TV Buying Guide-3: Plasma Televisions

The name plasma comes from the gas inside the set which lights up when an electric charge is applied. Plasma TVs are light and thin enough to be hung on your wall. Models like the Samsung HPR5052 produce great pictures with excellent brightness and colour range.

Compared to LCDs they have a wide viewing angle of almost 180 degrees and produce more natural-looking pictures with better contrast. Plasmas are also capable of very large sizes making them perfect for home theatre. The best units have a long life of about 60,000 hours which is more than enough for the average user.

Though plasma models are perhaps the most expensive among high-end TV’s, their prices have been falling rapidly in recent years. Historically plasma has suffered from the problem of burn-in which means that that a static image like a channel logo gets etched onto the screen permanently if it’s on-screen for too long.

However this problem has been significantly reduced in recent models and can be reduced even more by taking a couple of precautions: keep your contrast levels moderate (say less than 50%) and avoid showing static images continuously for hours.

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Television | CRT | Plasma | LCD