Plasma, LCD, and ... ?

As a gadget-guy, I'm often asked about which type of screen people should buy for their new HD widescreen TV.  One of the main decisions to make is the basic type of screen, currently usually plasma or liquid crystal displays (LCD).  The best choice depends on many factors and I don't plan to go through all of them in this blog article. One factor however is power consumption.  Although LCD screens may boast lower consumption, their backlight requirements mean that their power consumption figure is usually fairly constant.  Plasma screens by contrast consume power related to the brightness of the picture being displayed - a picture with lots of dark pixels will consume much less power than the same picture on an LCD.  

Soon there may well be another option to consider.  Mitsubishi have announced plans to launch a range of TVs based on laser displays in the third quarter of 2008.  They state that such technology will bring a new level of performance to high definition displays due to its ability to display twice as many colours as the best LCD can manage at a frequency of 120Hz.   Laser screens will be available in large sizes as with current plasmas, and importantly will consume less power than both plasma and LCDs.