HDTV Displays Duke It Out

Recently, one of the weekday morning news shows had a gentleman on who was talking about HDTVs with plasma displays. My wife was watching with interest, since a friend of hers is about to purchase one. “He says these HDTVs only last for three years,” she said, surprised, since she knows how expensive they are. Rather than just grunt, I found myself trying to explain the difference between the HDTV signal and the display. I found myself saying things like. “Well, that’s just a plasma display. Large screen HDTVs also use LCD and DLP displays.” Worse yet, I then started talking about how the new DLP HDTVs introduced this year at the Consumer Electronics Show were less than seven inches thick, as compared to last year, when they were about 12 to 18 inches thick, as I recall. Then, I found myself contrasting the new DLP TVs with the older CRT rear-projection sets. “Those older sets had three CRTs, red, green and blue, yada, yada, ya.” The icing on the cake was when I tried to explain how manufacturers are able to produce such a thin rear-projection TV. “The thin DLP HDTVs use the InFocus light engine,” I said, “I saw a demo of it at last year’s CES show.” I was about to explain this aspect of the technology to her, when I saw that her eyes had glazed over. It was then that I realized I had gone too far. A grunt would have been sufficient. I found myself wondering why a morning news show on a major network would let a guy discuss the merits of HDTVs with plasma displays. It’s just not fair to people getting ready to go to work in the morning. E-mail your comments to me at [email protected]