More plasma myths, this time from David Pogue
New York Times Circuits editor David Pogue has failed us. Yesterday he did a comparison of LCD and plasma screens and perpetuated the plasma myths - in fact, he hit every myth except for the "you gotta recharge your plasma with gas every two years" one. We're guessing that was in the first draft. First, he claims that plasmas are at risk for burn-in. David, this half-truth has been proven wrong time and time again. Modern plasmas are prefectly fine for gaming and even static images at trade shows. In fact, we've been playing five hours of Halo 2 a day for the past week. Any burn in? No. Just some nausea from the widescreen immersion. Second, he claims that plasmas have a shorter life-span. Had he been paying attention to the latest plasma models from Fujitsu and Panasonic for the past three years, he would note a 60,000 hour lifespan. In fact, recent tests have shown that plasmas even increase in brightness and contrast over the first 10,000 hours while LCDs immediately begin to lose light. We don't know who's buttering your muffin, David, but we're pretty sure they're not doing their research. You want some LCD issues? How about inferior contrast ratios, unnatural color recreation (which you do sort of mention but poo-poo quickly), fixed pixel sizes that don't scale well to NTSC and ATSC standards, motion blur, limited viewing angles, and massive prices. Want more? We can keep going.
