Way up on the list of reader questions we field on a regular basis is, “Which is better, plasma or LCD?” Compared with more affordable tube-type TVs, both technologies are relatively new. But their flat form factor, combined with an ultra-bright picture that looks good from any position on your couch, gives many folks a spasm of techno-lust. As a country, America may be divided into “red” and “blue” states, but we all agree that flat TVs are cool. Still, the question remains: which type is better?

To find out, we put a plasma and an LCD set in the ring and let 'em duke it out. Samsung's HP-P3761 ($4,000) represented plasma, and in the LCD corner was Sharp's Aquos LC-37GD6U ($6,000), both 37-inch widescreen HDTVs. We set them up to optimize their pictures, the same as we do for all the TVs we review. After placing black matte material around each screen to hide the brand names, S&V executive editor Brian Fenton played numerous HDTV and DVD clips for me, contributing technical editor David Katzmaier (DK), and technical editor David Ranada (DR). We each brought some of our own reference DVDs and D-VHS tapes to check out, and as a final torture test, we watched a few minutes of analog cable TV.

Our regular arsenal of TV performance tests includes these difficult scenes from the DVDs of Chicago (left) and The Fellowship of the Ring (middle) and from the high-definition D-VHS tape version of Digital Video Essentials. Each contains very bright areas — the light board behind the dancers, the snow drifts, and the shuttle exhaust and clouds — that the plasma and LCD displays handled differently.

On some levels, pitting two TV display technologies against each other is comparing apples and oranges. So it's probably best to begin by laying out the key differences between the Samsung and the Sharp. Although both can display HDTV, they have different native resolutions, or the number of pixels (picture elements) that make up images, counted horizontally and vertically. The Samsung's resolution is 1,024 (horizontal) x 1,024 (vertical) pixels, and the Sharp's is 1,366 x 768 pixels.

Plasma and LCD sets also generate pictures in very different ways. In a plasma TV, the pixels consist of gas-filled cells coated with phosphorescent material. When an electrical current charges the gas in a cell, it makes the coating glow. In an LCD TV, the pixels are liquid-crystal cells over a fluorescent backlight. The opacity of the cells varies in response to an electrical signal, passing or blocking the light.

Regardless of the unique technical details behind plasma and LCD, both types can deliver great-looking high-def pictures. But our goal was to carefully compare their image qualities, so we created scorecards with a number of evaluation points grouped into five general categories. The first of these, Contrast, describes the range of tonal steps between the deepest shadows and brightest highlights. Col or covers the set's ability to accurately display a full range of colors at various brightness levels. Picture Detail and Picture Uniformity gauge overall sharpness and consistency of the image across the screen, respectively. Picture Uniformity also covers image quality at off-angle viewing positions. And Daylight Viewing ranks picture performance in a room that's filled with light.

Each reviewer jotted down detailed comments on his scorecard as he watched test clips, and these formed the basis for a composite score ranging from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). While our scores don't apply to all plasma and LCD TVs — even two plasma or two LCD TVs from the same brand can perform differently — you can take them as a measure of what to expect from current popular models. Hopefully, they'll help you with your buying decision when you finally decide to go flat.

Contrast

This category covers a lot of ground, from picture brightness to the level of detail visible in shadows and highlights. Makers of flat TVs often crow about the amazing contrast ratios their sets are capable of, but that spec is pretty meaningless unless the TV is properly set up and tested with patterns that approximate the programs people watch.

All three reviewers noted that the Sharp LCD looked brighter than the Samsung plasma (after calibration, its peak brightness did measure somewhat higher), although DK felt that the difference wasn't much of an issue. The LCD's overall picture contrast turned out to be more controversial. DR and I had a problem with how it handled both shadow details and highlights in images. But blacks looked very rich and deep — the LCD set was much better with this than the plasma, which barely dipped below a very dark gray in most of the clips we looked at. But DR and I both found that shadow details, or the gray tones just above black on the brightness scale, were swallowed up by the LCD in most dark scenes.

