LCD TVs, despite having a screen type with inherent scientific difficulties, have become the market leader in the multimedia world. The purchase of televisions always generates a debate on whether ‘to LCD or not to LCD… that is the question’! Today we’re exploring exactly what makes LCD TVs tick and whether the display technology will be right for your viewing preferences.
How do LCD TVs work?
LCD stands for liquid crystal display; The display panel of an LCD television uses a film of crystals in a viscous liquid, with light traveling through or blocked, to display an image. It’s the same technology (albeit on a completely different level) that’s used in your alarm clock.
An LCD TV panel uses two sheets of polarizing plastic filters, with an electrically sensitive liquid crystal layer in between. When voltage is applied to a pixel, the crystals rotate through an angle. Polarized light traveling from the backlight cannot pass through pixels that are polarized at a right angle to the light, thus effectively creating an “off” pixel. Red, blue, and green filters are included to display the full range of light colors.
The advantages of LCD technology
LCD technology has one great inherent advantage: its cost-effectiveness in manufacturing. Each LCD television screen is cut from a single large sheet of liquid crystal display that has been pre-designed. With each generation of manufacturing, processes are improved to make ever larger individual sheets, improving profitability. Other factors that make LCD technology preferable to plasma, DLP rear-projection televisions, or cathode ray equipment include:
* The screen is made of plastic instead of glass, so it is lighter and less fragile
* Screen burning is not a problem
* The definition of pixel edges is much better than the bright phosphor dots used by plasma technology, so images are much sharper.
Green credentials are a big part of the reason many consumers buy LCD TVs. While the power consumption differences between brands are relatively small, the difference between technologies is significant. Both plasma and cathode ray arrays use about twice the power of a similarly sized LCD. It seems that with the profitability of LCD TVs, researchers will spend much more time improving the technology, so LCD is the way of the future. It is inherently HD compatible, inexpensive, lightweight, durable, offers high definition, and uses less power than other types.
The dangers of LCD technology
LCD televisions have their drawbacks, which is why plasma, rear projection, and cathode ray televisions continue to be sold. An inherent flaw with the technology is that sometimes the backlight can seep through the dull pixels and the contrast ratio suffers. The good news is that the way you use your TV makes a much bigger difference to the perceived contrast ratio than the manufacturer’s specifications. Sitting at an optimal viewing angle and cutting out external light sources when watching TV will make a big difference to your viewing experience.
Color saturation is less powerful on LCD TVs than on plasma ones; however, depending on your preference, the improved picture “sharpness” found in Samsung, Sharp, and Sony LCD TVs may make up for this in your perception of picture quality. Most of the drawbacks of LCD TVs are easy to compensate for: more expensive, fragile, and power-hungry plasma or rear-projection sets are often considered only by picture-quality enthusiasts.