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If you are going to change the old TV-set or to buy a home theater, you should think of the plasma screen as a source of qualitative image. Its work is based on the glow of alive noble gas. Plasma screens have a lot of advantages and disadvantages that can confuse even a mature customer. But still there is a question, to buy or not to buy?
Plasma screens have following advantages:
- High contrast. The best, compared to LCD and tube screens. The image is colorful and bright. That’s why plasma screens are often chosen for home theater.
- Plasma screen is not as persistent as LCD screen; the response time is not long. So the dynamic scenes will look natural.
- Plasma screens have larger viewing angle, compared to LCD screens. The image quality won’t change due to the position of watching.
- Compared to tube TVs, they have high dearness, because there are no problems of beam convergence, characteristic to tube TVs.
- Compared to tube TVs, there is no image flicker, so your eyes won’t get tired.
- They are insensitive to electromagnetic fields. Magnetic materials are used in the production of speakers, so they can’t be placed near the tube screen. Plasma screens don’t have this disadvantage.
The disadvantages of plasma screens almost cancel all their advantages:
- Very high price – about few thousand dollars.
- High energy consumption. For example, LCD screens of the same size consume few times less energy.
- As a result of high energy consumption, plasma screens get hot, that’s why producers use fans for cooling. It means that the fan will make noise. Of course, producers use fans with lowered noise level and besides, the viewer is quite far from the screen.
- Plasma screens have the same disadvantage as tube TV-sets – their phosphor fades, especially on the places with stable images, for example, channel logos. It means, that it isn’t recommended to use them as a TV-set. Though the producers try to cope with this disadvantage and nowadays its term of life is compared to other screen types. Besides, the dots of plasma screen can also fade.
- As in any other screen type, the unit of image is a dot or a pixel. In plasma screen this dot is bigger then in other types. That’s why plasma screens are large (from 30 inches). It means that the room, where you are going to place the screen, should be quite big – the distance between the viewer and the screen should be 4-5 times bigger than its diagonal, i.e. 3-4 meters. Back speakers should be behind the viewer, so the width of the room should be minimum 4-5 meters.
- Plasma screens are heavy.
Usually, if you buy a plasma screen, you don’t get a full-fledged TV set. Plasma screen is just an imagery device. That’s why you should additionally buy TV-tuner, acoustic system, DVD-player. Of course, there are models with built-in acoustic system and TV-tuner, but I don’t think it is a good choice. You won’t have a qualitative sound.
Have a pleasant purchase! |