Presently, when people go shopping for TVs they are normally torn apart between choosing to buy plasma TVs and their counterparts, the LCDs. It therefore all boils down to what benefits one TV model has over the other and measuring these with respect to your spending budget.

It is best to buy plasma TVs than the LCD type when you are looking for superior contrast, better rendering of deep blacks, advanced motion tracking (also referred to as response time) and more color depth. However, plasma TVs in relation to LCDs carry the downfalls of higher power consumption and consequently more heat generation, and because they naturally produce darker images they suffer screen glare when used in brightly lit rooms. Their performance also falls with increase in altitude. These TVs are also heavier and at the same more fragile with regards to shipping issues. A few years ago people did not want to buy plasma TVs because they suffered or were susceptible to burn-in. However, this is not much of a consideration presently thanks to technology advancements such as pixel orbiting.

Shifting our focus to LCD TV sets, we discover that these are all about negating the disadvantages of plasma TVs and including some extras. By choosing to buy LCD TV you are set to enjoy fantastic image viewing even in brightly lit rooms because of their ability to generate naturally bright images. They suffer less glare, have a cooler running temperature/lower power consumption, they are better for use at high altitudes, and they are not susceptible to burn-in. The extra benefit of choosing to buy LCD TV over the plasma is a longer display life. Again on technology improvements, advances are being made to improve the screen life of plasma TVs.

One of the inadequacies you should expect if you buy LCD TV is poorer tracking motion especially with the lower end models. However, the cream-of-the-crop models are performing better at 120Hz and even 240Hz refresh rates. There is also the demerit of a lower contrast ratio whereby LCDs are inadequate in rendering deep black effects.

In relation to continuous improvements for both plasma and LCD TVs, the most notable reason why people are choosing to buy LCD TV sets is the enhanced native pixel resolution whereby most if not all recent sets including the 26-inch sets are fully capable of 1080p display capability i.e. (1920X1080 pixels). Plasmas are catching up on this capability but it is mainly constrained to 42-inch and above sets, otherwise most plasma TVs are in the 720p league. It is also worth noting that for the same screen size, LCDs are lighter in weight.

A potential reason that drives people to buy plasma TVs is that LCDs can suffer individual pixels burn-out and this causes the screen to have small white or black dots which can be pretty annoying. Individual pixels cannot be repaired and therefore to overcome the problem you will have to replace the whole screen.