Big Screen TV ……… Which Do I Want?

What type of big screen TV do I purchase? The discuss rages on!!

Lots of home theater fans prefer a big screen TV to the bulky projection systems. They sacrifice screen size for picture quality and space necessities. There are numerous types of televisions to select from but we’ll cover the Plasma vs. LCD TV debate first.

Plasma TV is by far the coolest and most costly. They are extra thin, (only a few inches) and very lightweight. They are great for small rooms or apartments since they can be hung on the wall like a picture. The better contrast, brightness and wide viewing angle of color plasma TV’s, have made them a superb choice for viewing HDTV programming. The price of Plasma TV’s has been lessening recently with prices starting at around a thousand dollars all the way up to 20K for a top of line huge plasma TV.

LCD (liquid crystal display) TV's are very comparable to LCD computer monitors and present video reproduction quality approaching that of plasma displays. LCD models usually price less than comparable plasma models. They are very lightweight and thin and come in sizes from 7 inches to about 32 inches and more.

Certainly as the big screen TV debate go on, we must not forget the standard CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) TV’s. These bring great picture quality and are the most reasonably priced by screen size. The negative is that they are very weighty and bulky. That’s why they are losing ground to the slimmer, lightweight Plasma and LCD TV’s.

High Definition TV is becoming the new standard for TV’s. The modern format for television broadcasting in America, as well as much of the globe, is the NTSC format. While analog NTSC may have been the format of option for nearly 50 years, digital broadcasting is revolutionizing the broadcast industry. High definition digital television broadcasting (HDTV) gives a much superior image resolution than NTSC. While NTSC could only give around 650 lines of information per image, HDTV presents up to 1080 lines. This allows for much more detail and lucidity.