Is plasma better than LCD for SD TV pictures?

by Antonio
(Portugal)

I have one question, whose answer I could not find anywhere on the net: regarding the display of SD material (PAL), is plasma better than LCD? I mean, I know that in the case of an LCD panel, the best possible image is only achieved when the source has the same resolution as the native resolution of the panel.

However, that is not the case with CRTs (if computer monitors can be taken as a reference here).

My question: in this regard, do plasma panels have the same behavior as a CRT or as an LCD? In other words, is picture processing for SD material as important in a plasma than in an LCD - considering a native resolution of 1080p in both cases?

Thanks in advance,

Antonio

---

Antonio

You are correct when you say that a CRT and LCD are completely different when it comes to thinking about screen resolution.

The LCD TV has a screen made from a fixed grid of pixels, and we should expect the best picture quality if the incoming image resolution is the same as the native resolution of the TV screen. If it isn't, then an internal scaler will adjust the image to fit the pixel grid for the screen, and this will affect the quality of the image.

Go here for more information on flat screen TV resolution.

A CRT TV on the other hand creates images by firing electrons onto a fluorescent screen, and it can vary it's resolution depending on the incoming signal.

For a plasma TV, it has the same basic screen design as an LCD TV (even though it works in a different way). In other words, it has a fixed grid of pixels which are used to create the image. Therefore, the same rules apply as to that of an LCD screen, and the best quality image should be from an image that matches the resolution of the screen - 1920 x 1080 for example.

Therefore, the quality of the image processing inside the TV will determine how good both LCD or plasma TVs look for standard definition images - and this will vary between models of plasma and LCD televisions. This can be an important buying point if you will be watching plenty of SD TV on your new flat screen.

If you are watching your SD images from a good quality DVD/Blu-ray player, then it may be that the upscaling of the player may be better than the scaling in the TV. Try both and see which looks best.

Hope this helps.

All the best.

Paul (Site Editor)

Feel free to join in this discussion by adding your own comments below...