Plasma should not work! At least it should not work as a TV display system. At best, it should provide a nice, even light surface - suitable for decorative effect, and maybe, with a strong south wind, work as some type of test display. That was the thinking about thirty years ago. But today, "Plasma" (a.k.a. Gas Discharge) is one of two technologies presently being employed for flat panel TV displays - the other being LCD. Although plasma displays have been around for several years, only relatively recently has this technology been applied to television. Earlier Plasma uses were relegated to flat alphanumeric displays, but other, more efficient technologies such as LCD, LED et al have replaced Plasma in these applications.

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This article hails Plasma displays with little mention of its traditional downside -- the "burn-in" or "aging" problem. I have heard the comment that this problem was solved long ago, but nobody seems willing to put that in writing.

The reality, at the present state of the transition to DTV/HDTV, is that people HD set owners still spend a lot of time watching non-wide-screen programming, whether that comes from an antenna, a cable box, a satellite box, or even from an HDTV broadcaster doing an up-conversion of 4:3 material. Plasma sets generally seem to protect themselves by going to a stretch or zoom mode when this kind of picture is tuned in. Were they to not do so, there would be the danger that the center of the screen (that portion used for 4:3 aspect programs) ages more quickly than the area to the left and right that is only used for wide-screen aspect programs. Eventually, the wide-screen program suffer because the portion of the image in the center would be dimmer than the sides. (The other solution -- filling the sides with gray -- is so distracting to many viewers that it is hardly worth discussing.)

This stretch/zoom technique is a very poor solution to the problem because it exaggerates an already serious problem with virtually every HDTV set--the fact that viewing is optimized for HDTV with a 1.5 to 2.0 screen-to-viewing-distance ration and NTSC material requires a screen-to-viewer-distance two or three times that (depending whether HDTV is 720p or 1080i and wheter the 4:3 image is well de-interlaced or not). So we have people who are wowed by cool HDTV images at the showroom, bring a new HDTV set home, and then become disappointed when they watch a program not available in HDTV. Many have told me that they feel they were better off with their old set!

So my question is this: Is plasma really suitable for the home that watches mixed content? It is disappointing that this article fails to deal with this important question. Until the problem is completely solved, set buyers should steer clear of plasma and elect a technology that avoids the problem completely whether that be LCD panel, DLP, LCoS, or whatever.