Hearing 'plasma TV' spoken is a rare occurrence nowadays. After all, the television panel technology hasn't been in production – or on shop shelves – for years. While you won't find plasma TVs for sale now, with the market dominated by LCDs and OLEDs, there are still some who own or trade them, their particular picture traits remaining sought after by some aficionados even now. Plasma TVs may not feature in our current best TVs list, but they did many a time in years past.
If you're, ahem, experienced enough to recall the arrival of plasma panels, you may remember they came at a time when traditional tube TVs were on the way out. In fact, they helped precipitate that. Sure we had "flat screens" before then, but these referred to the lack of convex shape to the TV front, still packing a deep square Cathode Ray Tube box behind that. Plasma was the dawning of the age of true, slim flatscreen TVs.
If you don't recall these wonders of the TV age, plasmas were super slender by standards then, albeit positively chunky by today's measure. They also ran pretty hot, consumed lots of power and had to be kept upright even in transit.
Plus, when they first arrived in 1997, they cost around $20,000 for a 42-inch Fujitsu. It wasn't until the early 2000s that prices became more mainstream-affordable. Yet they were a true wonder at the time.
So how did plasma work, what was its picture quality like, and why was it eventually replaced by LCD and OLED? Join us in taking a trip down memory lane...
What was plasma TV?
Plasma TV sounds very futuristic as a term, even looking back. And the technology did represent a big jump forward from CRT, when you consider that was basically the same system developed in some of the early TVs from the 1950s.
Instead, this used a gas mixture which filled millions of small cells that were placed between two sheets of glass. Send a charge of electricity through there, exciting the gas and turning it into a plasma emitting ultraviolet light, and the cells light up. These cells varied in colour and brightness based on the charge sent in. That's somewhat of an oversimplification, but that was basically the crux of it.
This repeated pattern meant that the screens could be scaled up relatively easily. This made it possible to have far larger screens and suddenly those 32-inch CRT TVs seemed small compared to 40 and even 50-inch plasma TV options. The fact it could also be wall-mounted was just a really popular bonus.
If that sounds familiar, that's probably because it isn't a million miles away from how today's OLED TVs work, in that they both produce their own light rather than relying on a backlight – though OLED panels do so by being made up of millions of tiny, advanced self-emitting pixels.
As such, plasma in some ways offered a more impressive technology than LCD, which does use a backlight. It could offer better contrast ratio (deeper blacks because its cells could simply turn off) and wider uniform viewing angles because they emitted light in all directions, while motion handling was also better due to their quicker response time.
Yet plasma was outdone ultimately because LCD, which was cheaper to produce, could easily be made smaller, was more robust in terms of damage (and didn't suffer panel burn-in like plasmas) and had some picture quality benefits...
What was plasma TV picture quality like?
Plasma TV images were, and still are, very impressive in certain aspects of picture quality – better than LCDs in some areas, although generally not as strong as today's premium OLEDs.
Again, that ability to turn cells off and on at will meant they could deliver some very deep and rich blacks and saturated colours. Because each part of a plasma panel could be lit up, rather than relying on a backlight that shone slightly unevenly across it, viewing angles were fantastic.
And high refresh rates – up to 600Hz, compared to LCD's 60Hz or 120Hz – and generally excellent response times made for smooth, crisp motion too, making it also great for sports and gaming alike. Some believe plasmas even beat OLED in the motion department.
Going from CRT to plasma meant a massive jump in screen sizes and resolutions too. Plasma saw the introduction of 720p resolutions (or 'HD Ready' as they were called) as well as the 1080i and 1080p 'HD' upgrades.
Plasmas actually outperformed LCDs for years in terms of picture quality. So what finally brought it to an end?
Why did plasma TV technology die?
Plasma TVs did not have an affordable high production yield, meaning only some of the many produced would be worthy of being sold. That meant they cost manufacturers a lot to produce. They also suffered from image retention (or 'burn-in'), where an image left on the screen for a long time could leave its mark on it. As such it was important to use moving screensavers, or not leave the TV paused on one screen, or it could be damaged in terms of future quality.
LCD did need its own backlight, but it consumed far less power. So not only was it more affordable to produce and buy upfront but the ongoing running costs were lower too. Also, it didn't churn out as much heat – something noticeable from plasma TVs to the point where you could turn the heating off in a room and a larger panel would keep you pretty toasty.
LCD screens were also brighter than plasma TV models because of that backlight, making them better suited for daytime viewing – ideal for sports. LCDs were also far lighter, making transport and wall-mounting a much easier process.
Ultimately, plasma, despite being better in most picture quality ways, was beaten by an inferior (in ways) technology that was cheaper, easier to scale up, transport and cost less over time. Of course, OLED is its natural predecessor, still offering arguably the best picture quality – with limited brightness compared to the LED competition – and commanding a higher price. But in the face of the QD-OLED, QLED and MicroLED developments, maybe even OLED could go the way of the plasma.
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