At the other end of the scale, whenever a bright image appeared onscreen, both DR and I felt the LCD could produce only a limited range of highlights (the lightest areas in the picture). A good example was a scene of snowy peaks from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. On the LCD, mounds and creases in the snow tended to blend into a unified white mass. The same was true in a shot of the space shuttle taking off from the high-def D-VHS tape of Digital Video Essentials. Both the billowing clouds of smoke and the intricate web of white-painted hardware on the shuttle's launch pad looked somewhat featureless and washed out on the LCD compared with the plasma. With most images, DR and I felt the plasma was much more adept at conveying details from both the light and dark ends of the spectrum.

Interestingly, DK disagreed with us on many of these points. Although he acknowledged that highlight details in bright scenes like the space-shuttle launch looked blown-out on the LCD compared with the plasma, he thought the LCD's contrast had more impact overall. He also commented that along with its deeper blacks, the LCD's picture consistently revealed more shadow detail. As for the plasma, he characterized its shadows as being “muddier” than the LCD's. Taking all of these observations into account, the plasma ended up with a slightly higher Contrast score than the LCD.

Color

If there's one thing that's guaranteed to look different on any two TVs, it's color. Check out a row of sets at your local electronics store, and you'll see what I mean. But even though our efforts to optimize the color setups on both the plasma and LCD were nothing short of heroic, each TV retained a distinct color signature. That factor was given some weight in this part of the evaluation, which covered both color accuracy and the set's ability to reproduce vibrant, natural-looking colors no matter how dark or bright the image onscreen (grayscale linearity).

The LCD's color rendition held greater appeal for DK, although he did comment that its primary colors seemed less accurate than the plasma's. Watching both DVDs and HDTV, he thought the LCD's color was better saturated, with more natural reds. He wasn't too bothered by the set's tendency to go greenish in dark scenes — a sticking point for DR and me. As for the plasma, DK thought that it emphasized reds, making Frodo's face in The Fellowship of the Ring look too flush in closeup shots.

While the LCD color performance was good, I thought it looked less natural than the plasma. I found that it emphasized reds, making faces look slightly sunburned. DR also picked up on this, but he saw the problem as more in the yellows, which he felt were being shifted toward orange. We both also noted that the LCD's colors tended to look pale in bright shots. I called the plasma's color “CRT-like,” meaning that the picture was vibrant and deep, with a wide range of subtle hues visible in both light and dark images. After I tallied up the positive and negative comments, plasma took the Color round by two to one.

Picture Detail

You might think that detail on a plasma or LCD TV is directly proportional to its resolution, or pixel count — the more pixels, the more detail. Well, not exactly. DK's and my experience with reviewing TVs has shown us that other factors — contrast in particular — contribute to a set's sharpness and clarity.

But there were still some instances where the LCD's extra pixels gave it an edge over the plasma. Both DK and I noted that we saw more details in the billowing smoke emanating from the space shuttle in certain shots from the Digital Video Essentials footage. DK's enthusiasm for the LCD's crisp picture extended to DVDs as well. He noted greater detail in the illuminated stage set from Chicago and in close-ups of faces. He felt the plasma display's picture was slightly softer, causing scenes like the one in Master and Commander where the ship retreats into the fog after battle to look even “foggier.”

But despite the LCD's resolution advantage on some material, both DR and I felt that the plasma had the upper hand overall when it came to picture detail. To our eyes, the plasma looked sharper on a broader range of programs. For example, I found that detail in shots of the sky-borne space shuttle evaporated every time the picture brightness exceeded a certain threshold on the LCD. The plasma, in my view, consistently rendered the same pictures with much greater subtlety. And in a static shot of steps leading down to a river bank on a Silicon Optix test DVD that DR brought along, he noted a fraction less detail on the LCD than the plasma. The result? Plasma won the Picture Detail round by a nose.

