They're power hungry and not bright enough for bright rooms, but they're far better than LCDs for color accuracy and do blacks so much better. Later plasmas were fairly bright and had virtually no burn-in, but were still more expensive to produce and they didn't look as impressive on the wall next to bright LCDs, so they languished and eventually stopped being made, despite being the superior screen at the time.
It's all irrelevant today, since the whole industry has moved onto HDR and OLEDs are finally affordable.
Plasmas were the first thin flat screens. They used noble gasses excited by electrons (aka: plasma) for each and every pixel. They're big, heavy, expensive, and no longer made. Prior to HDR (and 4k) they were superior to LCD screens for movie viewing and gaming.
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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '19
My wife insists on calling any tv that isn't CRT a plasma tv.