How to Buy a Flat-Screen TV

The Big Picture

• Introduction
• The Big Picture
• The Specs Explained
• Flat-Screen TV Shopping Tips

It's only natural that the supersizing of the American TV over the last decade or two eventually spawned some diet programs. A 50-inch HDTV built in the traditional CRT-based rear-projection television format is a major hog, taking up a big hunk of floor space and weighing hundreds of pounds. Of the various approaches to dealing with this problem, the one that has drawn the most attention is flat-panel display.

Advances in plasma and liquid-crystal display, or LCD, technology have made it possible to build very shallow, relatively lightweight TV screens with large picture areas. That's their common advantage. Their principal common drawback is high price compared with bulkier alternatives. But they differ in enough other respects to make the choice between them interesting.

Plasma

Virtually all plasma displays are wide-screen designs, meaning they have a 16:9 ratio of screen width to screen height (also referred to as aspect ratio), which is the standard for HDTV and very close to the ratio used for most modern movies. This makes them more rectangular than the traditional, almost square 4:3 displays. With a handful of exceptions, screen sizes start at 42 inches diagonal and range up to 61 inches. Prices start at slightly less than $3000 and top out at more than $25,000.

You get what you pay for in plasma, however, which means you can't expect to get the same picture quality from a $3000 42-inch display that you would from a same-size model selling for $7000, a more typical price. The budget model will be an enhanced-definition screen rather than high definition and will have poorer contrast; that translates to a softer picture with less punch and detail.

Even the best plasmas do not quite match the ability of good CRT sets to reproduce deep blacks and gradations of dark gray. They're close enough now, however, that you probably wouldn't notice except in a direct comparison. Like CRTs, plasmas use phosphors to generate light, which means they can be subject to "burn-in." When a static image is left on the screen for a long time (a station logo or a text banner, for example), it may not completely disappear when the image changes.

This is particularly likely to be an issue if you watch a lot of standard TV programming on a wide-screen display or play a lot of games with static backgrounds. Fortunately, you can minimize the risk by keeping contrast and brightness settings reasonable (virtually all TV sets come out of the box with their contrast, brightness, color, and sharpness controls turned up too high) and by using stretch modes to fill the screen when you're watching 4:3 programming.

Although some plasma displays come with wing speakers that can be attached to the sides, most are strictly video displays with neither speakers nor any built-in TV tuner. You will need to factor those additional costs into your budget.

For more information on home theaters and speaker systems, check out "How to Buy a Home Theater System" and "How to Buy an Integrated Home Theater Audio System."

LCD

LCD screens range from 15-inch models designed primarily as computer monitors up to 37-inch wide-screen designs complete with speakers and TV tuners. Although not as pricey as plasmas, they still sell at a significant premium above what you would expect to pay for similar-size direct-view CRT sets. A 22-inch wide-screen high-definition model might come in at around $2000, for example, and a 32-inch model at close to $4500. (A 32-inch wide-screen display has about the same screen height as a 27-inch TV with a conventional 4:3 aspect ratio.)

LCDs have lower contrast ratios than plasmas, primarily because they have a harder time reproducing deep black and dark grays. They also tend to be one to several inches thicker than plasmas and have a narrower effective viewing angle. (Plasmas, like CRTs, are easily viewable from well off to the side and do not exhibit any change in brightness as you stand up or sit down.) On the other hand, LCDs are completely immune to burn-in, and they more often include all the standard features of a conventional TV. LCDs also run cooler than plasmas, minimizing the need for potentially noisy fan cooling. An LCD is a particularly attractive choice in situations where a plasma would be too large or where you want a display that can serve double duty as a TV set and computer monitor.