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Technology Behind Plasma Displays
digg writes "CoolTechZone.com has an in-depth article that gives an overview of how Plasma Displays work. From the article: 'So, what exactly is plasma? Plasma by definition is one of the four states of matter (apart from solid, liquid and gas) and consists of positively and negatively charged particles, which are added in roughly the same quantity.' This obviously makes the gas more or less inert but ensures that the charged particles are free to conduct electricity. Plasma can be produced if a gas is energized enough to split the molecules into positive and negatively charged ions. Mostly, the plasma displays use a mixture of noble gases like Neon and Xenon."
I'd personally be more interested in reading a comparison of Plasma and LCD. Preferably one that I could stand reading without my attention immediately turning to something else.
"Now the problem in plasma (unlike OLED) is that the light photons thus released belong to the Ultraviolet band and are therefore invisible to human eyes. This was where researchers got hitched until someone came up and suggested that they use these UV photons to incite visible light photons. Now to better understand this concept, lets look at how a normal plasma display is constructed."
Now call me chicken and fry me in Kentucky, but isn't that exactly how fluorescent tubes work (and even to some extent cathode ray tubes).
HTF did the 'researchers' managed to get hitched on the problem, it plain fucking obvious.
My discreet math professor, Dr. Bitzer showed us some of the original designs he had of the plasma screen (which was originally was developed for his distance learning program) he told us that the original problem most designers were having was that they were trying to put the capictors (resisters for the alternating current) inside of the plasma chamber which made the displays too clunky
he showed us his original working model
Four states of matter?
Has the author been living in a hole? Even being conservative I think you'd have to plump for there being 5 states of matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_matter
That's aside from the poor wording which suggests that there are 7 states (or perhaps that's what he meant??).
Well, the four are the ones most accessible to the average person. Many of those states aren't even made in labs right now, and some of the ones listed in Wikipedia seem to be theoretical at best.
Lots of solids (maybe liquids too) have sub-phases based on bond and crystal alignment based on temperature, pressure and percentage of different atims, I'd be interested in knowing where those fit in.
In our cleanroom, we use plasmas for etching silicon. Plasma etching is a standard process that is used in the manufacturing of just about every chip. The plasma in TV-screens is generated in the same manner as the plasma in our etching machines. Therefore I have to conclude that plasma screens will suffer from the etching, and will not have a long lifetime. Add to that the amazing energy consumption, and my choice for my next TV is made: LCD, or maybe even another CRT. I still think CRT monitors give a better poicture than LCD, and for TV's the difference is even greater.
-- Cheers!
consider that even the lowest resolution that you can get on the computer monitor you are viewing is 640x480 whereas the best resolution that the finest analog TV can give you is a maximum of 480 horizontal lines
WTF does this have to do with Plasma vs. CRT? This is a limitation of analog vs. digital, not of any one display type.
Seriously, think for a second. You're whining that your TV doesn't have great resolution when monitors are usually at least 1024x768. Um. Most monitors are still CRTs! I had a CRT that did 1600x1200 for years!
Remember, plug a plasma TV into a coaxial cable plugged into standard analog cable TV, and you're going to get 640x480, no matter what the plasma is capable of.
I'm not sure if I even want to finish reading the article after that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It's a personal preference thing. I'm glad you like your DLP and I'm even more glad that we have a lot of options when it comes to display technologies. I've had the opposite experience, DLP doesn't look as good to me as LCD or plasma. Judging by what's on display at stores isn't a fair comparison though, so I'm sure I would like DLP better if I saw a calibrated display.
I've been gaming a LOT on my plasma for 13+ months now. No sign of burn-in or fading at all. I haven't noticed an excessive amount of heat either.
I needed something to hang over a fireplace. At the time, LCD wasn't that impressive although I think LCD has come a long way since I was seriously shopping (13-15 months ago).
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it's all about?
Plasma screens will vanish as suddenly as they appeared once this stuff arrives. It's already production-viable in small versions for mobile phone displays and the like, where it is destroying LCD (the only other technology used in those devices) as you read this.
I see no mention here of a technolgy that was delveloped about 10 or 15 years ago to produce large flatscreen television based on CRT technology.
The idea is this. Remember back in the 1980's when all you had was basically CRT screens and nothing else. Somebody then realisied that you could arrange a large number of CRTs in a grid array and produce a much bigger picture by sending a segment of the video signal to each screen.
It was then noticed that this large array of CRT had a much thinner profile than having on very large CRT. What happened was that one of the CRT manufacturers of the time decided to construct a large panel screen by using several thousand small CRTs in an array, each one emulating a function of a pixel.
Looking at the description of large plasma displays, the technology in arranging pixels very similar (the only different being the method used to generate the charge to generate the phosphor glow). It may be that using CRTs was too expensive, and plasma was cheaper to use.
Any body else know about this technology?