This is the beginning of what I hope will be a long-running conversation between you and me. I will write about the things that I consider important, but if you think something else is more important or just more interesting let me know. eMail me with any questions you might have and I will make my best effort to address those issues
The audio/video/multimedia industry is fraught with myths mostly started by competing firms or technologies but often misleading to many of us. I thought I would occasionally talk about some of this folklore, so I'll start today. Hopefully this will shed a little light on some misunderstood subjects. So let's get to it.
By far, the gatherer of the most legends is Plasma TV or Plasma Display Technology. This often outstanding viewing medium is the target of so much confusion, it's scary. Let's talk about some of these:
- Plasma TVs lose their gas. They have to be recharged every couple of years.
- Similar to other fixed pixel displays, plasma TVs have thousands of tiny locations, where red, green, and blue are mixed to form all the colors in our movies. Each of these pixels(picture elements) contains a tiny amount of gas. When an electric current passes through that gas, it gets so hot that the gas molecules fly apart and form a plasma. The electrons floating around in that plasma strike a phosphor on the front of the screen causing it to glow. We see light. All of these little lights form shapes on the screen and we get a picture.
- The gas doesn't escape. It is permanently sealed in. It can't leak unless the screen is broken in which case can kiss your lovely expensive TV goodbye. Repairing a broken screen is essentially replacing the plasma TV. Get it insured.
- Plasmas always burn. They can get a permanent image and you have to throw them away.
- First let me say that any display technology can retain an image. However, this is far more likely in a phosphor-based display (e.g. plasma, picture tube…) than in any solid-state technology (lcd, dlp, DiLA…). Admittedly, burn is most likely in plasmas because they use a high-persistence phosphor. But…
- Early in its life any plasma will retain images. You can see them when the set is turning on or off. However, once the phosphor ages a little this effect disappears.
Burning is different from early-life image retention. Plasmas fail because the phosphor fades as it is used. If one part of the phosphor is used much more than the rest of the screen, it will fade faster and you will be able to see the border of that area whenever you watch the picture, especially in dark scenes. This rarely occurs but it can, for instance, if you watch CNN all day. The crawl at the bottom will eventually burn (fade) into the screen and you will see a line across the bottom of the screen if you ever watch anything else. If your plasma does burn, use your manufacturer's burn eraser (on the user menu) or lacking that, leave "snow" on your screen overnight. This should help. Video games, at one time the worst culprits, and most of the plasma displays themselves have anti-burn technology so this occurs infrequently.
- Plasmas get dim. They don't last long.
- Plasmas do fade. Almost all t