Why does it matter?
If you get yourself a nice big TV, there’s one other thing you tend to get as a side effect: lots of friends! Yes, it’s remarkable how popular people with big TVs suddenly become when there’s a key football match on! The last thing you want is for people forced to sit to the side of the TV on these communal viewing occasions to have to suffer severe reductions in image quality just because your TV can’t sustain its picture integrity from wide viewing angles.
Myth
Flat TVs have poor viewing angles, meaning pictures lose much of their quality unless you’re sat directly in front of the screen.
Fact
Plasma TVs can actually be watched from very wide viewing angles without any significant loss in colour or contrast, thanks to the fact that they emit light directly from each of their screen cells or pixels.
However, LCD pixels merely ‘pass on’ a light originating from a single point behind them, therefore LCD screens can lose contrast and colour if watched from angles as small as 45 degrees.
