If plasma TVs can be so thin, why have we spent decades with those bulky, oversized television sets taking up an entire corner of the room? The answer is in the technology.
To understand why plasma TVs can be so thin, you should start by understanding why traditional television sets of the past couldnt be. Those televisions typically used tubes as the means to producing the pictures. There were several problems with tubes, including their size. The size of tubes inside a television set depended on the amount of screen space the picture was expected to fill.
The technology wasnt put to the size test until people became disenchanted with the typical 20-inch screen and started demanding larger screens. Manufacturers were happy to meet the demands, but there was a problem. The dimensions of tubes are predetermined. If you want a bigger screen, you have to be prepared to project a larger picture. Larger picture demands a larger tube. Its always been a given that the size of the television set was dependent on the amount of stuff that had to be fitted inside. Larger tubes meant larger cases.
If you consider the average size of a 20-inch television set that...