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| Buying an LCD Flat Panel Television |
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My First LCD
Television
Sometimes buying a television is
as hard as buying a car. Not only are there so many models out there, but it is
difficult to compare based solely on numbers. At least for cars you can use your
friend's suggestions to give you a guide, but in the case of LCD televisions you
may well be the first on your block getting one. We all want one, including
me...so I took it upon myself to learn about these beauties and decide what
would be the best model I could purchase for my budget of $1500. |
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| First let's learn a little about
the specifications that are commonly listed |
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Contrast Ratio
Contrast ratio is a key feature
that is often overlooked or misunderstood during the purchase process. Simply
put, contrast ratio is the measure of a monitor's blackest black compared to its
whitest white. It is commonly used for LCD TV's, and rarely important in CRT TVs
(conventional televisions). The current crop of LCD displays will have contrast
ratios ranging from 350:1 to 800:1. It equals brightness over room light. In
practical terms, the higher the contrast ratio, the better the television's
ability to discern fine, detailed differences between dark and light colors.
You'll see more shades, and pictures can show more detail.
Currently, the highest contrast ratio for LCD televisions is 1000:1. For most
purposes, 800:1 is good enough. There is no industry standard for the
measurement of contrast ratio. This means
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| that two televisions with a
contrast ratio of 800:1 may have different contrasts. Too high a
contrast ratio can be detrimental if not supplemented by enough brightness. It
can cause "bleeding" of an image. |
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Good contrast means dark
blacks and white whites |
LCD
panels with bad contrast
cannot produce true black. | |
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Aspect Ratio
Most older monitors and
televisions have a 4:3 aspect ratio. This means that the screen is 4/3 as wide
as it is tall, or for every 4 inches in width, it is 3 inches high. This causes
a problem when you try to view movies, because your conventional TV tried to fit
a rectangular movie screen onto the nearly square 4:3 screen. This is either
accomplished by cutting off the right and left part of the image, or by showing
the full image and leaving black bars above and below the image. The former
means you don't see things that the movie producer wanted you to see, and the
latter means that you will have to view a much smaller image.
The advent of high-definition TV
and DVDs has led to the creation of wide aspect ratio displays, with 16:9 most
common. Sometimes this is simply stated as "widescreen". The 16:9 aspect ratio
helps give you the full view of entertainment programming, and more closely
approximates that of the movie screen.
Movies are most commonly projected
at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, which is the same as saying 16:6.8. Basically,
this just means that movie screens are even shorter than widescreen
televisions in relation to width. So even with a widescreen television, you will
see a black bar above and below your movies but the black bars will be smaller
than those seen while viewing movies on a CRT.
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