it takes.

Ok personally, I have a love-hate relationship with Netflix, while I love their catalog of movies and tv series to watch online (they even have all STARZ hits) I hate the fact that the quality of the video is very bad, and they do not let you select the quality of the stream by yourself. They have this bogus auto-detect script that always gives me the "Basic" quality which is very poor. And I know for a fact that my Internet connection speed is enough at least for a "Medium" quality which would be acceptable.

I called netflix customer service and they were very polite to tell me that there's nothing I can do to improve my watching experience, other than changing ISP's (internet service providers)

So ok, after all it's kinda "free" to watch at netflix, I mean I still receive my 3 DVD's on the mail every week or so, so I'm cool with that, however...

There are a few online TV contenders out there that are really impressive, I mentioned JOOST that has an amazing quality and controls, I like that you can actually comment on what you're watching on real-time and other viewers can reply or comment on the program. That said, Joost has a very limited selection of programming, maybe they lack the support of a big company or maybe big companies fear this kind of start-ups online television that may become potential competitors in a near future.

Another service that I love is HULU, this guys have real potential and are already one on the most visited sites for online video content. Now again, great quality (some programs even come in HD -amazing-) the time spent for buffering and commercial interruption is minimum. But again, content is limited, but not nearly as limited as JOOST, so I spend more time at hulu.com

I think at the end the war has two fronts.

On one side Online TV stations need to fight the traditional Television networks and corporations, remember what happened to NAPSTER? online TV stations face the same challenges, they wanna make the content available for free and with minimal commercial interruption, but the large corporation don't want to loose money, and they don't let their programs go online very often, usually what you see online is either only a short clip, old or unsuccessful.

On the other side of the online video wars, there's file-size and bandwidth issues. It takes considerably more space and resources to broadcast video than it takes to broadcast audio, and exponentially more than text and pictures (like a regular html page for example) So the future will depend on either a Bandwidth revolution that can allow the average user to download massive amounts of data, or, what seems like a more realist prospect, to come up with better technologies to compress and de-compress video, in other words, to enable the transmit of video and audio data using less space (bandwidth)

What ever the future holds I'm sure that it is bright and exciting, soon we will see internet television available everywhere, on any TV, and with an amazing quality!