Which HDTV Specs Matter?

If you are going to call yourself an HDTV guru, you ought to know what you are talking about. In this case, the author's job is, apparently, to promote one particular display type: plasma. So he should be up-front about it, and not cherry pick topics to try to make other technologies seem inferior. He should also get his facts right, and not conduct a false smear campaign against other technologies.

Contrast ratio (CR). The author claims there is no standard way to measure CR. For standard 'no ambient light' conditions, yes, there is. It is defined in the VESA FPDM2 Standard for test methods. The FPDM2 also provides a method for testing in a lit environment, but this method (BDRF) is a bit complicated and hasn't been incorporated into production testing. Consumer groups and supposed 'gurus' like the author ought to be urging manufacturers to adopt it.

http://www.vesa.org/vesa-standards/standards-summaries/

In your house ambient lighting can still affect net CR. Most people can look at the specs and compare the appearance of the reflections and sort the good from the not so good. CR used to be an advantage for plasma. For the 'no ambient' conditions LCDs have caught up, so plasma promoters now say 'it's meaningless'. In fact many plasma displays have shiny ghost reflections that can make net CR worse than with LCDs.

Refresh Rate. He says LCDs suffer from motion blur. For the vast majority of LCDs now, this is no longer the case. It's true, though, that plasma displays don't have this problem.

Color. What he says is mostly true. Some LCDs use a 4th LED, yellow, in the backlight. The most critical color region of the eye is the green-red channel which includes the color yellow. Some improvement in producing yellow is perceptible and can produce a better range of color, particularly when producing color at dim light levels when the green+red combination may produce brown rather than a color that is supposed to be yellow or gold or orange.

Viewing Angle. The author initially states that is meaningless. This is true; the vast majority of displays are viewable from most normal seating arrangements. His final statement here: 'If you have a large couch, or viewing positions (i.e. "chairs") that are at an angle to the TV, most LCDs aren't for you.' is both untrue and contradicts his initial statement.

He mentions a few other display specifications including energy consumption. He warns that CCFL type LCDs contain mercury in the fluorescent lamps. He neglects to mention that the plasma display also uses mercury in the plasma to make the display work.

He also neglects to mention one of the biggest concerns about plasma displays: phosphor aging and image burn-in. The phosphors in a plasma display age over time (unlike LCDs). The center region of the screen gets the most use, especially when viewing older-style 3:4 format pictures. So eventually the center of the screen will appear dimmer than the outer region.