Plasma TVs are an excellent choice when looking at improving your home cinema experience. They are stylish and their slim bodies will allow you much more space in your room, and can be incorporated to any design easily. Plasmas can either be placed on a stand (that are often included) or wall mounted giving you the flexibility to suit your specific needs.
How they Work
A Plasma display is an array of tiny gas cells which are sandwiched between two sheets of thin - but strong - glass. Each cell acts like a mini fluorescent tube, emitting ultraviolet light, which then strikes red, green and blue spots on the screen. (you may see these colors referred to as RGB elsewhere). These spots glow to build a picture.
Benefits of a Plasma TV
Picture clarity – the picture displayed is clear, crisp and vivid. Plasma screens generally have excellent contrast, quality and sharpness.
Widescreen broadcast for an astounding home cinema experience.
Excellent colour and true life detail, makes you feel like you are actually there.
What to consider when buying an Plasma TV
The main advantage that Plasma’s have over LCD TVs is the size and cost. Once you go over the 40″ mark for an LCD cost per inch increase significantly and many beleive the picture quality to be inferior - LCDs often generate an artificial looking picture. Plasma television screens are long lived providing you with up to 60,000 hours viewing time. That’s roughly seven and a half years of watching your plasma for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, this number is often taken to mean half brightness, that is, at this point the picture will only be half as bright, so you can still go on watching your favourite programs.
Be sure to look out the the HD ready logo. HD Ready is a labelling scheme introduced by the TV manufacturers’ organisation, the European Industry Association for Information Systems (EICTA). The label means the TV has the minimum screen resolution and digital sockets to receive and display an HD picture.
Most Plasma HD TVs also have Auto format Switching. This allows you to choose which aspect ratio best suits the broadcast you are receiving. For example, showing standard (4:3) broadcasts with black bands on either side so the images aren’t stretched out of proportion. The TV will automatically adjust to the broadcasted format when using this option saving you the hassle of constantly changing when you switch channels.
Audio/video input sockets. Each time you wish to use a DVD player, set-top boxes, games consoles and other equipment, you will need a scart or AV socket for each piece of equipment. Most Plasma’s come with at least 2 scart sockets as standard. You should consider however looking for HDMI sockets to make sure your set will be future proofed, even if you dont have HDMI equipment at the moment.
Surround Sound can be an additional feature that you may wish too add by purchasing additional speakers to enhance your home system, to recreate the cinema experience. Most Plasma’s come with Virtual surround sound they mimic the effect using the two main speakers.
