So you’ve decided to buy an LCD TV. Good choice! LCD is a mature technology that offers great performance. Most of all though, it offers flexibility: you can get a full 1080p HD LCD TV as small as 22 inches (56 cm), or as big as 70 (178 cm)!
LCDs are also much lighter than plasma, and thanks to new LED backlighting technologies, incredibly thin. This makes it easy to place them on the wall, on a cabinet, inside an AV cupboard, pretty much anywhere!
The dream of a gigantic, active picture frame on your wall is now a reality: the very thinnest LCDs are not much thicker than a sturdy oil painting. The future is most definitely now!
Like all new AV technologies, LCD TVs are packed with features, and figuring out whether your particular model does everything you want can be a bit tricky.
Here then is a simple overview of the key features of a modern, full-HD LCD TV. Tick these off, but be aware they all add cost to your display. Choosing which ones you can live without will be up to you!
Full HD
To get the best picture quality from an LCD, you’ll want to make sure you choose a full HD panel. There are three high definition resolutions: 720p, 1080i and 1080p. The ‘p’ refers to “progressive”, and the ‘i’ refers to “interlaced”.
Interlaced images skip every second horizontal line to save on bandwidth. A progressive image uses every pixel in your display, and offers the absolute best quality.
A display with 1080p HD runs at the highest current resolution, with 1920 x 1080 pixels. That’s the native resolution of Blu-ray, and it’s higher than any current terrestrial TV broadcast or pay-TV transmission.
