General characteristics
A 103" plasma display panel by Panasonic
Plasma displays are bright (1,000 lux or higher for the module), have a wide color gamut, and can be produced in fairly large sizes—up to 150 inches (3.8 m) diagonally. They have a very low-luminance "dark-room" black level compared to the lighter grey of the unilluminated parts of an LCD screen (i.e. the blacks are blacker on plasmas and greyer on LCDs).[1] LED-backlit LCD televisions have been developed to reduce this distinction. The display panel itself is about 6 cm (2.5 inches) thick, generally allowing the device's total thickness (including electronics) to be less than 10 cm (4 inches). Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT or an AMLCD television.[citation needed] Power consumption varies greatly with picture content, with bright scenes drawing significantly more power than darker ones - this is also true of CRTs. Typical power consumption is 400 watts for a 50-inch (127 cm) screen. 200 to 310 watts for a 50-inch (127 cm) display when set to cinema mode. Most screens are set to 'shop' mode by default, which draws at least twice the power (around 500-700 watts) of a 'home' setting of less extreme brightness. Panasonic has greatly reduced power consumption ("1/3 of 2007 models") Panasonic claims that PDPs will consume only half the power of their previous series of plasma sets to achieve the same overall brightness for a given display size. The lifetime of the latest generation of plasma displays is estimated at 100,000 hours of actual display time, or 27 years at 10 hours per day. This is the estimated time over which maximum picture brightness degrades to half the original value.
Plasma display screens are made from glass, which reflects more light than the material used to make an LCD screen.[citation needed] This causes glare from reflected objects in the viewing area. Companies such as Panasonic coat their newer plasma screens with an anti-glare filter material.[citation needed] Currently, plasma panels cannot be economically manufactured in screen sizes smaller than 32 inches. Although a few companies have been able to make plasma EDTVs this small, even fewer have made 32in plasma HDTVs. With the trend toward larger and larger displays, the 32in screen size is rapidly disappearing. Though considered bulky and thick compared to their LCD counterparts, some sets such as Panasonic's Z1 and Samsung's B860 series are as slim as one inch thick making them comparable to LCDs in this respect.
Plasma display advantages and disadvantages
Advantages
- Picture quality
- Produces deep blacks allowing for superior contrast ratio
- Much wider viewing angles than those of LCD; images do not suffer from degradation at high angles unlike LCDs
- No visible motion blur, thanks in large part to very high refresh rates and a faster response time, contributing to superior performance when displaying content with significant amounts of rapid motion[6][7][9][10]
- Physical
- Slim profile
- Can be wall mounted
- Less bulky than rear-projection televisions
Disadvantages
- Picture quality
- Earlier generation displays were more susceptible to screen burn-in and image retention, although most recent models have a pixel orbiter that moves the entire picture faster than is noticeable to the human eye, which reduces the effect of burn-in but does not prevent it. However, turning off individual pixels does counteract screen burn-in on modern plasma displays.
- Earlier generation displays (2006 and prior) had phosphors that lost luminosity over time, resulting in gradual decline of absolute image brightness (newer models are less susceptible to this, having lifespans exceeding 100,000 hours, far longer than older CRT technology)
- Earlier generation (circa 2001 and earlier) models were susceptible to "large area flicker"
- Heavier screen-door effect when compared to LCD or OLED based TVs[citation needed]
- Physical
- Other
- Use more electricity, on average, than an LCD TV
- Do not work as well at high altitudes due to pressure differential between the gases inside the screen and the air pressure at altitude. It may cause a buzzing noise. Manufacturers rate their screens to indicate the altitude parameters.
- For those who wish to listen to AM radio, or are Amateur Radio operators (Hams) or Shortwave Listeners (SWL), the Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) from these devices can be irritating or disabling.
- Due to the strong infrared emissions inherent with the technology, standard IR repeater systems can not be used in the viewing room. A more expensive "plasma compatible" sensor must be used.[citation needed]
Native plasma television resolutions
Further information: Native resolution
Fixed-pixel displays such as plasma TVs scale the video image of each incoming signal to the native resolution of the display panel. The most common native resolutions for plasma display panels are 853×480 (EDTV), 1,366×768 or 1,920×1,080 (HDTV). As a result picture quality varies depending on the performance of the video scaling processor and the upscaling and downscaling algorithms used by each display manufacturer.[16][17]
Enhanced-definition plasma television
See also: Enhanced-definition television
Early plasma televisions were enhanced-definition (ED) with a native resolution of 840×480 (discontinued) or 853×480, and down-scaled their incoming high definition signals to match their native display resolution.
