The Movie Corner

The huge screen plasm, HDTVs or High Definitions are taking over. The main reason is that once you see a sport’s event on one of these screens, you just can’t go back to your old CRT television. High definition means having a lot more pixels than Standard Definition. Much like a 600 DPI printer will give you much greater detail than a 300 DPI printer, a high definition television will be able to display a lot more dots on the screen than a standard TV. The result – much better picture quality.

The two primary kinds of flatscreen TVs are plasma and LCD. Along with their other benefits, both of these sets showcase exceptional picture quality. Of the two, it’s generally conceded that the LCD technologies produce a nicer overall picture quality – particularly in the realms of color saturations and more realistic skin tones. On the other hand, the plasma TVs sport the advantage of better “black level” displays which serves to make the image crisper and clearer. Both LCD and plasma televisions have their disciples. And only you can decide which one is better for you is a matter of personal preference.

Old style CRT televisions used a cathode ray or electron gun to paint the screen with a picture. The newer plasma style televisions work on a different principle

The difference in plasma style televisions is that samsung plasma televisions don’t use scan lines to display a picture. Instead a plasma TV is pixel based. The pixels form a matrix of cells or transistor electrodes filled with an inert gas. The cells are coated with phosphorous and are sensitive to electrical current and emit red, green and blue lights in response to electric current.

When you turn on the TV, the cells are activated. When you turn it off, the cells are de-activated.This is the same way that computer monitors work. The three primary colors can create the colors required. In the end, the result is a crystal clear and smooth image being displayed on the screen. But another reason for the superior image qualities of plasma TVs is that while CRT televisions can display images in thousands of colors, plasma televisions can produce millions of colors.

Nearly all plasma TVs have what is referred to as a built in line doubler. What this does is take an interlaced video source and strip out the extra lines to create a single-interlaced frame output. In effect, it “doubles” the resolution of the regular TV signal. The end result is a smoother and higher resolution picture. Now, since plasma TVs can’t play interlaced signals directly, they use a line-doubler to modify the signal into a format which they can read. There’s more than one algorithm that can be used to “deinterlace” a signal and the quality of the resulting image depends to a large extent on which algorithm is brought into play.

There are a few problems with CRT screens, especially the older models. Some have a problem with glare, especially when watching TV in a room filled with sunlight. This is mostly due to the curvature of the screen. Most of the flat screen models, now available, have pretty much eliminated this problem.

Plasma televisions have another advantage as well in that they aren’t susceptible to the usual image distortions that CRT televisions are subject to. So no matter where you view the picture from, you get a true view of the picture.

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