Plasma TVs

A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display now commonly used for large TV displays (typically above 37-inch or 940 mm). Many tiny cells located between two panels of glass hold an inert mixture of noble gases (neon and xenon). more...

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Plasma TVs
42-49 inch Plasma TVs
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The gas in the cells is electrically turned into a plasma which then excites phosphors to emit light.

History

The plasma display was invented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Donald L. Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson in 1964 for the PLATO Computer System. The original monochrome (usually orange or green, sometimes yellow) panels enjoyed a surge of popularity in the early 1970s because the displays were rugged and needed neither memory nor circuitry to refresh the images. A long period of sales decline followed in the late 1980s as semiconductor memory made CRT displays cheaper than plasma displays. Nonetheless, plasma's relatively large screen size and thin profile made the displays attractive for high-profile placement such as lobbies and stock exchanges.

In 1983, IBM introduced a 19-inch (483 mm) orange-on-black monochrome display (model 3290 'information panel') which was able to show four simultaneous IBM 3270 virtual machine (VM) terminal sessions. That factory was transferred in 1987 to startup company Plasmaco, which Dr. Larry F. Weber, one of Dr. Bitzer's students, founded with Stephen Globus, and James Kehoe, who was the IBM plant manager. In 1992, Fujitsu introduced the world's first 21-inch (533 mm) full-color display. It was a hybrid, based upon the plasma display created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NHK STRL, achieving superior brightness. In 1996, Matsushita Electrical Industries (Panasonic) purchased Plasmaco, its color AC technology, and its American factory. In 1997, Pioneer started selling the first plasma television to the public. Current plasma televisions are often seen around the home and are thinner and in greater sizes than their predecessors. Their thin size allows them to compete with other display technology such as projector screens.

Screen sizes have increased since the 21-inch (533 mm) display in 1992. The largest plasma video display in the world was shown at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A, a 103-inch (261.6 cm) unit manufactured by Matsushita Electrical Industries (Panasonic).

Until quite recently, the superior brightness, faster response time, greater color spectrum, and wider viewing angle of color plasma video displays, when compared with LCD televisions, made them one of the most popular forms of display for HDTV flat panel displays. For a long time it was widely believed that LCD technology was suited only to smaller sized televisions, and could not compete with plasma technology at larger sizes, particularly 40 inches and above.

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