A home theater not only does movies, music, and TV well, but can provide an awesome gaming experience as well. The downside is that those who want to do a considerable amount of gaming need to be careful about which display technology they choose.

The new XBOX 360, and the soon to be released PlayStation 3, take advantage of the HD capabilities of home theater displays resulting in a gaming experience that has to be seen on the big screen to be believed.

Plasma
For gamers, the greatness of Plasma technology simply isn’t the best solution unless you’re a really casual gamer with only an hour of play here and there. It all comes down to burn-in, which Plasma does at an extremely accelerated rate due to the technology’s sheer brightness.

Many Plasma displays offer some sort of screen shifting to lessen, reduce and possibly remove burn-in. If you already own a Plasma TV and you want to try gaming on it, just give it a test run for 15-30 minutes to see what effect it has on your TV. If there’s any burn-in with this short period you can burn through the burn-in by displaying another source.

Plasma displays provide the best picture quality with 95% of material, but are about the worst TVs for gaming due to burn-in.

CRT Tube
While bulky, these TVs will display every source and video type with great clarity and smooth color. The only downsides are limited screen size at 36 inches or below (34 inches in widescreen), and the sheer bulk of the TV. With everyone wanting a thin big-screen, the size issue and smaller picture make CRT tube TVs less and less a desired purchase as a main home theater display.

However, if you’re fine with the screen size and form factor, and love the idea of a TV that can play anything, you certainly cannot go wrong as image quality and versatility are top notch with these TVs.

CRT Rear Projection TVs
These things are getting harder to come by as manufacturers dump this technology in favor of digital display technology like DLP and LCD. These TVs do suffer from burn-in, but only at a really slow rate. You would have to play nothing but the same game for days back-to-back to even get a small amount of burn-in.

If you’re a casual gamer that logs only an hour or two of occasional gaming, and watches other material, a CRT rear-projection TV can handle gaming just fine.

If your looking to play for 8 hours straight everyday a DLP/LCD rear projection TVs would be a better solution.

DLP/LCD Rear Projection
These things can display everything like smaller CRT tube displays without worry of burn-in at all. Though each have their individual shortcomings.

DLP suffers from the dreaded “rainbow effect” wherein some people are susceptible to the color flashing from the spinning color wheel used to produce colors. This issue will go away entirely as LED lit DLP TVs are introduced over the next year.

LCD suffers from a slower display rate, which results in a bit of motion blur with fast moving objects.

Both DLP and LCD rear projection TVs use a light bulb to light the display, and these need replacement every 2000-6000 hours at a cost of around $500. LED driven DLP TVs won’t have this issue at all as the LEDs last 40,000 – 60,000 hours.

If you’re not susceptible to the “rainbow effect”, a DLP driven rear-projection TV will likely be the best big-screen display type to handle gaming and movies.

LCD Flat Screen TVs
These things can display anything without burn-in, but flat screen LCD displays suffer from extremely slow response times resulting in motion blurring. They also offer about the worst picture quality out there while being the most expensive display solution.

Unless you have your heart set on getting a flat screen form factor, take a pass on flat screen LCD TVs.

Summary
Being a gamer almost entirely removes Plasma as an option for your home theater, and can cause you to make concessions on the display type you get.  The impact a good home theater has on the gaming experience can be well worth a few hard purchase considerations, and enable you to get a TV that handles both you movies and games superbly.