Plasma TV sales up 87%, Plasma detractor?s carry on undaunted

[Roger]

You know for a technology that’s been described as “on its last leg” “on the way out” and “soon to be overtaken by LCD”, plasma displays sure are selling like hotcakes.

Even with all of the ridiculously exaggerated ‘burn-in’ horror stories and laughable “gas leak” rumors, spread by plasma conspiracy theorists, manufacturers managed to ship 87% more plasma’s in the first quarter of 2006, than the same quarter in 2005.

Here’s an ugly truth about many tech writers specifically the ones that seem to come up with ‘buyer beware’ type articles over and over, most of them have never objectively reviewed a single CE product much less actually witnessed “Plasma Burn-in” first hand.

Does such a thing exist? Of course it does (did would be more accurate), and in every case I’ve seen as much as I hate to say it, the cause boiled down to ignoring the manufacturer’s recommendations.

Now, I won’t argue the fact that manufacturer’s played a role in the burn-in debacle; early on they had a choice to make.

Do we (the manufacturers) scream at the top of our lungs “Plasma’s aren’t CRT’s, they have to be treated differently” or do we keep quiet, put it in the legalese and sell a ton of these things? I guess you know which decision they made.

Don’t get me wrong, some brands did better jobs than others at getting the proper care word out to the public (Panasonic comes to mind).

But in the end, just about every owner’s manual ever shipped with a plasma display mentions keeping the brightness and or contrast ration below a certain threshold, for X amount of hours, until the display is broken in.

No doubt someone who ‘knows a guy’ with a burnt plasma image is reading this right now. I wonder if some of this phenomenon is related to poorly trained salesmen and internet sales, where the customer was never warned about the potential for burn-in.

I can still remember very vividly, my boss instructing us to give our customers the “speech” whenever we finished a Plasma installation; I wonder how many of the unfortunate owners who did indeed experience burn-in never received that speech. Or never bothered reading their owner’s manual.

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