HDTeleVision Review

Originally by: PETER PUTMAN, CTS

If you are like many consumers who are in the market for a new television, you’ve probably dreamed about making it a plasma or LCD flat screen HDTV.

Maybe you spent some time looking over the Sunday circulars from Best Buy, Circuit City, and other major retailers. Perhaps you spent some time on the Internet, shopping around for the best price. You may even have read a few product reviews here and there.

It’s also probable that, like your fellow shoppers, you aren’t quite sure exactly what the difference is between LCD and plasma. Sure, they’re both flat. One seems to be brighter than the other, but a little washed out at times. Some are marked HDTV — you might know what that means — but what does ‘EDTV’ mean?

Is your new flat-screen TV going to ‘burn in’, ‘burn out’, or burn up? Just how long will it last before you have to replace it? Does the gas leak out of a plasma TV? Will sunlight hurt your LCD TV?

And just who are all of these companies selling LCD and plasma TVs? Sure, you’re heard of Sony and Samsung, Panasonic and Philips, Polaroid and Toshiba. But who the heck is Maxent? Funai? Ovideon? Syntax? Vizio?

For us journalists, covering the fast-growing market for plasma and LCD TVs can be a real challenge at times. For consumers, it can be frustrating, confusing, intimidating, and expensive. There are an awful lot of products to choose from, but they’re not all ‘created equally’. Nor do they offer the same resolution and connector options.

In the interest of clearing up some of this confusion, I’ve prepared a list of things you should know about plasma and LCD TV technology, and some shopping tips to take along when you are searching for the ‘perfect’ flat screen TV. You know the old saying — ‘forewarned is forearmed!” (I won’t get into technical discussions of how plasma and LCD TVs work; you can find that information elsewhere on this web site.)

THE FACTS ON PLASMA

Both plasma and LCD technology are ‘mainstream’. Numerous companies sell these TVs in a variety of sizes, and prices are dropping faster than an elevator with a broken lift cable. Because of increasing consumer demand (and the fact that the United States is the #2 market worldwide for TVs), plenty of companies have gotten into the game.

Here’s something you should know. In the plasma market, there are only a handful of companies that actually manufacture plasma TVs. Not surprisingly, these companies typically have the best image quality and the broadest line of products available.

In Japan, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Hitachi are the ‘Big Three’ in plasma manufacturing. Panasonic is rolling out about 100,000 panels a month in 37-inch EDTV, 42-inch EDTV, 42-inch HDTV, and 50-inch HDTV sizes. They also have a new 65-inch model coming to market. Pioneer manufactures 43-inch HDTV and 50-inch HDTV plasma TVs using their original assembly line, and 42-inch, 50-inch, and 61-inch products on the ex-NEC line they purchased in January of 2004.

Hitachi also cranks out various sizes of plasma in the FHP factory that was originally a joint venture with Fujitsu. (Fujitsu recently announced they were withdrawing from the plasma manufacturing business). Hitachi panels sold in the United States include 37-inch and 42-inch HD AliS (Alternate Lighting of Surfaces) designs, and a unique 55-inch HD plasma TV.

In Korea, Samsung SDI is the clear leader with about 250,000 panels a month flying off their assembly line. Samsung manufactures 42-inch EDTV, 42-inch HDTV, 50-inch HDTV, and 63-inch HDTV plasma TVs for the mainstream market. (An 80-inch model is also set to debut shortly.) Neighbor LG Electronics is active with 42-inch, 50-inch, 60-inch, and even 71-inch products.

In China (Taiwan), Chunghwa Picture Tube (CPT) is rolling out 46-inch EDTV and HDTV plasmas, based on older Mitsubishi designs. Aside from the odd startup here and there, your plasma TV will use ‘glass’ from one of these six manufacturers, even if it has a different name on the front plate.

Certain sizes of plasma TV screens are as unique to a company as a fingerprint, such as 43 inches (Pioneer only), 55 inches (Hitachi only), 61 inches (Pioneer only) and 63 inches (Samsung only). If you see one of these with another brand name on it and a higher price, you may simply be paying a premium for that brand, or there may actually be some added value, such as improved video processing and scaling.

Keep in mind that true HDTV resolution can’t be found in plasma TVs smaller than 50 inches. There are two HDTV broadcast standards — 1920×1080 interlaced (1080i), and 1280×720 progressive (720p). So, in order for a plasma TV to be considered truly ‘HD’, it should have at least the same amount of pixels as a 720p signal, or more.

‘HD” in smaller sizes of plasma means that there are more pixels than ‘ED’ plasma, but generally not as many as there are in a true HD display. So, you’ll find that it’s difficult to see any substantial difference in picture quality between these two types of plasma TVs, particularly when viewing an HDTV program.

When viewing a widescreen DVD, you may often be surprised to se that the less expensive EDTV plasma TV actually looks sharper than the more expensive HDTV plasma TV! That’s because the image resolution of a widescreen DVD (nominally 704×480) is very close to the actual pixel count (852×480) in an EDTV plasma.

I would venture to say that if you watched both of these plasma TVs with the same content on them from a reasonable viewing distance — say, eight feet to ten feet — you might think the extra $$$ for the same-size HDTV version isn’t really worth it. And you’d be in good company, as 42-inch EDTV plasma TVs were big sellers during the 2004 holiday season, while 42-inch HDTV plasmas were not.