"LCD vs Plasma vs DLP vs Me vs Dad" by Troy H. Cheek on Sep 08, 2008
"Son, can you get on the internets and compute me the difference between LCD and plasma screen televisions?" my father asked the other day.
"Sure thing, Dad," I replied. "Anything specific you want to know?"
"Oh, nothing in particular. Just which is a better deal."
"No problem!"
Big problem. I did some quick searches and printed out several pages for him. This led to more questions. This led to more printouts.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Eventually, this led to the entire family loading up and taking off to the electronics store. Dad had decided it was time the family had a new television. He wanted a flat screen because rounded screens distort when viewed from the side. He wanted wide screen because he was tired of seeing black bars at the top and bottom of the pictures all the time. He wanted digital because everything is better in high definition. He wanted a big, bright set because new shows were so dark and filmed things from so far away. He wanted big, loud speakers because new shows were so quiet and people mumbled all the time. I didn't bother correcting him on any of this. I wasn't too clear on the new technology, anyway.
Apparently, while I wasn't looking, several new technologies completely supplanted the CRT televisions of my youth. CRT used a cathode ray to illuminate red, green, or blue phosphors to create an image. LCD, or liquid crystal display, uses a backlight shining through little colored shutters to create much the same effect. Plasma screens excite a gas into plasma to light up little colored subpixels. DLP, or digial light projection, uses beams of light bounced off micromirrors to create images. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Choosing which one is a "better deal" is nigh impossible, so I pawned it off on the friendly, courteous, helpful salesdrone.
He was a bit less friendly, courteous, and helful before it was over.
The DLP display was showing images of sunsets, desert landscapes, ocean cliffs, and the like. Beautiful colors, wonderful gradients, gazillion shades of grey. Nonexistent viewing angle.
Imagine, if you will, the entire Cheek clan bobbing up and down like demented meercats. Oh, sure, we could have achieved the same effect by slowly stepping from side to side, but where's the fun in that?
We also noticed that the DLP displays were showing images of sunsets et al, while the LCD and plasma sets were displaying football games. We watch a lot more ball games than sunsets at our house. Your mileage may vary.
The LCD and plasma sets had similar picture quality, viewing angle, sale price, etc. We found a 50" plasma that was a little bit cheaper and a little bit brighter than the sets around it.
"We'll take one!" Dad declared, pointing at the desired model.
"Great! We can't sell you one!" the salesdrone declared, backpedaling furiously.
It seemed that this particular model was selling very well, so they had sold out and only had the display model, which of course they wouldn't think of selling. It was inconceivable.
Ten minutes later, we were loading the display model into the truck. We had no box, used the remote from a similar display model, batteries borrowed from another display model's remote, and the manual from the LCD version of the set we bought. We took it home and, ten minutes later, realized that it was too big to fit in the current locations of any of our television sets. Ten minutes later, we had a new place set up. Now we just needed to give it something to display.
Thankfully, our home was serviced by Cardassian Cable, now bringing you four -- no, five! -- digital sports channels. Actually, I'm not sure what digital sports channels they're bringing us, as we still have the analog package. However, the analog package includes digital versions of the local networks and PBS stations. In other words, digital verions of the stations that Cardassian Cable gets for free anyway. I hooked it up and, remarkably, the new set (with its digital noise reduction and phase variance compensator) made our old analog signal look brand new.
Still, the new set was too large for the room, and I almost had Dad convinced to take the set back and get one that would fit in one of the available holes. Almost. Then he flipped over to one of the digital channels and realized that the picture was so clear he could count blades of grass as the golf ball rolled over them. A few minutes later, he was watching a car race so clear that he could see the exhaust fumes coming out of the tailpipes. I didn't see it, but he swears he could see through the football player's tinted eyeshield. I do know that the only reason I watched that much tennis is because the picture was so detailed that I could tell which players weren't wearing bras.
I tried explaining that not every channel was digital, and that not every digital signal was high definition, and that not every high definition show was as good as those sporting events we'd just watched, but the whole family was hooked.
I expect I'll be calling up Cardassian Cable and ordering the digital package any day now.
