The biggest convenience flat screen television can give us is it’s space saving feature. Compared to television sets of old, it does not have a hump on the back. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t have a hump at all. The back of the flat screen TV is as flat as the front. With old sets, the hump on the back increased in size and weight as the screen size grew bigger. The hump was necessary for old sets to accommodate the cathode ray tube (CRT). This tube is the device that produces the images you see on the TV screen. With the new flat screen TV, installing a big set in your entertainment center isn’t a major problem since you wouldn’t have to worry about space in the back to accommodate the hump.

There are two kinds of flat screen TV sets in existence today. The advances in these two technologies have enabled TV makers to build thin, lightweight TV screens with a large picture area. Plasma and LCD both offer similarly large, lightweight, flat screen TV's but the similarities are only skin deep for their inner workings are different.

Although almost similar at first sight, differences in technology make a big difference in their inner workings. While both TVs use specific electrical charges to stimulate components into flashing different colors, this is where the similarities end. Plasma screens have grids of tiny, gas plasma cells. LCD (liquid crystal display) screens on the other hand, are made of liquid crystals sandwiched between two glass plates that create images by varying the amount of electrical charge applied to the crystals. Both Plasma and LCD offer excellent picture quality.

Plasma screens have the advantage over LCD screens when it comes to viewing dark picture scenes as they produce the color black better than an LCD. Color contrasts are much sharper with Plasma flat screen. Another disadvantage of LCD flat screens is that, when viewed from the side, picture quality deteriorates as opposed to that of Plasma flat screens where picture quality remains solid. Plasma TV can produce brighter colors while light leakages in LCD screens affect the color saturation.

Plasma TVs are priced relatively less than their LCD counterparts especially in the large screen segment. Plasma TVs offer much larger sizes than LCDs, yet are still priced lower. LCD has a higher native resolution than plasma TVs of the same size. This results to sharper images and makes LCD TV the better choice for HDTV. LCD TVs consume almost 30% less power than Plasma TVs. LCD TVs are generally lighter than similar sized Plasmas. Among the two, LCD screens have a longer life span than plasma screens. LCDs can last up to 60,000 hours compared to Plasma that average from 30,000 to 60,000 hours. Plasma TVs are more prone to screen burn-ins compared to LCDs although newer plasma technology are less susceptible to these.

It seems that Plasma flat screens have the edge over LCDs in terms of technology and affordability. My choice? Plasma, of course.

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