Dimly lit room: Plasma, LCD, or DLP

"Though the blacks are a little deeper on my plasma, my LCD has better shadow detail. In other words, on dark scenes I see more detail on objects like buildings and the side of a person's face that is away from direct light."

Comparing the shaded areas between my XBR6 LCD and my Pioneer 151FD plasma the plasma is clearly better.

"This is also important and easily visible when you do a side by side comparison on the same material. As time goes on a plasma will grow dimmer(it will start to lose its brilliance).. an LCD doesn't."

Out of the box the XBR LCD was running at 8000 kelvin and the plasma was at 5750 kelvin. With both displays calibrated the plasma is clearly brighter. Modern plasmas now have a much longer lifespan than LCD.

"A plasma is more susceptible to burn in... LCDs are not."

Yes but modern plasmas now have firmware that greatly reduces the possibility of burn in.

Even with its high refresh rate my LCD has visible motion blur around object edges which by itself could be easily overlooked if it's you only display. During a high quality football broadcast the divots in the turf seem to be floating with the LCD.

Living with a modern plasma in the same house seems to magnify their differences to the point where I wouldn't recommend an LCD.

I think Vic sums it up well.

Of all the technologies we sell, we see far less problems with plasmas and LCD being better than DLP.

As for brands that I would recommend you look at: Pioneer, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, then everything else....just my opinion.

Both technologies work great in low-light to dark environments. To me, I choose plasma over LCD in most cases as I like the deeper blacks only a plasma can give you....Pioneer and Panasonic are what I recommend, sell and own myself.

I agree that plasma has better blacks, contrast and brightness. However, for me, the larger pixels on plasmas are very irritating. Although they are only apparent on certain colours, when they are there, that's all I see. I can't seem to look past them so I prefer LCD. If I was going to get a plasma, I would look at Pioneer or Pansonic first. Of course, plasmas and LCDs may both disappear in a couple of years when OLEDs come out in larger sizes.

Phase, The more common question is which technology works better in normal ambient light. Plasma is the loser here. LCD outputs much more light. Ditto DLP. I would not worry about burn-in. Even the lowest priced plasmas have an orbiter or a white-out feature. This old 'wives tale' just does not apply anymore. Life span, same thing. If you put enough hours on a plasma to reach it's half-life, contact me and I will GIVE you a new set free!