Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Going TV shopping, recommendations?

It is true that plasma screens are not as bright as LCDs. But "brighter is better" is in the same category of "louder is better". As long as you have enough light over come the surrounding environment that's the important thing. Going brighter than that will hurt the relative black level.

Relative black level is the most important thing for achieving depth of picture. If blacks don't appear inky, and as dark as the darkest thing in your field of view, you're not getting everything you can from the picture. Color accuracy comes second black level for image quality.

I keep saying relative black level. Contrast ratio is a misleading spec. The number inflates rapidly when a display is able to drop its absolute black level, but doesn't really take into account one which can outshine the sun. If you had a display which could have absolute 0 output for black, but produce only a tiny bit of light for white, it would still have an infinite to 1 contrast ratio. Still a display which had some light leakage for black, but used a thermonuclear device for white would have a lower ratio.

What's important is the display be able to appear totally black in its surrounding. Considering I watch with only a bias light behind the set, I need a plasma to go dark enough. But in a room which is always lit, the little light leaked by LCDs (try saying that 10 times fast) can easily be lower than the ambient shadows and thus appear black.

If a set isn't producing enough light over-all it'll appear reflective. That means your room is too bright for the display, not much you can do about it, but make the room darker or change it out.