Have your say & ask the experts

Having decided to buy a  46 inch Tv this month and doing all the reasearch, I was wondering whether there really is a significant difference between plasma & LCD. It seems that manufacturers have been working on both technologies and improving the faults ie black levels and motion flow getting better on LCD, image retention and power consumption improving with Plasma etc so a lot of the old problems don't appear to be relevant.

So is it that really a cse  there isn't much difference, just subtle differences ? and the choice now is moving towards what features you want and what sources you are going to connect ?

Or are there are significant differences still ?

 It would be good to hear from people who have both LCD and Plasma in their houses.

(Not meaning to rehash old ground but a lot of the articles/information on the interent, is 3-5 years old and doesn't seem to cover the newer range of TV's from the last 2 years. )

 Thanks

Hi Staggerlee,

I've been working in hifi for a couple of years now and have watched as sets have evolved even in that short period of time. LCD has improved vastly since the old days of unnatural skin tones, over saturation, meshing of colours and ridiculous blurring. Most 100Hz LCD's perform quite well, however IMO a good plasma panel will still excell in the right environment. LCD still unfortunately suffers from backlight bleeding in darks environments, I know this for certain as I recently attended a Samsung AV roadshow which was set in a dark atmosphere and the LCD's were unforgiveably grey. If you're leaning that way though, a great alternative would be one of the LED tv's. While responsivness still isn't up to that of a plasma, it's the first tv I've seen that looks great in both bright AND dark environments, maintaining NEARLY the same level of black as what you get from a plasma. The three things you should ask yourself when trying to decide are:

1. When do you watch your tele? I.e. Daytime, nightime etc

2. What do you like to watch? Sport, action movies etc

3. What kind of room is it going into? Lots of windows, or closed off theatre room

I was expecting a torrent of abuse for my controversial post above. It doesn't really represent my opinion. I think the technology is only one part of the equation and that the most important thing is the processer inside the tv.

see http://www.thx.com/products/home/displays/shopping.html

Hope this helps you decide.

Very simply, in my opinion, technology should not decide your next TV purchase. Have a look at them, and then choose the one you think is best. Whether it's LCD or Plasma really shouldn't matter.