How To Choose An LED Television
LED TVs are flat panel liquid crystal display televisions that utilize strips of small efficient light emitting diodes (LED) as the backlight source. When electricity is passed through the LCD liquid, it turns on or off each crystal, allowing the backlight to flow through in a certain pattern. The resulting image is displayed on the screen. Some electronics manufacturers of LED TVs include Sony, Samsung, and Westinghouse.
What TV Specs Should I Be Familiar With?
There are several terms you should be familiar with before you begin evaluating different LED TV models.
- Resolution - the screen resolution of your LCD TV specifies the number of pixels displayed horizontally and vertically. For example, 1080p resolution, which is considered full HDTV, means that the TV can display 1080p (pixels) vertically.
- Screen size - the size of your TV is measured diagonally from the top right to the bottom left of the screen. It is expressed in inches and there are models in multitude of sizes.
- Aspect ratio - this term describes the width to height ratio of your LCD TV. The 16:9 ratio is the current standard for high-definition LCD televisions.
- Viewing angle - the quality of your TVs picture gradually degrades as you move to the side. This is the angle at which the picture begins to deteriorate.
- Contrast ratio - this is the ratio between the brightness of the brightest to the darkest color the TV can generate. The higher the contrast ratio, the more vivid the picture is.
What Are Response Time And Refresh Rate?
- Response time is how fast in milliseconds the crystals in the LCD liquid shift to pass or block the LED backlight. For example, the Westinghouse LED 720p Smart HDTV has a response time of 8 ms.
- Refresh rate is how many times per second the frame on the TV screen changes. The refresh rate of the Westinghouse HDTV model for example, is 60 Hz or 60 times per second.
What Type Of Inputs Do Smart TVs Have?
- HDMI - High Definition Multimedia Interface is the current standard for transmitting uncompressed video from an HD video source to your HDTV.
- LAN - the local area network port can be used to receive broadband cable TV signal via a LAN modem.
- USB - the USB port can be used to connect storage devices such as external hard drives and flash drives, and play content stored on them.
- Digital Audio Optical - this special type of audio interface uses fiber optics cabling and lasers for digital audio transmissions.
- Composite A/V inputs - this RCA audio/video input consists of one video connector and two connectors for the left and right audio channels.
- Component Video input - this interface transmits video signal usually split in three component channels.
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