All deliver high quality, high def experiences, but differences remain. Which one is right for you?
By Gregory Quick
It seems that the market for HDTVs is getting increasingly complex, presenting shoppers with an array of options that all look good, the question is which one is right for you? When shopping for a flat screen HDTV.
Adorama has a large selection of flat screen televisions, based on a number of technologies including Plasma, LED-LCD and OLED. SO which presents the best image for you? Well they are all very good and differ in ways that you may or may not be able to discern. To top it off emerging models now don’t qualify as flat screen, some high end systems have a slight curve to them as well. We will provide the information that will help you cut through the clutter of acronyms so that you can make an informed decision for your next television purchase.
Plasma was the once and future technology for televisions. Breaking into the market a few decades ago they were initially very pricey but the best picture money can buy. Now the quality has continued to increase and prices have dropped tremendously, but rival technologies also offer top performance and while they may pale a little in color saturation and depth of black, but not by too much, they are often at much lower prices. Also LEDs appear to be taking over the supersize category. The light the screen Plasma HDTVs use precise amounts of electrical charges applied to minute gas plasma cells and the result is emitted light.
Leading Plasma TVs at Adorama
LED-LCDs
LCD technology can confuse users because basically any LED is an LCD but not all LCDs use LEDs. Simply right? A LCD (liquid crystal display) is just a crystalline material that when voltage is applied emits a color. However while they can provide color they do not provide light, so they need a (back) light so that they can project an image. Originally LCDs used a technology called cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) to backlight LCD. However there is an issue associated with this technology in that CCFLs contain a small amount of mercury and so developers started looking for alternatives.
That alternative was to use LED (light emitting diodes), which had the advantage of also providing what brighter colors and better blacks, helping them compete with the Plasma displays. It is now uncommon to find a television that is simply an LCD.
To increase the complexity there are two ways that the LEDs can backlight the LCD screen, either on the back or on the edges of the screen. It is relatively rare for TVs to have the backlit version as it tends to make them a bit thicker
Top LCD-LED Televisions at Adorama
The new kid on the block is an improvement in LED technology that is called OLED (organic light-emitting diode). Rather than use UV light to create the image as plasma displays do or a combination of filters and light blocking as more traditional LCDs do it simply charges specific material to create three distinct colors, red, green and blue. A key advantage of this is that it can turn off the power to a material and the result is true black. They are also very thin and light
There are a number of additional issues that users should consider when purchasing HDTVs.
Image Quality
At the onset of the plasma generation had a clear advantage over their rivals both in the LCD and the older CRT offerings, but while plasma has continued to advance, its rivals have also made agreat deal of headway in closing the image gap.. Originally the native colors in plasma looked best but as backlighting technology got more refined, so was the image that they could show, as well as the fine details encased in that image. So you might be wondering: Which is better, LCD/LED, OLED or plasma? There really is no simple answer as they can vary from product to product. Displays now have a degree of intelligence that enables them to sense uneven light falling on them and to adapt the image, as well as allow users to set preferences, adding a degree of complexity. For higher end models look for these technologies under the Tec Specs to ensure that it can adapt top your needs rather than the other way around. They have also all started to move into the HK high definition market so simple resolution is no answer.
Longevity
There is one simply issue to understand here, the HDTVs are only as good as the strength of their light sources, as with any appliance the light sources weaken over time. At one time there was a pretty large gap between the technologies but now all of the developers are making claims that they have as much as 100,000 hours. Plasmas have always trailed a bit but to put it in context, if you buy a plasma HDTV today with an 80,000 hour expected usage life , and watch 4 hrs a day it would take you about 54 years to wear out and a display with 100,000 hours would take 68 years. OLEDs, being the new kid on the block and the few manufacturers that currently develop in this technology have not listed lifetime expectations for the televisions.
Image burn
If you are old enough, you might remember the early computer monitors and how if you left them on a page or an image for too long that image was burned into the screen as a ghostly reminder of Excel spreadsheets of evenings past. That can also happen to HDTVs at one time and plasmas were the primary guilty party, as some of the phosphor aged unevenly. That is not really an issue anymore for two reasons. One is that manufacturers use much more efficient phosphor so that it ages at the same rate. A second is that systems have eco-features designed to save on the energy bill and go to sleep when on but not operating, similar to screen savers from a decade or more ago.
OLEDs, much like plasmas, where users have reported that it is possible to have image burn, but a user has to be pretty dedicated to do so. The systems would have to be set to maintain an image over a long period such as a number of months to achieve image burn. So if you leave on a 3 month world tour with a picture of your daughter frozen on screen it might remain as a ghostly image.
In-Room Viewing
In general, plasma sets have the widest possible viewing angles, meaning that you can sit further from dead center and still get a crisp, clear image while the colors on an LCD panel will shift as you move away from the center of the screen. LCD manufacturers are now pushing outwards to match this feature, but they have not quite caught up yet. There’s also a difference in performance depending on room lighting. Plasma TVs generally perform better in darker rooms, while LCD TVs produce a better picture in a room full of bright light.
A downside to the OLED models is that they are curved so that a viewer off to the side might be blocked from a full view. However for the viewers directly in front of the display the image is not only crystal clear but the slight curve is designed to ensure that all of the display is an equal distance from the viewer. It should be mentioned that there is an emerging class of displays that are not OLED but are curved so this issue pertains to more than OLEDs.
An Entertainment Hub
HDTVs now serve a great deal more than simply connecting to a cable box and displaying top notch television and movies. They are almost always now designed to be Internet-friendly with a host of features that enable a user to surf the web, update social media and stream video from remote sources or a PC. Consider if you want to use it as a tool to access the Internet and if so look for models with built-in Wi-Fi and have apps that will enable surfing and viewing the Internet. Also look at what connections do they have? Ensure that models have a HDMI port (at least one) and other ports that are increasingly common are ones to connect mobile devices, if you cannot do it wirelessly, and USB ports.
Is 3D a game changer?
3D HDTVs are increasingly popular as the technology continues to improve and the cost continues to drop. We are not going to delve into the minutia of that here but suffice it to say that one of the issues that is needed for good 3D is fast image processing.
Over the past few years TVs, and particularly HDTVs have started to move away from the 60Hz refresh rate (which is also basically the image processing speed) and has moved to 120Hz, 240Hz and even 600 Hz. This is a battleground where people claim it is perception and others not but it appears that the plasma displays that tout 600Hz, or sometimes another term such as subfield motion technology, do provide a better 3D experience than LCD/LED displays that operate at the slower speeds.
Is 4k a game changer?
If this sounds like a repeat from above, well it is. You might just be getting use to HD resolutions of 1920 x 1080p and now they are going one better. Actually there are several versions of 4K that seem to be emerging. It does not appear that adopting one format would hinder users from supporting another should it emerge as developers are saying that the HDTVs will be upgradable.
This and that
A few other notes, plasma HDTVs tend to be slightly heavier and slightly thicker than LCD/LED displays. This is important to consider if you are planning on mounting a 60-inch display on the wall, or even a smaller one on an old table. LEDs are also more energy efficient. The new OLEDs are the thinnest to date, but there are very few models available and almost all are in the 55-inch format. There are two competing technologies in this space but that should not matter to consumers.
