jargon busting TV's

looking at buying a new TV?

Don't really get all the jargon and specification of the TV's you're looking at?  lets see what we can do.

where to start.... this is just a basic guide to help you tell the difference between TV's, what drives the price up, why one might be better than the other etc.


whats LED, LCD, and plasma mean???


this is the easy bit,  LCD and LED TV's only vary in one way! the lighting used behind the screen.

in fact an LED TV is actually an LCD TV with LED backlighting. Light emitting diodes (LED's) run either throughout the back of the panel, or round the edges of the screen to focus light through pixels to give an extremely bright and vivid image on the screen.

LCD TV's have a liquid crystal display screen and cold cathode florescent lamps or CCFL tubes running behind the screen, from left to right, giving an even burst of light throughout the screen.
(for information on which is best read our should I buy this TV blog)

Plasma TV's often found at sizes 42" and above as they are much easier and cheaper to produce than its competitors at large sizes.  essentially a Plasma TV is two layers of glass separated by thousands of pixels, each filled with gas.

for more technical info on LCD, LED or plasma TV's check out the Should I buy this TV? blog.

720p, 1080i, 1080p which is best???

so all new TV's now are HD READY, this means that if it is HD READY that it has a screen resolution of 720p.  Don't worry though 720p is still high definition, it just means there is 720 horizontal lines going across the screen! 1080i is also a type of high definition, this is what sky HD is broadcast in,  a TV with 1080i means that the TV has 1080 lines going across the screen however with each frame it can only use half of those lines for example in one frame the image will be shown on lines 1,3,5,7 etc.  then on the next frame the image will be shown on lines 2,4,6,8 etc.  dead easy!  so, 1080p, this is the one everyone wants, if your TV is 1080p congratulations your TV is full HD.  this means that it can use all of its 1080 lines at once giving you the best possible picture.  Blu ray, and the PS3 ( which is also blu ray) both give a 1080p picture.

50 hz, 100hz, 200hz, 400hz, 600hz???

whats hz? hz or hertz is the rate at which the screen flicks between images.  all formats onto a TV are inputted at 50hz. meaning no matter how advanced your input device your TV will display it, winner!

this is the confusing part, stay focused!

if its inputted at 50hz why do I need it to be higher?

great question, 100hz on a TV essentially is attempting to eradicate any motion blur, what is happening is that each image shown on the screen is set to be followed by the next image, a 100hz TV however is inputting a generated frame into the sequence. so it should go original image-generated image-original image.

200hz is slightly different from 100hz, ( this is where it gets complicated) the sequence would look like this.

original image, blank screen, generated image, blank screen, original image.

the blank screens vary between manufacturers some use a blank white screen some use black.  Again this feature allows the pixels in the screen time to react to the next image making things seem smoother.

TV's with a higher refresh rate are generally better for sports and movies, or anything that has a lot of movement, you can often tell the difference between a 50hz TV and one with a higher refresh rate when there is rolling text along the screen. for example the news, or the end credits of a film or program.

TV's that are 600hz can only be plasma TV's the reason the refresh rate on a plasma is so high is that unlike an LCD or LED back light TV, the plasma screen is not having to rely on the reaction time between the back lighting and the display pixel.  each pixel in a plasma acts rather than reacts, meaning the response time is much faster and therefore the refresh rate can be higher.

(see should I buy this TV blog for info on LCD, LED and plasma.)


other features such as DLNA, internet TV,  the speakers used, the engines used etc will all have their own dedicated blogs.

in a nutshell the higher the numbers on the spec sheet of a TV the better!  but beware some brands and models are much better than others.