Although the last year had been brutal to plasma television, a rejuvenating news for this good old “gas capsule” technology is released recently. DisplayMate Demo Laboratories, the television experts have revealed that despite of all the controversies, plasma scored much well than the much-hyped LCD televisions. Currently a general notion is spread that LCD technology is improvised to a great extent that they render much better performance compared to the Plasma display panels. After the quality tests, it has been revealed that Plasma Televisions are still unbeatable when it comes to contrast, black level and colour accuracy.

All the televisions (both plasma and LCD televisions) included in this calibration test are 2008 line-ups. However, it is a well known fact that there is not much difference in 2008 and 2009 models, except for the marketing strategy.  The contestants in this quality test include the vintage LCD televisions from Sony, Samsung, LG, Sharp, etc. It is played off against the high-end Panasonic Plasma Television. It is quite evident from the results that Plasma Technology is still the crowned head in picture quality regardless the allegations and bans. Despite of the market friendly features and catchy specifications of LCD televisions, the coy Plasma Television won the race with its scientifically proven specs than the  LCD panels’ humongous numbers on papers!

All the televisions were fed with the same 1080p input signal via HDMI inputs to ensure good video source. It has been noted that Sony LCD Televisions did fairly good performance which can be closely matched to the picture quality of plasma television. Although Sony and Panasonic had a neck to neck competition in the normal mode, Sony lagged slightly in the off-angle viewing, black levels and also in motion image rendition. The test results reveal that Sharp LCD Television showed various image artefacts and was not up to the expectation taking hues, saturation and colour intensity scales in to account.

The calibration reports shows that Samsung LCD Television demoed a decent performance, and was stepped down the top-list only in very few aspects like colour and gray scale accuracy. Sony LCD Television and Panasonic Plasma Television exhibited an “almost perfect” performance in this aspect. One may be thinking of the importance of the gray scale gradation and colour accuracy. Most of the contemporary HDTVs houses a USB connection, which can be used to connect various devices like digital cameras, laptops, mobile phones, memory devices, etc. to the television. Hence the colour accuracy and gray scale intensity plays a major role, as the users will be quite confident about the colour of their dress and the ambiance in each snaps they display in the big-screen.

The photometry and colorimetry reports reveal that Sony LCD Television showcased a “close to perfect” performance than other contestants. Moreover Sony LCD Televisions were much easier to calibrate than other HDTVs. In the spec war, brightness and contrast ratio are two major factors that are improvised dramatically by the manufacturers. However the test results showed that both these specifications are highly exaggerated in almost all displays. Most of the televisions exhibits almost impossible levels of  brightness and contrast ratio in the specification list; however things are quite worse in reality. Although, almost all HDTVs offer high viewing angle of about 176 degrees on records, most of the LCD televisions showcases image degradation in ±10 degrees in real time testing. All the same, plasma televisions offered better viewability than their LCD counterparts.

After the various tests conducted by DisplayMate, all experts are saying unanimously that plasma television racked up pretty well compared to the LCD televisions. So do you really think that such good screens should be thrown out of the industry with mere hypes and widespread gimmicks? Almost all plasma display users are pretty happy with its performance, and most of the latest plasma televisions are energy efficient as well. So it is high time to keep our eyes and ears open to choose the best.

Image Source : Display Mate

Grab our BEST DEALS and SPECIAL OFFERS!