"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Phil Allison wrote:
Your Wiki reference says it all. These are NOT LED televisions,
** But they are called " LED TVs " by their makers and so are
*KNOWN BY THAT NAME* to members of the public.
Wonder what name they'll invent for proper LED TVs when they arrive?
And why aren't all LCD sets known by the name of the backlight?
--
*Some people are only alive because it is illegal to kill.
Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.
Yes, quite.
To the OP
If you are seriously considering the purchase of a flatscreen TV of any
description, the best advice I can give you is to know what you're asking
and seeing in the showroom. Setting aside technical sales mumbo jumbo about
refresh rates and so on, you need to understand what you're looking at.
There are two basic competing technologies - LCD and plasma. LCD are in
general cheaper, but the panel has a slower reponse, which tends to lead to
motion blur, so if you are into sports, then you need to see any TVs that
you are interested in, displaying this sort of content. Plasma TVs suffer
little or no motion blur due to the extremely high switching speed
capability of the individual plasma cells in the screen. Plasma panels also
do not suffer from any viewing angle issues, which can be a problem with
LCDs, particularly if you are thinking of wall-mounting, as most will then
need to be angled down towards your sitting position.
You should also be aware that there are several 'resolutions' of screen and
drive to take into consideration. Almost all TV showrooms both here and in
the US, tend to have the sets running on at least an HD picture, and often a
BluRay picture. This makes them look very good at first glance. Problem is
that in normal day to day use when you get it back home, you are going to be
watching standard resolution terrestrial broadcasts on it, and on many sets,
these look pretty dreadful, and it is the reason that so many people are
disappointed with their purchase when they get it home, and think that it is
not what they saw in the store.
The reason for this is that the actual display panel has a 'native
resolution', which is likely to be at least broadcast HD. When you then
apply a standard resolution signal to the TV, this has to be 'scaled up' to
match its low resolution to the panel's high resolution. This often results
in scaling artifacts which may well be much more noticeable as motion
artifacts, with fast moving (and sometimes not-so-fast) objects on the
screen.
BluRay is a full HD source. This is handled fine by most sets, but be aware
that if the TV is just HD compatible rather than "Full HD", then the native
resolution of the actual display panel, will again not match the resolution
of the signal, and downscaling will take place within the TV to make them
match.
So, if you are a film buff, and likely to watch stuff on BluRay, you should
consider a set with a full HD panel resolution (1920 x 1080). If it's a
large screen you are wanting, consider a plasma over an LCD. Whilst these
are still more expensive than LCD, world recession has caused the prices of
them to tumble over the last 12 months, and Panasonic give very long
warranties with them. When you go into stores to look at them, make sure
that you grab an erk to demo properly, any that you are interested in. Make
sure that you see a 'standard' definition picture, an HD picture -
preferably from a broadcast source rather than from an HD DVD player - and a
BluRay picture. If the store claims that it can't show you a standard res
picture because they don't have any antenna distribution around the showroom
floor (a common claim because they know that a lot of the sets would produce
a crap picture on such a source), consider looking elsewhere.
Do as much research as you can before committing and parting with your cash.
It really is a much more complex buying exercise, if you don't want to be
disappointed, than it was when you were buying a CRT TV set a few years
back.
Arfa