There are two products that really manage to captivate people’s attention at the moment, in our experience at least. Those two things are storage (that is to say, hard drives, whether internal or external) and nice, high definition displays. We’re not quite sure why it is that storage and HDTVS seem to capture people’s interest quite so well, but it’s interesting.

The only issue of course is that we’re asked eventually to explain the differences between the various flavours of these products quite often. With storage that’s always nice and easy, you can talk about internal and external and everyone can keep up. You can talk about noise and heat and you’re unlikely to lose your audience. The only problem is that when it comes to HDTVs, there seems to be an awful lot of confusion around the different types of displays, be they plasma, LCD or LED. The hope here is to clear up some of that confusion

Plasma:

While there was a very long time when plasma really was the only option for anyone looking to set up a reasonable home theatre, for the most part this all came down to one simple feature; plasma was a lot easier to produce at the kinds of sizes that early adopters demand and so there was relatively little competition from LCD displays until quite recently. The problem for plasma displays now is that LCD is fast catching up in the size department, though it should also be mentioned that the very high end of the size scale is still the practically exclusive stomping ground of plasma displays.

This Panasonic shows the kind of shape you can expect a 40 inch plasma display to have.

The fact is though, there are still a few tricks up the plasma display’s sleeve other than the fact that they’re cheaper at bigger sizes. Not least of these is the fact that plasma still boasts the best ability to display blackness. While this might not seem immediately important to the non-display savvy out there, it doesn’t take too much consideration to realise that a significant amount of any film you care to watch (except maybe Toy Story) has, at least, shadows to it. It’s in particularly dark settings that plasma displays really excel. They also offer some of the best contrasts going, which can be even more important, depending on who you talk to.

Indeed, it seems that plasma’s biggest fault is the fear of the dreaded ‘burn in’ event. For the uninitiated, this is the same kind of experience you may have had with an old CRT display left running with a static image for too long – you begin to see that image overlaid on top of whatever else it is you’re trying to watch. The problem is that ‘burn in,’ with relation to modern plasma displays at least, seems to have been dramatically exaggerated. In actuality, most plasma displays have some kind of built-in safeguard to make sure you don’t end up ruining your own TV by leaving the Sky menu on all night.

The only other real issue with plasma at the moment is the weight – plasma screens do tend to outweigh their LCD rivals by a fair whack. To take similarly sized examples, Panasonic’s TX-P42X10 plasma weighs in at 26Kg, while Samsung’s LE40B750 LCD clocks in at a somewhat healthier 18.7Kg. Naturally, weight will only be an issue from time to time, but it does mean you’ll want to be very sure of your anchorage if you’re considering wall-mounting your display.

If you’re so inclined, you can take a look at some of our plasma TVs here, but you might be better served reading up on LCD and LED displays beforehand.

For anyone worried about the ongoing availability of plasma displays, there’s a good CNET piece on why buying a plasma TV isn’t necessarily a bad decision at the moment. You can read it here.

LCD:

One of the biggest points in favour of LCDs is the form factor. As a rule, you’ll find LCDs to be lighter and a little slimmer than plasmas. Given that they’re gas-based, a plasma TV has to give a lot of consideration to containment. LCD displays are liquid crystal based; anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to break an LCD will have first hand experience of this – they weep.

Samsung's usual eye for style is evident in the design of their LCD TVs.

Anyway, relatively inconsequential physicalities aside, the biggest issue anyone has with LCD displays is that they tend to underperform a little when it comes to the “blackness” arena (as we discussed briefly with relation to plasma displays above). LCDs tend to be an awful lot brighter than plasma displays, which is excellent when you want to sit down and watch Toy Story or Finding Nemo.

The problem is that LCD displays lack the ability to completely black out the display’s light. This means that, if you end up watching a film like Alien that prides itself on a dark and bleak setting, you’ll often find yourself thinking, “Why is it all so grey?” The answer of course is that it’s not all so grey, it’s all black, but your display is having a hard time with it. It’s the price you pay for the increased brightness.

In a similar fashion to the over-worry about the ‘burn in’ of images to plasma displays, in earlier LCD displays the shift from colours back to blacks took slightly longer than it really should have. It should be pointed out that this has, for the most part, been rectified by more recent LCDs, but the problem persists in some displays. In situations where this kind of ‘ghosting’ is noticeable, a bright image moving across a dark background will leave faint afterimages in a smudged trail behind it. This is only worse if you’re watching an intense shakey-cam affair like Battlestar Galactica… in those kinds of situations you’ll find yourself watching a kind of ship-shaped blur fight off the equally blurry cylons; it’s not what you bought a high end TV for.

By now though, most of the kinks have been ironed out, though the ability to display really dark blacks is something the hardware may never manage. In most modern LCDs you’ll see very little ghosting, if any, and the blackness issues have been addressed to the point that they’re not nearly as noticeable as once they were. Still, if you’re a horror or thriller fanatic you’d probably do well to give plasma serious consideration before springing for an LCD display. You might find it’d serve you better in the long run.

If you’re after an LCD display, you can check out this page, which is just a selection of some LCDs we sell, here.

LED:

LED displays are still relatively new, but they’re a very solid entry into an otherwise relatively stable market. The idea with LED displays is, as the name suggests, to replace the standard CCFL illumination setup of an LCD display with light emitting diodes. There are a couple of ways to do this, but one of the most popular has been to light the entire display from the edges. The upshot of this is that LED displays are thin. They’re almost incredibly thin.

It's really genuinely attractively thin.

As though that weren’t enough, there’s a fairly pronounced weight difference. Again, using a similar size as in the above comparison, the LED display is roughly the same amount of difference less than the LCD as the LCD is less than the plasma. A 40” Samsung UE40B6000 is just 14.7Kg, though with its stand included that figure rises to 18.4Kg.

The good news here is that you most likely won’t need a second person around just to help you wall mount an LED TV, and they’re a piece of hardware that does exceptionally well with a wall mount. Due to the size and shape, it’s quite easy to consider it as though it were kind of like a painting, which is always a good thing to be able to say.

There’s also good news on the “blackness” front – the fact that the whole affair is lit by LEDs means that it’s very much possible to dim lighting for a shot or even just for a particular portion of the screen. All of which adds up to making LED displays seem like they might well be the most attractive displays possible, but for one feature. LED displays really don’t compete with plasma or LCD when it comes to cost; they’re far far more expensive.

While some have predicted that LED displays will eventually replace LCD TVs, it seems likely that, for the time being, the CCFL setup will stick around until we start to see a significant reduction in the price of LED TVs.

If you’re interested in LED TVs, you can take a look at some of the LED TVs we carry, here.