HDTV Reviews

A new television technology has taken become the market leader in recent years. High Definition Television have become more affordable, and technologically superior to anything that came before. In the past, consumers chose between plasma televisions or rear projection units.

Plasma TV’s were expensive items that were reserved for a small segment of the market. Rear projection televisions had many flaws. Bulk, weight, bad viewing angles and other shortcomings made the novelty of owning anything but a standard television an expensive experiment in technology that had not yet matured.

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) HDTV’s have become the fastest-growing segment of the television market, sales soaring as the price and quality of the picture are combined to make them attractive to consumers. They also use much less power than their older competitors and offer great styling and looks as well.

Improvements of Late

Some of the issues that LCD HDTV’s have not overcome, are a slightly lower contrast ratio that the plasma.

Plasma screens still display deeper black for higher contrast than LCD’s. LCD’s were also generally smaller in size, and couldn’t compete with the wider-screen plasma and rear projectors that had the movie theater size that many consumers sought. Most LCD’s were 40" or less.

Now, however, LCD’s have reached a competitive level with their older cousins, and offer many of the same features, including contrast ratio and wide-screen versions which are hard to separate from the plasma or rear projectors as far as image quality. LCD’s still use less power, sometimes less than half of plasma and rear-projectors, which can save $20-$30 a month on average.

The savings aren’t just on power, either. The new-unit cost of an LCD HDTV is much less than the plasma version. A 50" LCD can still cost around $2000, but the same plasma can cost twice that amount. LCD’s also aren’t subject to image "burn in" problems that plasma televisions have.

"Burn-in" is a condition that causes an image left on the screen too long to become permanently etched into the television set screen. Manufacturers have dealt with the problem in different ways to reduce the effect, but it has not been completely solved.

So if you are looking for immediate cost savings, long life, energy conservation, and excellent picture quality, go with an LCD HDTV for your movies and programming, and you’ll appreciate the advances in technology over plasma and rear projection units.