Plasma HDTVs are best used in a dark room, the darker the better, particular in the area where the screen is located. What you need to guard against when using a Plasma HDTV is room light reflecting off the screen. A completely dark room is not advisable because you will likely bump into things when you try to move around the room. Also, prolonged viewing in a pitch black room could lead to eye strain. The best lighting setup is a dim light placed directly behind plasma. Since this is difficult to achieve for most (a lot of plasmas are wall mounted), you want lighting that you can control the direction of the beam, allowing you to angle it away from the front of the screen. The ability to control the overall light levels is also beneficial. One other tips; remove any mirrors or other highly reflective objects from the room.

Many people fool themselves into believing that they can make their ground floor big window room “dark enough” to effectively use a plasma HDTV. To provide you with a frame of reference for the light conditions best suited to a plasma display, think projector. Consider all of the different lighting conditions you will face when watching TV, would you want to use a projector under those conditions. Most of you are probably going to answer no! The simple truth is better Plasma HDTV will provide the end user with a “good” picture even in a well lit room. But hopefully your goal is to buy the HDTV that best supports all of your needs. If you wouldn’t consider using a projector in the environment you are going to use the HDTV because of the amount of room light, then a LCD is better suited to the room.

Motion blur, is a loss in the edge details of objects as they move across an HDTV screen. The object will appear to be less crisp, slightly blurred or smeared. Motion blur is more noticeable at higher resolution and on larger screens. Due to the differences in how Plasma and LCD refresh images on screen (Plasmas refresh at a faster rate, due to the ability to selectively refresh only affected pixels, while LCD refreshes the entire screen, natively at a rate of 60 times/sec), plasmas natively perform better than LCD with motion. Better LCD HDTVs employ a technology known as 120Hz refresh, where the screen is refreshed 120 times/sec when there are objects in motion on screen. Expect to pay a little more for 120Hz refresh LCDs, as they are typically the top models from their respectively LCD manufacturers. 120Hz refresh will allow an LCD to perform almost as well as Plasma with active content. At the time of writing Sony is set to release an LCD with a 240Hz refresh rate. The new technology will allow an LCD to achieve a performance level close to what an HDTV that utilizes DLP can do. DLP natively outperforms both Plasma and LCD as far as maintaining the edge detail of objects in motion.

Plasma screens are made of glass, thus they can withstand being touched by tiny little fingers and paws. The glass surface also makes them easier to clean than LCD screens when you find that dried on chocolate smear your child left in the middle of the screen. LCD screens on the other hand are very sensitive to direct pressure to the screen surface. Individual pixels in the LCD display matrix can easily be damaged by pressing or poking at the screen, even with blunt objects like your fingers.

This is purely an economic issue! If you sit about 10 feet away from you set, and you want to get a 1080p HDTV, conventional wisdom for sizing your set puts you in the land of 50 inch HDTVs. In that size range, plasma HDTVs which are available at exactly 50” are generally a few hundred dollars less that the 52” LCD counter parts. As you increase the size of the set beyond that the spread in price between Plasma and LCD increases. The Plasma will cost you less.

Although things have improved, due to the nature of the technology, plasma HDTVs can still suffer from image retention, commonly called “burn-in”. Most modern plasma HDTV employ pixel shifting either actively or passively (where you have run a built-in diagnostic), to combat image retention. If you plan on playing video games then LCD is a far safer HDTV technology for you. Almost every video game will have static content (the scoreboard), increased frequency and length of video game use increases the chance of burn-in. If you just have to have plasma and would like to play video games, you need to take some precautions. Do not pause the game for excessive period of time and leave the plasma display turned on. Also don’t play games into the wee hours of the morning, then fall asleep with the game and TV still on. Keep the brightness level down; too many people try to pump up the brightness of their plasma, hoping to make it look as bright as an LCD, which just isn't possible.

If you live at altitudes above 6000 feet then you may want to rethink your plasma plans. The gases inside each pixel of a plasma is compressed and therefore under pressure. Plasma HDTVs are designed to work most efficiently where the pressure of the gases inside of the pixel and the outside are more or less the same, which occurs at sea level. At higher altitudes the pressure outside of each pixel drops, creating an imbalance. The imbalance in pressure results in the HDTV working harder to keep things cool in units that contain fans. Displays without fans will run hotter at altitudes due to the imbalance. Both situations have the potential to shorten the life of your set.

Your typical plasma HDTV consumes about 40% more hydro that a similarly sized LCD.