Thin Is In

Not all high-tech TVs are alike. Here we sort out the differences among big-screen and high-def TVs, and keep score in terms of price, pros and cons.

By Ronaleen Roha

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, September 2004

Roger Clemens is on the mound. It's bottom of the ninth, two outs, runner on first. The lights are bright. Sweat glistens on his brow. Fans are shouting. You notice a runner has taken a generous lead off first. You yell: "Roger, first base!" Clemens pivots and rockets the ball into the first baseman's outstretched mitt, which then zips down to nail the runner's outstretched fingers. Out! The Astros win! And you and Roger did it.

That's how it feels to watch big-screen TV.

The question is which model to buy. Walking through a showroom, all the big screens look good. (Big is a subjective term, but sets that are 36 inches and larger are a reasonable starting point.) However, there are differences among them that you should know before buying. To begin with, big-screen sets come in four varieties. Conventional big-screen sets that use cathode-ray-tube (CRT) technology start to get massive when they move into big-screen territory. A 40-inch Sony, for example, is 26 inches deep and weighs more than 300 pounds.

For a slimmer profile, you'll need to buy one of the other three varieties. Of these, two are flat-panel TVs, which are usually less than four inches thick. Flat panels are either liquid crystal display (LCD), which top out at 46 inches measured diagonally, or plasma, which reach 71 inches. Almost one million flat-panel TVs were sold last year, five times the number sold the previous year, with LCDs about twice as popular as plasma models.

The final type is microdisplay, rear-projection TV. The screens on this type are too thick to hang on a wall (about 13 to 19 inches), but they can be almost as large as plasma screens -- at about half the price.

For cachet, you can't beat a flat screen. Just ask Tim and Jill Hecht of Vienna, Va., who couldn't tear themselves away from coverage of the U.S. Open golf championship on their 50-inch Sony plasma TV. The spectacular picture "made us feel as if we were walking up the 18th fairway with the leaders," Jill says. And one afternoon, she recalls, the eldest of their three kids, 10-year-old Robbie, yelled to her, "Look at these mountains! Look at these skiers!" He was watching a travel show on the huge screen. "I was so excited he wasn't watching Nickelodeon," Jill says.

The price for the Hechts' system was $21,000 -- $12,000 for the screen and another $9,000 for extras, including an amplifier, recessed surround-sound speakers and custom installation. The Hechts bought at the higher end of the flat-screen range, which for big sizes starts at about $4,000. The good news: Even though flat-panel TVs are still relatively new, prices are starting to fall.

Pixel perfect

Bigger is nice, but a better picture in combination with a larger size is what really makes these sets sizzle. And a better picture means high-definition TV. An HDTV contains more pixels, the tiny bits of color that combine to make up an image. A traditional, non-high-definition TV set displays about 200,000 pixels per screen; an HDTV offers up to two million pixels.

Although all the models mentioned here are designed to show HDTV programs, that doesn't mean every program you view on them will be high definition. You need a high-definition signal and a high-definition tuner to go with your high-definition screen (you will have to buy an HDTV tuner separately if it is not built in). Many network shows are broadcast in HDTV, and many cable and satellite providers offer HDTV packages. To make sure you can take advantage of HDTV, sign up for Titan TV's free online programming guide at Titantv.com, to find HD shows in your area.

You can, of course, watch non-HDTV shows on an HDTV. The picture is often better than on a regular TV but falls short of HDTV clarity. (For more details on HDTVs and HDTV programming, see "Tune In to HDTV.")

As well as having high-definition screens, all of the TVs mentioned here come in wide-screen format -- that is, they are rectangular in shape, more like a movie screen.

Wide screen is great if you want to watch movies in the proper format. For one thing, you'll no longer see the black bands at the top and bottom of the screen that appear on conventional, squarish screens. HDTV programming is always in wide-screen format. Flat-panel TVs generally allow you to stretch or otherwise adjust a regular image to fill the screen, but the distortion may be jarring.

Until recently, you had to sit directly in front of a plasma or LCD screen to view the picture properly. But now viewing angles are much better -- about 160 degrees for plasmas and 170 degrees for LCDs -- which means you can watch even from an oblique angle.

The pick of plasma

If you want a really big flat panel, you want plasma. Plasmas start at about 32 inches diagonally, with the most popular size being 42 inches, followed by 50 inches. The biggest plasma screen currently available is a 71-inch set that costs more than $30,000 from Korean manufacturer LG.

Plasma screens are like ultra-fancy neon lights. Each pixel can shine red, green and blue, and contains a mixture of xenon and neon. When electricity zaps the gas, strikingly bright color is the result.

A plasma image may be vivid, but plasma technology is new and still has some bugs. For instance, plasma screens are subject to "burn in" -- meaning a ghost image may eventually develop when an image, such as a network logo or video-game graphic, stays in one place too long.

