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Until quite recently (c. 2004) the superior brightness and viewing angle of color plasma panels, when compared to LCD, made them one of the most popular forms of display for HDTV. However since that time improvements in LCD technology have closed the gap dramatically. The much lower weight, price and power consumption of LCDs have seen them make large inroads into the former plasma market. Sony now only sell a very limited range of Plasma screens and appear set to quit this market altogether. The phosphors in a plasma display give off colored light when they are excited. 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. By varying the pulses of current flowing through the different cells, the control system can increase or decrease the intensity of each subpixel color to create hundreds of different combinations of red, green and blue. In this way, the control system can produce colors across the entire visible spectrum. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, accounting for the extremely accurate color reproduction. Techniques for color graphics Reflective LCDs, often found in digital watches and calculators, are illuminated by external light reflected by a (sometimes) diffusing reflector behind the display. This type of LCD can produce darker 'blacks' than the transmissive type since light must pass through the liquid crystal layer twice and thus is attenuated twice, however because the reflected light is also attenuated twice in the translucent parts of the display image contrast is usually poorer than a transmissive display. The absence of a lamp significantly reduces power consumption, allowing for longer battery life in battery-powered devices; small reflective LCDs consume so little power that they can rely on a photovoltaic cell, as often found in pocket calculators. The TN display suffers from limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction, and some are unable to display the full 16.7 million colors (24-bit truecolor) available from modern graphics cards. These particular panels, with 6 bits per color channel as opposed to 8, can approach true 24-bit color using a dither method which quickly cycles pixels to simulate a given shade, which are noticeable to some and discomforting to others. Overall, color reproduction and linearity on TN panels is poor. Shortcomings in display color gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC color gamut) can also be attributed to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for displays with CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps) based lighting to range from 40% to 76% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas displays utilizing white LED backlights may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut -a difference quite perceivable by the human eye.
With prices starting around US$2,000 and going all the way up past US$20,000 (as of 2004), these sets did not sell as quickly as older technologies like CRT. But as prices fall and technology advances, they have started to seriously compete against the CRT sets. Some 42" sets fell below $1,500 at major retailers like Best Buy and Costco during the 2005 Christmas season, and many of the retailers reported that plasma TVs were among the hottest selling items for that season. Value TFT screens and most 38 cm (~15 in.) sized LCDs usually fail to include a digital signal compatible DVI interface, thus their future proofing may be limited. The upper end of 43 cm (~17 in.) or 48 cm (~19 in.) gamer and office TFT screens may have dual analog-VGA and DVI sockets; almost all professional screens have DVI and pivot mode for letter-mode display. However, the use of a DVI video signal does not automatically guarantee better image quality: a good video card RAMDAC and properly shielded analogue VGA cable may produce a better display than a bad video card and DVI. Plasma displays are bright (1000 lx or higher for the module), have a wide color gamut, and can be produced in fairly large sizes, up to 260 cm (102 inches) diagonally. They have a very high "dark-room" contrast, creating the "perfect black" desirable for watching movies. The display panel is only 6 cm (2 1/2 inches) thick, while the total thickness, including electronics, is less than 10 cm (4 inches). Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT or an AMLCD television; in 2004 the cost has come down to US$1900 or less for the popular 42 inch (107 cm) diagonal size, making it very attractive for home-theatre use. Real life measurements of plasma power consumption find it to be much less than that normally quoted by manufacturers. Nominal measuments indicate 150 Watts for a 50" screen. The lifetime of the latest generation of PDPs is estimated at 60,000 hours to half life when displaying video. Half life is the point where the picture has degraded to half of its original brightness, which is considered the end of the functional life of the display. So if you use it at an average of 2-1/2 hours a day, the PDP will last approximately 65 years. For high-resolution color displays such as modern LCD computer monitors and televisions, an active matrix structure is used. A matrix of thin-film transistors (TFTs) is added to the polarizing and color filters. Each pixel has its own dedicated transistor, which allows each column line to access one pixel. When a row line is activated, all of the column lines are connected to a row of pixels and the correct voltage is driven onto all of the column lines. The row line is then deactivated and the next row line is activated. All of the row lines are activated in sequence during a refresh operation. Active-matrix displays are much brighter and sharper than passive-matrix displays of the same size, and generally have quicker response times. LCDs with a small number of segments, such as those used in digital watches and pocket calculators, have a single electrical contact for each segment. An external dedicated circuit supplies an electric charge to control each segment. This display structure is unwieldy for more than a few display elements.
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MVA The first operational LCD was based on the Dynamic Scattering Mode (DSM) and was introduced in 1968 by a group at RCA in the USA headed by George Heilmeier. Heilmeier founded Optel, which introduced a number of LCDs based on this technology. The TN+Film (Twisted Nematic) display is the most common consumer display type, due to its lower price. The pixel response time on modern TN panels is sufficiently fast to avoid the shadow-trail artifacts that were a cause for complaint in the past. This fast response time has been a heavily marketed aspect of TN displays, although in most cases this number does not reflect performance across the entire range of possible color transitions. However this marketing strategy, combined with the relatively lower cost of production for TN panels, has led to the dominance of TN in the consumer market. Twisted Nematic (TN) LCD technology still has a few drawbacks in comparison to some other display technologies:
A general purpose alphanumeric LCD, with two lines of 16 characters. To ionize the gas in a color panel, the plasma display's computer charges the electrodes that intersect at that cell thousands of times in a small fraction of a second, charging each cell in turn. When the intersecting electrodes are charged (with a voltage difference between them), an electric current flows through the gas in the cell. The current creates a rapid flow of charged particles, which stimulates the gas atoms to release ultraviolet photons. During the 1970s and early 1980s, LCD technology was not yet mature. However, during the early 80's timeframe, a tabletop video game called Popeye was made with a color LCD, a device with technology ahead of it's time. Technologies used for portable devices made prior to the 1990s to use color graphics include tabletop video games that use Vacuum fluorescent displays and also, before modern laptop computers that used color graphics, the so-called luggable computer, Commodore SX-64 used color graphics on a mini-CRT. The Commodore SX-64 was however bulky hence the aforementioned term luggable. Plasma displays are bright (1000 lx or higher for the module), have a wide color gamut, and can be produced in fairly large sizes, up to 260 cm (102 inches) diagonally. They have a very high "dark-room" contrast, creating the "perfect black" desirable for watching movies. The display panel is only 6 cm (2 1/2 inches) thick, while the total thickness, including electronics, is less than 10 cm (4 inches). Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT or an AMLCD television; in 2004 the cost has come down to US$1900 or less for the popular 42 inch (107 cm) diagonal size, making it very attractive for home-theatre use. Real life measurements of plasma power consumption find it to be much less than that normally quoted by manufacturers. Nominal measuments indicate 150 Watts for a 50" screen. The lifetime of the latest generation of PDPs is estimated at 60,000 hours to half life when displaying video. Half life is the point where the picture has degraded to half of its original brightness, which is considered the end of the functional life of the display. So if you use it at an average of 2-1/2 hours a day, the PDP will last approximately 65 years. A Color LCD is a descendant of the primative monochrome LCD. This kind of LCD can emulate almost any real-life image compared to a monochrome LCD.