Finer, flatter, but not cheaper ... yet

MICHAEL FOREMAN takes in the future of television screens.

Most consumer electronics pundits agree that flat plasma displays will have replaced the venerable cathode ray tube (CRT) television set within about 10 years.

After spending a week evaluating the Sony PFM42B1S Hi-Definition plasma monitor, I can believe this.

The Sony plasma screen measures just over 1m wide by 63cm high, but just 8.3cm thick. It is slim enough to be hung on a wall but an optional floor stand is also available.

The market for plasma screens is changing as prices come down. A couple of years ago such displays would have set you back $60,000 plus, which tended to limit their use to specialist advertising displays or as the centrepiece of the most high-tech boardrooms. But at its present suggested retail price of $18,995 including GST, the current market for the PFM42 is evenly split between corporate and home users. According to Sony sales executive Stephen Brady, the trend is towards the latter, and he expects the home market to account for 70 per cent of sales in a year's time.

As I began the arduous task of testing the display by viewing hours of DVD movies, the appeal of plasma screens to home theatre users immediately became apparent. The screen comes alive the moment you hit the on button and the 16:9 ratio wide screen DVD picture is sharper and brighter than a conventional TV. Because the PFM42 is a monitor only, any audio signal must be sent through a separate amplifier, but when the DVD player was hooked up to stereo speakers and a subwoofer, the effect really was like having a cinema in your living room.

The Sony plasma screen would be equally impressive for videoconferencing or showing customers videos, but there are a couple of characteristics which make it slightly less suitable as a PC monitor for a boardroom.

One reason is simply the shape of the screen. Although the monitor does a very good job of translating various PC screen resolutions up to 1600 by 1200 onto its 1024 by 1024 picture elements, the screen is too wide to display a PC desktop without stretching it or leaving gaps at the sides. Another minor drawback stems from the plasma technology. This works by applying a charge to change tiny pockets of inert gas into a plasma state, turning them into miniature ultra violet (UV) lamps. The UV light then reacts with coloured phosphors in each picture element to produce a visible image. Plasma screens do not suffer from magnetic or electrical interference like CRT screens do, but they are prone to the same phosphor "burn in" if a static image is displayed for too long.

Sony gets around this problem with a "pixel-shift" feature that causes the entire image to jump up, down or sideways by a set number of picture elements every few seconds.

These movements are admittedly slight, but they are just noticeable enough to be mildly irritating.

These are mere quibbles, and the PFM42 is bound to wow any client. But if you need a boardroom display primarily to show static slides or PowerPoint presentations internally, then an LCD projector, such as Sony's own VPL-CX10 at $12,750 including GST, could be a cheaper and more workable solution.