OTHER TECH

Flat-Panel Plasma

I bet you never thought plasma would be included in an article about affordable big-screen HDTVs, but these coveted sets are getting cheaper fast, especially in the popular 42-inch size. Despite the plummeting prices of flat-panel LCDs, plasmas are still a better buy and generally outperform LCD flat panels for demanding home theater viewing.

How It Works Each pixel in a plasma display consists of three gas-filled cells coated with red, green, or blue phosphors. Electrodes above and below the cells (the top electrode layer is transparent) jolt them with varying amounts of voltage. This excites the gas in the cells, stimulating the phosphors to produce colored light.

Pros •Slim design and large screen size. •Uniformly bright picture over a wide viewing angle - even in a brightly lit room. •Excellent image quality, especially compared with LCD. Plasmas use phosphors to produce color, just like CRTs, resulting in excellent saturation and natural hues. •While performance on dark scenes varies widely, some models approach CRT-level blacks.

Cons •Still expensive - especially in screen sizes 50 inches and larger. • Lower resolution than LCDs, causing slightly softer HDTV images. •Subject to burn-in, where an image becomes permanently etched onto the screen. But this won't happen unless you leave a bright stationary picture on the screen for hours at a time, and recent research suggests these effects might be reversible. Newer models have features to prevent burn-in, like a pixel orbiter, which exercises pixels by slowly shifting an image around the display.

Entry Point: $1,800 Plasmas start at 37 inches, but the least expensive come in the ubiquitous 42-inch screen size, which also provides the best value. Lower-resolution EDTVs are the entry-level here, and though we haven't reviewed any recently, Panasonic has a 42-inch set that sells for $1,600 (about $2 per square inch). September's "Plasma for Less" featured a trio of "bargain" high-rez models, and Dell's $2,600 W4200HD was the clear winner. Vizio recently slashed the price of its 50-inch plasma HDTV to an amazing $2,999. (But we haven't reviewed it so can't vouch for its performance.)