Are you going to buy a flat-panel HDTV for watching HD channel? If the answer is “yes” then you must determine which kind to buy: LCD HDTV or Plasma HDTV.  Plasma is not available for screens smaller than 41 inches diagonal or at least it is much less popular, so LCD is your primary choice. If you are interested to buy HDTV with screens of 41 inches or larger, there are two things you should consider: the technology and the budget.

What is difference between LCD and Plasma technology?
LCD and Plasma panels may look alike, but the thin profile and also flat screen are different. Plasma screens uses tiny gas plasma cells matrix that charged by accurate electrical voltages in order to create an image. Liquid Crystal Display or LCD screens use liquid crystal filled in the space between two thin glass plates. The crystals get varying the amount of electrical charge to create pictures.

How about quality of picture between LCD and plasma screens?
Both LCD HDTV and Plasma HDTV produce great images but many specialists of home entertainment tell that plasma screens have a slight edge over LCDs for basic home theater-like usage since plasma screens have contrast better than LCD. Plasma is able to display blacks more precisely. It’s hard for LCDs to produce deep blacks because there is some leakage of light between pixels. This is continually improving with every LCD new generation, though.

The advantages of Plasma HDTV over LCD HDTV
In addition to better contrast, plasma screens typically have viewing angles better than LCD. Viewing angel is how far you can sit on either screen side before quality of visual performance is affected. It means plasma’s picture remains fairly solid even you on too far of an angle with Plasma while you tend to see some color and brightness shift for LCD. But this is continually changing. You can find some new LCDs with viewing angles equal to some plasma in the market. Plasmas can have a brighter color, once again because of light leakage on an LCD affecting its color saturation.

People may also tell you that LCDs have slower response times (measured in milliseconds) so that have a tendency to blur for fast-moving scenes in movies or in sports. This opinion was true for older generation LCD screens but for the newer models he differences of performance between plasmas and LCDs in this regard is almost nothing.  They have improved significantly.

Pricing is the biggest advantage plasmas over LCDs, particularly for screen 41 inches or larger. For some resolution, plasma HDTV is still able to beat most equivalently-priced LCD HDTV.  As you can see in this review, you will find some plasma HDTVs have priced lower than some LCD HDTVs.

The advantages of LCD HDTV over Plasma HDTV
LCD HDTVs tend to consume less power than Plasma HDTVs. With the trade-off being lower brightness, LCD panels with some of the newer “Eco” can use half of the power than equal plasmas. LCD also tends to has higher native resolution than similar-sized plasma, which means LCD has more pixels on a screen.

LCDs are generally easier to wall mount or move around because they are lighter than plasma of similar size. As you know that plasmas tend to use glass in their screen make-up while LCDs use plastic.

LCD pundits will tell you that LCDs have longer lifespan rather than plasmas that will drop half of their brightness after more than 20,000 viewing hours. It may be true for earlier plasma models but today you’ll find many plasmas in the market quote a lifespan of about 60,000 hours of viewing, which is similar with LCDs.

Finally LCD can catch up to plasma quality with LED backlighting technology. It uses banks of LED lights instead of lighting the screen with fluorescent tubes. LED Lighting is divided into two types: edge and direct. Direct backlighting arguably better, that is higher contrast because manufacturers can turn off screen lighting sections. Edge lighting uses a series of LEDs along the screen edge. Then by using a series of mirrors, the light is spread evenly across the screen.

Some people may tell you that plasmas suffer from screen burn-in and this will not happen in LCDs. Burn-in occurs when a static image stays on the screen for a very long time and resulting in a ghost of the “burned in” image. By improving feature and technology, newer plasmas are less susceptible though burn-in can still be a trouble. However, most burnt-in images are not permanent. They will fade after a few days.

source : cnet