3. Plasma? My Opinion Is Better Than Yours

Sometimes, our readers think they're more knowledgable than our writers. And sometimes, they are. That's why we want their article ideas. But when we published an opinion piece about the future of Plasma HDTV technology, all of the nit-pickers came out of the woodwork. Check out this guy's piece de resistance:

Piec2

The debate is similar to one that occurred several years ago: Betamax versus VHS. Looking at only the technology side of things, Betamax was better. However VHS won the war for totally other reason: major movie distributors decided to choose VHS.

In the end, the technology doesn't matter that much: it's all about perception. If the TV looks good enough in the store and people can't see a very obvious difference between the plasmas and the LCDs, then they choose whatever is the lowest price. CUrrently LCD is winning at that game.

Yes, I believe when you look closely at it and compare two screens side-by-side, Plasma will look better. However when you simply look at one of the two in your living room, the vast majority of people will be satisfied with the technology they bought, no matter which one it is.

Plasma is being seriously hurt in Europe because of it's power consumption. Some countries are actually considering passing laws to ban them. That's why Panasonic had no choice but come out with lower consumption panels. I'm sure this increases the production cost for Panasonic (although I haven't read anything to that effect). Unless of course they simply lower the overall brightness of the panel to make up for it (it will be interesting to read the first reviews of these new models).

In North America, I think the vast majority of people don't see such a big difference between the 2 so they go for the cheapest. As long as people are satisfied with their purchase, there's no problem. I bought a VHS a few years ago and I'm still satisfied with it (still plays those children VHS that I don't want to replace because the kids will outgrow them in 2-3 years). I still have one Sony CRT TV which is working perfectly fine. So as long as it fulfills my needs, I don't really care about the fact these technologies are not available anymore. Content producers (Cable/sattelite TV) are the ones that will force me to switch because they will change their content (digital, lots of 16:9 format rather than 4:3).

LCD have made great improvements to catch up with plasmas. Plasmas are making marginal improvements since they are already at the top of the technology. Therefore the gap between the two is reducing.
Then it there will be only one differentiator left: price.

As for OLED, it may be a great technology but right now it is still several years away from becoming affordable. It will follow the same curve that plasma followed (remember those 40" plasma screens that cost 10,000$ 7 years ago?).

I think Plasma will die eventually for lack of manufacturer support. Will LCD be the only kid in town? I doubt it. Plasma will hold on for a few more years and OLED will come down in price. Then plasma will fade away and it will be an all out battle LCD vs OLED.

Wow, that was intense. But leave it to one of our other readers to nit-pick the nit-picker.

Tekkamanraiden

@piec2

You're history is a little fuzzy. The major movie studios developed vhs so they would not have to royalties to sony for every betamax cassette they produced (as sony owns the patent to betamax technology).

The industry has gone lcd because they make more money. How many manufactures have been accused now of lcd price fixing?

OLED is very nice but it looks to be a while until its economically feasible. I'm curious on what has happened to SED technology. It was originally supposed to replace plasma but has seem to have fallen by the wayside.

Thanks for the clarification. Next up is a boaster named Mpasternak. Should we give him a try? His grammar is terrible, and he isn't sure who is audience his (Tom's Guide does cater to the "tech-new" crowd), but nothing a good editor can't fix. Please hire you? Please, send me a message with your ideas.

Mpasternak

please tom's. i've been reading you for so many years now. Why are you resorting to posting "opinion" pieces such as this trash? at one point you used to be a well respected site that would post reports on hardware and technology that could be objectively verified and backed up.

Now you're allowing such crap as "in my opinion the picture looks better, so you are all wrong to dismiss the technology" to be a reasonable article.

I could write such meaningless opinion pieces as this about any topic i'm not an expert on. Please hire me!

what it comes down to Tom's. is that you really need to resort back to your investigatory days of hard factual information instead of this new direction. Toms now seems to cater to the "Newbie" and "tech-new" crowd.

Here's a guy--a rhetoric professor, perhaps?--with instructions on how to write a good persuasive essay. Maybe he wants to write one for us.

Demonhorde665:

if you need 9 reasons for something... then your case is already lost. Persuasive essays use a general rule of "3 reasons " only for a reason.
first off a persuasive essay is intended to NOT bore it's auidence.
over long triades with amilion reasons "for" the argument will and does get old to most every oen that reads the persuasive essay

Secondly a persuasive essay is not supposed to ever appear desperate to win the argument. Listing off to many reasons "for" an argument makes the essay come off as a desperate attempt to keep the readers interested in what you have to say, not very professional

Lastly, Persuasive essays never want to come on to strong. Listing more than three reasons for an argument , can seem extremely overbearing to a reader. this kind of overbearing attitude, can and has lost many an arguments.

So you see it is good to always Keep persuasive incline articles and or essays to a "3 reasons " rule (plus your introduction and conclussion). After all you dont want to seem desperate , boreing and overbearing to your audience, and definitely not all three at the same time.