With the new technology being pored into the television industry, it is easy to get confused about all of the acronyms that are being thrown around. For instance, there are LED TV’s and LCD TV’s, but they are essentially the same thing except for the backlighting. In an LCD television, the screen is composed of two glass panels that are sandwiched around a liquid crystal layer. Light is then projected through this display using Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (or CCFLs) which are behind the screen. The crystals either add colour to a light source or block it out when a set amount of current is used to activate them. With the LED model televisions, LEDs effectively replace the CCFL lighting source. This is why most of the LED style televisions are much thinner and lighter than the respective LCD models, since their light sources are much smaller. Many of these models are less than one inch in thickness. There are a number of advantages to purchasing an LED television, and some of these include the fact that they use less power, have a greater contrast ratio (leading to a sharper picture), and can be disposed of quite easily.
But there are other effects that have been seen as well such as models like the samsung 32 inch tv. New developments in backlighting have arisen, the two most common being RGB dynamic and Edge LEDs. Both of these methods have pros and cons so it’s important to know how they work. The RGB Dynamic style uses a series of red, green and blue LED lights located behind the display. Colours are enhanced in a specific area because the LEDs in that location are automatically turned down when an image featuring dark colours is shown. This means that the contrast ratio in a set featuring this type of technology is higher than any comparable LCD style but still not as impressive as a plasma model for the darker shades of colour. With the dark areas being enhanced so greatly, there is also loss of detail when bright objects appear in this area.
The Edge LED on the other hand operates on a completely separate set of principles. White LED lights are strategically placed around the perimeter of the display. To make up for the lack of brightness in the centre of the screen, a panel capable of diffusing light is placed behind the screen. While this style cannot produce the same contrast ratio as the Dynamic method, it does have some advantages over this style. For instance it is much cheaper to produce, meaning that models can be offered at a much lower price, and these televisions can be made much thinner as well, so a wall mount on any room in the house is feasible. Since both of these methods are expensive, they will still be in the high end range of TVs right now. A TV DVD combi might not be affordable now, but as technology advances inevitably forward, the price is bound to drop just like everything else.
