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Plasma vs LCD TV and Ambient Light

October 17th, 2008 · No Comments

Until not to long ago, ambient light was the main argument you had in choosing LCD over plasma. With today\'s models, though it remains a factor that helps you decide which technology to choose, it is not as decisive as it was before. The light can affect the picture quality in two ways.

First of all, if the screen material is highly reflective a lot of light will bounce from it. In a real life scenario this happens in a sunny day when a lot of sunlight enters the window and hits the screen from an angle that makes it reflect directly into your eyes. In this situation the screen acts as a mirror and instead of seeing what it is displayed on the screen you see that annoying light that reflects from it. This happens because the amount of sunlight that hits the screen and bounces from it is much higher than the amount of light the screen produces. Depending on how reflective the screen is and the angle from which the sunlight comes, this effect can be more or less disturbing. Same effect appears from other powerful light sources - like your light bulbs - but it is less disturbing. In most cases the light from light bulbs is very weak compared to sunlight so this effect is either invisible or almost unnoticeable.

The second way in which light affects the picture quality has to do with your eyes not the TV. Your eyes are built in such way that they adapt to the amount of light around. When you watch TV in a dark room, most if not all light that enters your eyes is coming from the TV. In a well lit room a lot of the light that your eyes capture is ambient light coming from the window, light bulbs or reflected by the walls and objects in the room. In this situation your eyes get more light from the environment and less from the TV itself. So when you watch TV in darkness the picture quality looks better because your eyes capture all the light from the TV and you perceive a better contrast, luminosity and saturation - which are the most important factors that affect picture quality. When you watch TV in a well lit room the ambient light will overlap with the TV light and it will make it look more washed and the colors will be less intense.

Generally Plasma TV screens are more reflective than LCD screens. At the same time, a plasma TV tends to offer better picture quality than LCD TVs in an environment with controlled lighting (a dark room). Because of these characteristics of plasma and LCD TV, they are recommended generally for different situations - plasma TVs for people who watch TV with lights turned off or dimmed and LCD TV for people who watch TV during daytime and have a lot of light in the room. If you have an averagely lit room then both TVs perform similarly.

There are exceptions however. Technology is evolving and plasma TVs now have an ace in their sleeve. To find out what is the plasma TV feature that makes them perform in a well lit room at a level comparable with LCD, follow the link titled Plasma vs LCD TV at the bottom of this page. The guide you will reach through that link has much more useful information about plasma vs LCD TV subject and can be a very useful resource if you want to understand which is the best HDTV for your particular needs.

If you want to read more about the practical differences between the two types of displays, the complete Plasma vs LCD TV guide will certainly help you understand this topic well. Also if you are looking to buy a plasma TV do not settle for any model. Instead see which are the best plasma TV models and get the best thing out there. On our site you will find a best plasma TV top with models grouped in such way that no matter what your exigences, size requirements or budget are, one of the models in our top will satisfy your needs.

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