Picture Uniformity

Like Contrast, Picture Uniformity encompasses many things, including image smoothness (lack of “noise,” which gives a harsh, grainy look), solidity, and viewing angle. This is also where we chose to gauge each set's handling of analog cable-TV programs. Because some aspects of Picture Uniformity are highly dependent on a set's video processing — something that varies from maker to maker — it's also the category that depends least on whether a set is LCD or plasma. To be consistent with our usual testing procedures, we switched off noise reduction via the user menus.

The Picture Uniformity evaluation had DK, DR, and myself at last seeing eye-to-eye. We all noted that the LCD gave a rough, blotchy look to shots with shadow gradations or flat patches of color, an effect known as “false contours.” We saw many examples of this both in Tron, a sci-fi movie that makes heavy use of computer graphics, and in the battle scenes of Master and Commander. The smoke and fog surrounding the ships looked noticeably smoother and more uniform on the plasma.

The plasma also handled “noisy” video images much better than the LCD. With old movies or the woefully noisy Golf Channel on cable, the LCD seemed to accentuate video noise. But the plasma weathered these same images extremely well. Even with the set's noise-reduction feature switched off, analog cable TV looked relatively smooth compared with the LCD.

As for viewing angle — a key concern when you've got a bunch of people gathered around to watch the big game — both DK and I felt the sets were about equal. DR thought the LCD picture was slightly washed out when viewed from positions other than head-on. But all disagreements aside, plasma hammered LCD in the Picture Uniformity round.

Daylight Viewing

Hard-core home theater nuts wouldn't dream of watching movies anywhere except in a dark room. But most “normal” people like to watch TV in a space with at least some light. And for those long Sunday afternoons spent watching sports, it's not unusual to have the curtains open and lamps on — the better to light your way to the fridge during commercials.

DK felt that the LCD did a better job in a well-lit room, mainly because its screen reflected less ambient light. To my eyes, the plasma's contrast range lessened and images looked dimmer when the lights went on. There was also an issue with screen glare on the plasma — light from nearby lamps bounced off its screen to an annoying degree. On the other hand, I agreed with DK that the LCD maintained picture contrast exceptionally well in a bright room, and screen glare wasn't a problem at all. Performance here, especially with glare, greatly depends on screen-surface treatments, which can vary among manufacturers and aren't technology dependent. Looking to the Daylight Viewing section of our scorecard, LCD beats plasma with a knockdown.

Bottom Line

The question of plasma or LCD's supremacy is one a lot of people are pondering these days as they look for a flat alternative to bulky TVs. Our test pitted only a single representative of each technology against each other, but the TVs we chose are prime examples of the models you'll find in stores. In this bout, plasma edged out LCD in overall video performance. It rated distinctly higher on Picture Uniformity and Color, but only slightly higher on Picture Detail and Contrast. Yet LCD won the round on Daylight Viewing. But this is only the first bout, so keep an eye on these pages for a plasma vs. LCD rematch.

Lab Setup

To level the playing field for the fairest image comparison, we calibrated the Sharp LC-376GDU and the Samsung HP-P3761 sets for optimum picture quality and tweaked them to look as similar as possible. The Sharp was difficult to calibrate, and I couldn't compensate for a greenish bias at the low end of its grayscale, which varied by an average of 315 K from the brightest to darkest measurable images. (In the range from 40 through 90 IRE, though, it varied by only 170 K.) The Samsung HP-P3761's grayscale was more linear, varying an average of 208 K from the brightest to darkest images. Because of differences in how the two sets handled brightness and color signals, they couldn't be adjusted to look identical on all program material. But the user controls were adjusted to get as close a match as possible using high-def test patterns and the Avia and Digital Video Essentials test DVDs. — Brian C. Fenton

