Display. Visualization - Plasma displays. Video image rendering

Color plasma screens first appeared on the international market towards the end of the 20th century, with a diagonal size of 42'' (1.07 m), a depth of less than 10 cm and a mass of around 30 kg. Although these screens, because of their price, were initially reserved for professional applications (display screens, advertising, meeting rooms, etc.), the share of the market reserved for consumer or home cinema applications is growing steadily.

Indeed, although the first screens to appear on the market were Japanese (NEC, Fujitsu, Panasonic, Pionneer), other Asian countries soon joined in the adventure, and today the Koreans in particular have launched a veritable price offensive. The latter have even surpassed their Japanese models in size, with Samsung presenting a record 102'' (2.60 m) diagonal screen with 1920 × 1080 pixel resolution (Full-HD) in early 2005.

Nevertheless, while falling prices combined with impressive technological demonstrations speak in favor of this technology's success, we mustn't forget one essential factor: image quality. In many respects, plasma screens are still inferior to CRTs.

This is mainly due to the fact that this new technology represents a significant departure from the cathode ray tube (CRT) in terms of video image rendering. Consequently, the success of this technology can only be established by innovating in this field too, in order to offer images of equal or superior quality to CRT. That's why, in this issue, we'd like to focus on the particularities of plasma technology and the associated signal processing.

In the first part, we'll look at the video pre-processing required for currently available sources, then get to the heart of the matter with the transformations and transcoding needed to display an optimum image in terms of rendering video levels, motion and parameters such as contrast and power consumption. Finally, we'll look at possible future applications for this technology, as well as the complete structure of today's plasma screen.