Also, a plasma TV's picture tends to degrade, sometimes after only a few years. When that happens, says Dominic Ainscough, senior analyst with the Yankee Group, "you might not want to use it as your main TV." But manufacturers claim that plasmas deliver between 20,000 and 30,000 hours of viewing time. If the set is on six hours a day, that's nine to 14 years.

A couple more caveats: Plasmas don't do well at high altitudes. At 6,500 feet or higher, plasmas' trapped gas can buzz and vibrate annoyingly. Finally, because pixels in plasma screens are lit from within, pixels that fail will leave a dark spot on the screen that cannot be repaired.

Based on picture quality and set design, we found several plasmas we really liked.

The Hitachi 42HDT51 (list $7,000) is a stylish unit with a shiny black frame, a silver base and slim stand. (The stand can be removed if the unit is wall-mounted.) It is about four inches deep, weighs about 76 pounds and has a built-in HD tuner and speakers (many flat-panel TVs do not come with speakers). As with many of the newer-model HDTVs, it has a slot for a CableCard, a device available from most cable companies that permits reception without a set-top box. The set allows you to adjust lighting conditions for day or night so you can, say, increase the contrast to counteract light in a bright room.

The Panasonic TH-42PX25U/P ($6,000) is a 42-inch plasma screen with a built-in HD tuner, a CableCard slot, built-in speakers that allow 3D sound from two speakers and a slim, pedestal-like stand. It weighs 93 pounds and is about 5.5 inches thick.

For a good picture for less, consider the Gateway 42-inch, HD-ready plasma ($4,500). ("HD ready" means it needs a tuner to pull in over-the-air HD broadcasts.) It has a thin silver frame and two low, black "feet" for a stand. It weighs 69 pounds, is less than four inches thick and has two built-in speakers.

Tried-and-true

In contrast to plasma technology, LCD technology has been around for years (in everything from pocket calculators to bathroom scales), and bugs are few. LCD pictures look as sharp as plasma pictures. And, although plasma screens tend to wash out in bright rooms, LCDs can be used in any lighting conditions. These advantages come at a price: LCDs cost more than similar-size plasma sets.

With an LCD screen, light comes from a bulb behind the display. Electric current causes the crystals to change, either allowing light to pass through or blocking it, forming the image on the screen. The back-light bulb for an LCD can be replaced, but it may cost $200 or more. Most LCDs are smaller than plasmas, starting at about 13 inches and topping out at 46 inches with the Samsung LTP468W ($10,000). This HD-ready TV has the highest HDTV resolution on the market and speakers on either side of the screen. It weighs in at just under 100 pounds.

The Sharp Aquos LC-37G4U ($6,000) is a 37-inch beauty with a crisp, bright picture. It weighs 53 pounds and is less than 2.5 inches deep without the detachable speakers and table stand. The unit is HD-ready.

For a smaller screen that can double as a computer monitor, consider the Mitsubishi Platinum Series LT-3050 ($5,000), which has a handsome black-and-silver finish. This 30-inch unit weighs 42 pounds, is HD-ready and comes with speakers.

Thicker but cheaper

We were impressed by the new kids on the big-screen block: microdisplay, rear-projection TVs. These sets boast an impressive combination of picture quality -- some models are as good as the best plasma or LCD screens -- and lower price that has begun to capture consumers' attention.

If you were considering a plasma TV but didn't want to hang it on a wall, these sets are definitely worth a look. They can be as large as plasma sets, from about 40 inches to about 70 inches, but often run about half the cost per square inch of plasma. They are, however, deeper and heavier than flat-panel TVs -- 13 to 19 inches deep and about 70 to 200 pounds.

Do not confuse these sets with the fuzzy, wall-size, CRT-based rear-projection TVs that you may find at your local sports bar. Microdisplay pictures are high definition and come in three configurations: LCD; Texas Instruments' Digital Light Processing (DLP); and liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS), new from Intel. So far, there are few LCOS sets on the market. Most are DLPs or LCDs, and between those two technologies, it was a tossup as to which sets had the better pictures. Both the DLPs and LCDs were stunning, though some say the image quality isn't quite as good as that of plasma screens. But to us, the microdisplay images looked every bit as good as plasma.

Our favorite microdisplay TV is the 42-inch Sony Grand Wega KF-42WE610 ($2,800); it's HD-ready and uses LCD technology. The case is less than 15 inches deep and weighs 100 pounds. A newer model, the 42-inch Sony Grand Wega KF-42WE655 ($2,800; due in stores in September), has a CableCard slot. Another excellent HD-ready microdisplay unit is the 46-inch Samsung HL-P4663W ($3,500). This set uses DLP technology, has a thin black frame, is only about 13 inches deep and weighs about 70 pounds.

--Research: Joan Goldwasser

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