ED Resolutions
- 840×480
- 853×480
High-definition plasma television
Early high-definition (HD) plasma displays had a resolution of 1024x1024 and were alternate lighting of surfaces (ALiS) panels made by Fujitsu/Hitachi.These were interlaced displays, with non-square pixels.
Modern HDTV plasma televisions usually have a resolution of 1,024×768 found on many 42 inch plasma screens, 1,280×768, 1,366×768 found on 50 in, 60 in, and 65 in plasma screens, or 1,920×1,080 found in plasma screen sizes from 42 inch to 103 inch. These displays are usually progressive displays, with square pixels, and will up-scale their incoming standard-definition signals to match their native display resolution.
HD Resolutions
- 1024×1024
- 1024×768
- 1280×768
- 1366×768
- 1280×1080
- 1920×1080
How plasma displays work
See also: Plasma (physics)
A panel typically has millions of tiny cells in compartmentalized space between two panels of glass. These compartments, or "bulbs" or "cells", hold a mixture of noble gases and a minuscule amount of mercury. Just as in the fluorescent lamps over an office desk, when the mercury is vaporized and a voltage is applied across the cell, the gas in the cells form a plasma. With flow of electricity (electrons), some of the electrons strike mercury particles as the electrons move through the plasma, momentarily increasing the energy level of the molecule until the excess energy is shed. Mercury sheds the energy as ultraviolet (UV) photons. The UV photons then strike phosphor that is painted on the inside of the cell. When the UV photon strikes a phosphor molecule, it momentarily raises the energy level of an outer orbit electron in the phosphor molecule, moving the electron from a stable to an unstable state; the electron then sheds the excess energy as a photon at a lower energy level than UV light; the lower energy photons are mostly in the infrared range but about 40% are in the visible light range. Thus the input energy is shed as mostly heat (infrared) but also as visible light. Depending on the phosphors used, different colors of visible light can be achieved. Each pixel in a plasma display is made up of three cells comprising the primary colors of visible light. Varying the voltage of the signals to the cells thus allows different perceived colors.
A plasma display panel is an array of hundreds of thousands of small, luminous cells positioned between two plates of glass. Each cell is essentially a tiny neon lamp filled with rarefied neon, xenon, and other inert gases; the cells are luminous when they are electrified through "electrodes".
The long electrodes are stripes of electrically conducting material that also lie between the glass plates, in front of and behind the cells. The "address electrodes" sit behind the cells, along the rear glass plate, and can be opaque. The transparent display electrodes are mounted in front of the cell, along the front glass plate. As can be seen in the illustration, the electrodes are covered by an insulating protective layer. Control circuitry charges the electrodes that cross paths at a cell, creating a voltage difference between front and back. Some of the atoms in the gas of a cell then lose electrons and become ionized, which creates an electrically conducting plasma of atoms, free electrons, and ions. The collisions of the flowing electrons in the plasma with the inert gas atoms leads to light emission; such light-emitting plasmas are known as glow discharges.[23][25][26]
In a monochrome plasma panel, the gas is usually mostly neon, and the color is the characteristic orange of a neon-filled lamp (or sign). Once a glow discharge has been initiated in a cell, it can be maintained by applying a low-level voltage between all the horizontal and vertical electrodes–even after the ionizing voltage is removed. To erase a cell all voltage is removed from a pair of electrodes. This type of panel has inherent memory. A small amount of nitrogen is added to the neon to increase hysteresis.[citation needed]
In color panels, the back of each cell is coated with a phosphor. The ultraviolet photons emitted by the plasma excite these phosphors, which give off visible light with colors determined by the phosphor materials. This aspect is comparable to fluorescent lamps and to the neon signs that use colored phosphors.
Every pixel is made up of three separate subpixel cells, each with different colored phosphors. One subpixel has a red light phosphor, one subpixel has a green light phosphor and one subpixel has a blue light phosphor. These colors blend together to create the overall color of the pixel, the same as a triad of a shadow mask CRT or color LCD. Plasma panels use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to control brightness: by varying the pulses of current flowing through the different cells thousands of times per second, the control system can increase or decrease the intensity of each subpixel color to create billions of different combinations of red, green and blue. In this way, the control system can produce most of the visible colors. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, which accounts for the extremely accurate color reproduction when viewing television or computer video images (which use an RGB color system designed for CRT display technology).
Plasma displays should not be confused with liquid crystal displays (LCDs), another lightweight flat-screen display using very different technology. LCDs may use one or two large fluorescent lamps as a backlight source, but the different colors are controlled by LCD units, which in effect behave as gates that allow or block the passage of light from the backlight to red, green, or blue paint on the front of the LCD panel.
Source: Wikipedia
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