14 DAY TRIAL // One reason plasma displays haven't been able to actually turn into a stronger rival to LCDs is that the way they rendered the color black was imperfect, with color levels worsening as time went by, but Panasonic claims to have surpassed this issue at last.
When it comes to TVs and monitors, the LCD (liquid crystal display) technology is the most widespread right now.
With LED getting even cheaper lately, this situation is likely to persist for quite a while, but this still doesn't mean other technologies don't have their place.
OLED, for one, is steadily making a name for itself, particularly on the mobile front, while Panasonic's plasma models have gained their own following, of sorts.
Unfortunately, plasma TVs have had to cope with a particular issue since their inception, although it looks like the problem has been resolved at last.
Basically, reports say that black levels should no longer lose depth over the lifespan of the TVs.
This is quite important for television picture quality, and for that of any other displays, be it for monitors, laptops, mobile devices or anything else.
The reason for this is that the sharpness of the color black directly contributes to the contrast ratio, so users would be understandably displeased to see it become worse and worse as time went by.
“The engineers made significant changes to the internal panel materials…to improve the luminous efficiency of the panels,” said Bill Schindler, technical consultant to Panasonic.
“In so doing they had a byproduct effect, which allows them to not adjust the black levels over the panel aging time.”
The changes that enabled this step forward have been implemented in all TVs from the 2011 generation.
What remains is to see how LG and Samsung, the other makers of plasma TVs, respond to this new development.