Home theaters may be compact in dimensions or offer wide viewing options. This means that when assessing the picture quality, you need to assess it from all angles. Based on this criteria, the Panasonic 42 plasma beats out the Sony XBR LCD

It’s the picture quality that is most important.

Plasma Screens

If you are using projection television, then the display quality is more important and you don’t have to consider other features.

A Pioneer Plasma display costs around $3,000 and most believe it is worth it. The clarity is excellent and satellite, and HD ready.

One of the early problems with Plasma TV was “burn in” of images. Fortunately, now that we seem to be on 5G Plasma this is no longer a problem with brand televisions. Samsung claim a 27 year life span without burn in.

Plasma Display vs Plasma TV

A display differs from a television in that it does not include a tuner. You can save money by purchasing a display over a TV by using your DirecTV box or DirecTV Tivo box as your tuner.

If you don’t feel you would ever need to change the channel on the television set itself; then you probably don’t need a tuner. DirecTV has it's own inbuilt tuner, so you change the channel on it, not the television set. Just set the television channels to video 1, video 2 etc.

Some plasma screens, not sold as televisions, have a built in tuner. These can be handy when some of the analog cable channels have poor reception through the cable box.

LCD Screens

The main issue with LCD screens is their inability to reproduce solid blacks. This becomes more apparent with larger screens. The set up can make a huge difference, albeit it will not resolve the problem completely.

When large areas of the screen are black, the problem is most obvious, as in end of program credits. For me, I don’t care about this.

But if you find that most of your favorite programs are high in night shots with high quantity of black, you may want to reconsider LCD for Plasma.

At this stage is is technologically impossible to have a 100% pure black on an LCD screen, because of the permanent light from the back.

Plasma LCD Comparisions

Consumer Reports , Forums, technology review sites [such as this one] and CNET.com.

Please Note: Reviews in this series are from actual consumer reports, and not direct findings of Go-Review.

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