Many consumers may feel overwhelmed the fist time they buy a full HD LCD TV because of the terms and specifications that are associated with these televisions. Those that are completely new may find themselves having flashbacks of the first time they bought a computer when they ask about a high definition television to a store clerk. The technical jargon that surrounds these televisions may sound complicated but in reality it is not. Those looking for a new product do not really need to know what all of them mean in order to find a good product. The most important terms and specs that those new to high definition should familiarize themselves with are refresh rates, resolutions and screen type.
The screen type as the name implies refers to the technology that the display panel uses. Contrary to what many believe not all HD television sets use Plasma screens. In fact, most of them use LCD screens. Each type of screen is different and has its ups and downs and consumers that are interested in HD televisions should do some research before deciding on what type of panel to choose in order to avoid buying something that they might regret in the end.
The other spec to keep and eye on is the refresh rate. These are very important especially when it comes to LCD HD TV. As a general rule of thumb the higher the rate the better. When comparing refresh rates be sure to compare with models that are using the same display technology in order to get a better idea of the products performance since rates that are the normal for a screen type are not for another.
The other thing to look is at the maximum resolution. The maximum resolution is usually in the description of most HD Televisions and it looks something like: 1080p. 1080P is the highest resolution available commercially at the moment and most products are able to display it . Cheaper sets may be able to handle a maximum resolution of 720p which is suited for smaller units.
There are the three most important specs that any HD Tv newbie should pay close attention to.
There are many names for Full High Definition Television. The term has been shortened to Full HD TV and given other more catchy names such as True HDTV and Ultra HD. Another more technical term for it is 1080p. Don’t be mistaken they all mean the same thing, this type of television is basically conforms to the 1080p standard. This means it has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and employs the progressive method of scanning indicated by the letter ‘p’ after the 1080.
So what is the significance this type of TV and why TVs that conform to this standard superior to other televisions. Basically it is down to two particular aspects of HD TV – resolution and scanning method.
The first is easy to explain – resolution. The resolution is basically the number of dots or pixels that make up the images displayed on screen. It is represented in a format which is the number of horizontal pixels x vertical pixels. In the case of full HD TV this is 1920 x 1080. This resolution is shortened to just 1080 in reference to the number of lines. This is the highest number of pixels available for mainstream high definition televisions today.
Television channels broadcast their programs in resolutions up to this particular resolution. The alternative to this is televisions with 720 lines, which obviously means that there are fewer lines of pixels and therefore televisions that solely use this standard are not capable of producing as high resolutions as 1080 televisions.
Secondly the scanning method is little more difficult to explain. Now that you know the images on screen are made up of lines of pixels, imagine that as the images displayed on the television change these pixels must be redrawn. There are two similar methods that are used to do this they are called interlaced scanning and progressive scanning. Basically with interlaced scanning alternate lines of pixels are refreshed for each frame, so to refresh all lines of pixels two frames must pass. With progressive scanning every line is refreshed for every frame. The resulting effect of this is that progressive scanning produces smoother images on screen, this especially noticeable when used on large displays with fast moving action.
Knowing this it should now be a little easier to see the benefits that owning an LCD Full HD TV has over other lesser televisions sets.
