Hardcore football buffs, home theater fans and elitist sophisticates are the people that mostly use the VIERA plasma HDTV. The high definition portion of the television spectrum is the corner where these are to be found. Do not expect the same brightness from normal TV sets. The black regions of the scene will look more black. There is no ghosting here, and that means faster response times.
The viewing angle is also much wider than normal LCD TV sets. So more people can sit in a wider circle around the TV and still enjoy the picture clearly. For LCD, if you stand on the side, either to the left or right, the picture will look washed out. This will not happen here.
Now, LCDs are matching the plasma sets with their brightness, color representation and response times. However, they are no match for the deeper black levels while showing moving scenes. A moving scene means a scene where there are many objects with vast difference in color. A good example of this is a picture of a day with people and buildings. Parts of the scene would be lighter than the other. People and buildings would have deeper shades of black depending on whether they were in the shade or in the dark.
On an LCD, the cells being lit sideways, deeper blacks are not possible. Some cheap sets might show the black as dark gray. This does not pose any problem with the plasma sets.
The illumination technology utilized, makes the displays have much more brightness. The contrast ratio and the brightness are also very high. The contrast ratios here could be as much as one million is to one. This is to mean that a brightest point of the picture can be brighter than the lowest bright point by nearly one million times. Only few LCDs can come close to this.
Very large screens could be made with plasma technology and this is the biggest advantage, since very thin materials can be utilized. Since the pixels are all lighted individually, very bright images are possible. This makes the picture clarity also very good from large angles.
There is only one drawback for the plasma HDTV, like the Panasonic 60 inch HDTV. These TVs are very expensive. Yet, as there is progress of technology, with newer discoveries being made, the rates are likely to fall. Anyway, the day of the CRT TV is fast approaching its end, and we may not see these space occupying and cumbersome TVs again.