When I saw the plasma monitor for the first time, I was amazed. I was excited. I was convinced this would be the holy-grail of replacing the world's living rooms with cool TVs you can hang on a wall, install in the small corporate boardrooms internationally and replace the aging rental stock of CRT displays.

But, it hasn't happened yet.

Why?

Well, I have a theory. Want to hear it? If so, read on. If not, skip this week's column and read next week's.

OK, here goes.

They are still too expensive. Wow, heck of a lot of insight there, huh?

Seriously, it can't be quality, size or availability - three things that have historically hampered new presentation products from exploding into the market; so it must be price.

Quality: The quality of the plasma has improved at least 10-fold with each version. The early plasma displays of the mid-1990's had virtually immeasurable contrast ratio, had a horrible "mossing" effect when motion (like video) was play on them and the resolution was at the lowest common denominator (basically VGA-quality). But, today, we have plasmas from every manufacturer at 16:9 XGA-style resolutions; the contrast ratios are almost perfect (for the display technology) and video looks awesome. OK, I have heard a number of people disagree with that last statement (video quality), but I would like to point out: Garbage in = Garbage out. If you will input a good quality, clean video source, it will look awesome (i.e. HDTV). But, Plasmas, unlike consumer TVs and many presentation CRT monitors are fixed resolution devices and when bad quality video is connected, it displays it as it sees it - bad quality video. Most consumer TVs are such low quality, you don't really notice what's missing.

Size: Early on, plasmas were only available in 40- and 42-inch sizes. Now, however, we have most manufacturers finally shipping 50-inch plasma and a few select manufacturers debuting 60-inch panels! And, I recently heard that a few manufacturers are working on building plasma that may reach 70-inches. That's certainly big enough for the right kind of installation. I think the reputation surrounding size may have come from the fact that although manufacturers introduced 50-inch panels in 1999, most weren't able to really ship them until late into 2000. Or, maybe it came from the fact that since most plasma displays are 16:9 aspect ratio, when displaying 4:3 (i.e. NTSC video and PC stuff) it squares up the picture and fills only about 70% of the screen area. That makes the image look smaller. But, there is a solution to that. If you want a plasma to run PC or Mac stuff at 16:9 without squeezing the icons or fonts (to look short an fat) then you can simply install drivers into your PC or laptop to it to output the native resolution of your panel. Yes, most laptops and PCs can do that. And if it can't, you can MAKE it do it by simply adding in a $200 card to your PC that will allow your laptop or PC to drive it's video output at ANY resolution (even every 16:9 plasma resolution). Get one.

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