Plasma vs. LCD: Just the Facts

The purpose of our test was to do a blind, side-by-side subjective comparison of plasma and LCD flat-panel TVs from well-known manufacturers. To make this comparison as fair as possible, we needed to find high-def models of each type in the same size — not an easy task. This concern for a close visual match overshadowed any price difference between the two, which is mostly due to the more costly LCD set's having a built-in HDTV tuner with CableCARD, and also because big-screen LCD TVs are new on the scene and still in short supply. Big-screen plasma TVs, on the other hand, have been around for several years. Now here are some facts about both technologies that you should know before making a buying decision. The phosphor-lined cells on plasma TVs are subject to the same “burn-in” vulnerability as tube models — this is when graphics like videogame backgrounds or stock-ticker patterns are left onscreen for long periods and persist even after you change programs. But there are plenty of ways to avoid burn-in, and some sets even include processing to prevent it. Another point: while plasma sets, which come as big as 65 inches diagonal, dwarf the largest LCD models (46 inches), they currently have limited pixel resolution compared with those sets. The biggest LCDs can provide a whopping 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, enough to display a 1080i-format high-def program (or 1080p, for that matter) in its full native resolution — vertical and horizontal — without scaling it to fit the pixel layout of the screen. If you're keeping an eye on your electric bill, you should also know that LCD TVs tend to consume less power than same-size plasma sets. And then there's the issue of product lifespan. Although LCD is often cited as having the greater longevity of the two, most plasma-TV manufacturers rate their new models to last for two decades or more. By that time, there will likely be something more intriguing on the market, like high-definition wallpaper.  — A.G.

The Final Round
Our three video experts summarize their impressions

David Ranada
The LCD had less accurate color overall, and the grayscale — the range of tones between full black and full white — was less pure (distinctly greenish as opposed to the slightly bluish grayscale on the plasma) and less linear (darks got pushed to black). It also lost details and color saturation in the brightest portions of the image. Background noise in the program material was highly visible, too. On the other hand, the plasma didn't deliver as bright a picture, though this could have been a result of the LCD's pushing signals near full white to full white, which makes for a considerably brighter picture overall when the image contains a lot of near-full-white areas, as in the clips featuring snow or bright clouds. The plasma refrained from pushing the image up to white or down into black, and that alone could account for much of its superiority in detail, color hue, and color saturation. On the whole, I greatly preferred the less exaggerated imagery of the plasma set.

Al Griffin
For a TV to be good, it needs to actually look good with a broad variety of programs — everything from HDTV to VHS tapes. The plasma set nimbly handled most everything we threw at it, delivering consistently crisp pictures with a smooth contrast range and clean, vivid colors. The only thing I could ask for would be greater shadow depth, but I've had the same experience with many other plasma TVs in the past. Interestingly, shadow depth was an area where the LCD shined — that and its incredibly bright image, which retained good contrast even with the lights turned on. But compared with the plasma, the LCD's picture lacked subtlety. Its greater native resolution should have been readily apparent with high-def programs, but it tended to wash out detail in bright and even medium-bright pictures. Compared with the plasma, the LCD also lacked color accuracy, and it couldn't handle noisy images like those on analog cable channels. LCD has a bright future, but for now I prefer plasma.

David Katzmaier
In both Master and Commander and Chicago, the fog and shadows looked smoother on the plasma than on the LCD. But skin tones seemed much more realistic on the LCD, particularly Frodo's face in The Fellowship of the Ring. With high-def material, the extra detail in the LCD was immediately apparent, with more whorls and sharper details visible in the clouds from Digital Video Essentials' space-shuttle sequence. But the plasma's primary colors seemed more natural, particularly green and blue (although red was a bit better on the LCD). In darker scenes I noticed more noise in the blacks on the plasma and cleaner shadows, with slightly better detail, on the LCD. In shots of the blue sky from The Fellowship of the Ring and Toy Story, the LCD seemed a bit noisier. Overall, I preferred the LCD picture, although the Sharp TV's greenish grays gave me pause. The high-contrast look of the picture, and greater detail with high-def sources, won me over.

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