LED TV Buying Guide
The LED backlit TV with sparklingly crisp images and colours is the future.
CHOICES, CHOICES
For the longest time now, the choice for big screen hunters is whether to buy a Plasma or LCD TV. Now that choice has expanded somewhat with the stunning arrival of LED back (or edge) lit technology.
LED TVs are actually in the same line as LCD TVs except they differ in the way they are lit at the back. LCD TVs rely on an always on CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Light) behind the front panel to project light to the viewer. When the scene goes brighter, it lightens up; and darkens when the scene does the same. The CCFL weakness lies there as everything either brightens up or darkens at once as the CCFL light changes.
THE LED ADVANTAGE
With a LED backlight, you have individual LED lights behind each screen pixel to perform the lighting, and each of these can be dimmed or lit up as required.
The LED TV is really the next step of TVs evolution. It ticks off the right things on our checklist of excellent contrast ratio, colours and being the most energy efficient form of big screen TV.
DIFFERENT LED TECHNOLOGY
It would be really simple if all TVs used the same LED technology but different makers have adopted different ways to implement it.
LED TVs can be back lit or edge lit. You can tell which is which simply by the thickness of the TV. Edge-lit TVs can be outrageously thin but they are currently limited in their ability to locally dim the LEDs. Locally dimming the LEDs allows you to see better contrasts and brighter colours.
So, for now, the chunkier back-lit LED TVs have that advantage.
Then there are the TVs that use white or RGB LEDs. The majority of current TVs use white LEDs that is much more affordable to produce than RGB LEDs. But those TVs using RGB LEDs are truly exemplary. Each pixel is lit by a red, green and blue LED diode that is able to reproduce a higher gamut of colour. And then there are LED TVs that control the brightness of the screen according to regions or by individual pixel control.
WHAT’S OUT THERE
There are a few major manufacturers of LED TVs right now but expect more to jump into this bandwagon. Samsung was one of the first out of the gates and really caught the World’s attention when they released their Series 7 edge-lit LED TV with a thinness of 29mm. Sony has a RGB individual pixel controlled LED TV that’s simply lushious in its image quality. And Philips’ 42PFL9803 uses their LED LUX panels to produce some truly gorgeous images with rich colours.