So how does this flat plasma stack up to the rear projectors my little darlings were spoiling themselves with when they should have been doing their homework? Well, at 42 inches, it looks half the size of a 56-inch TV––not just 14 inches smaller. But I tell myself to ignore it, after all, this might not be a TV for the living room, it may fit well as a bedroom TV, where space is at an extra premium, and where it would replace an ancient, ugly CRT-based 22-inch unit. After all is said and done, isn’t it the picture that counts, what’s up on the screen? Well, plasma has some limitations as a technology, and this display definitely suffers from those, although only some will notice it, and only with certain kinds of images.
 
When my wife first saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the theater with our Potter-crazed kids, she commented that it was “dark.” Our Gryffindor, fifth year, launched an explanation about how it was dark because Wormtail escapes. My wife clarified that it was “dark” as in gloomy, almost half the movie takes place at night, by moonlight. “I could hardly see what was going on,” she protested. It was not a good omen that this was the first movie the kids clamored to see when we fired up the Dell W4200. I am sure the rapturous Potter fans in my little audience did not notice the plasma struggling with all the dark tones, but I did. At times the picture looked smudged, with the color breaking into splotches. I never noticed how blue the movie was, either, so I played the DVD afterward on a PC––it was dark, but it was crisp and it wasn’t as blue on an LCD as it looked on the plasma.
 

Dell’s plasma doesn’t come with a computer built-in (though we don’t think it would be a bad idea). It does, however, come with a bevy of digital and analog inputs that accommodate new and old sources alike.

After spending a few weeks with this display, I realized that this movie wasn’t a fair premier. From A Bridge Too Far to Sideways, the Dell W4200HD performed beautifully, and this plasma can truly shine with the right content. I dusted off Shakespeare in Love and I honestly can’t say that I noticed how vibrant the colors were the last time I saw it. Overall, one remembers the gritty earth tones of the bard’s London, but the Elizabethan costumes never looked so luminous and alive. I caught myself wondering, “Wow, this guy is wearing purple, and it works here. I never noticed that before.” I would consider this a better showcase for its performance than the murky Forbidden Forest outside Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

However, there are two things I noticed about this display that some might object to. First I noticed that it is loud. There isn’t a fan—although it does pump out a lot of heat—but it does emit a very noticeable buzzing noise. How noticeable? With dialog, I can make out the sound on my couch at 12 feet, and between voices from my easy chair at 20 feet. All plasmas make some amount of noise, but I found this hard to ignore at times. I also noticed that the component video inputs were rather sensitive to weak signals; periodically with one of my DVD players, the TV would simply blink as it lost synchronization with and then reacquired the signal. I suppose a better DVD player would help but the unit I use for testing has no problems with other TVs. I’m not a big fan of component video anyhow, I prefer to use digital inputs, which work great with this TV. I would expect that if your DVD player wasn’t up to the job, you could upgrade to a unit that supported one of the digital output formats. For legacy TV, the W4200HD has two analog tuners so you can channel surf independently when watching the picture-in-picture, and there are enough hookups to connect plenty of game consoles and video equipment like older VCRs and camcorders.

As a standard television on its stand, the W4200HD works fine, but it would work best in a location that takes advantage of its flat profile. A place where size wasn’t everything, and its noise would not be as noticeable, like the breakfast nook. That’s something even my kids could appreciate.