Simple Flat Panel TV Guide

The flat panel tv market is booming! Flat Screen Plasma, LCD, overhead projectors, the arrival of High Definition TV ... Not easy to find in such an abundance of offers and technology.

The first question to ask when choosing a flat TV is as follows: How will it serve me? If you want to lay the first stone of a home theater setup, a stereo TV to widescreen is a minimum. If it is an extra TV for the kitchen, a little 4/3 screen with mono sound is quite sufficient.

Once you fixed a budget, you need to decipher the characteristics listed in the product descriptions offered by manufacturers. At the same price, all TVs are not equal.

Room Size for your Flat Screen TV

A large screen offers a little comfort, for sure. However, it is necessary to adjust its dimensions to the room to which it is intended. A decline is indeed necessary to appreciate the image on a wall mounted flat panel tv. Overall, it takes a distance equal to three to five times the diagonal of the screen for comfortable viewing, three to five yards for a screen of 42 inches (1 inch = 2.54 cm). You must arrive in stores with an idea of size, or at least a size estimation to focus your research. Remember that a store is huge, and a screen may seem small inside, especially compared to the gigantic models highlighted, is quite acceptable in a salon. In addition, the dimensions of a screen also influence its power consumption. And it is far from negligible.

TNT decoder required

In recent years, consumers had to buy a Freeview decoder in order to watch digital TV on their old television set. Now any TV offered for sale must include this decoder. From 1st December 2009 onwards, high definition televisions will have to integrate a Freeview adapter to the MPEG 4 capable of restoring the programs broadcast in high definition. Currently, a Full HD television or HD Ready can render images in high definition from an external source like a Blu-Ray, but not interpret the HD signal broadcast by the television. This is a frequent confusion in the minds of consumers. To clarify the situation, manufacturers affix logos on equipment.

To add an "HD Ready" logo, manufacturers must respond to precise specifications, particularly in terms of screen resolution (number of cells that can display information). HD Ready screen must have a native resolution of 720 lines and be compatible with 720p and 1080i resolutions. Although not the subject of consultation between industry, the "Full HD" is not really a label, it implies a definition of native 1 080 lines and compatibility with the 1080i. Warning, these labels are not absolute guarantees of display quality. It depends on other factors, such as the transition of colors, shading in black, etc.. Thus, it is not uncommon in our tests to get a poorer picture quality with Full HD 1 080 lines with a single HD Ready offering only 720 lines.

100Hz and 24p

Let's delve into the technical characteristics of flat panel displays. Among the criteria often used as a selling point, two particular roll: 100 Hz mode and 24p. These concepts are complex, so we will confine ourselves here to explain the principle. The fifty available models tested in these two modes achieved the following results: 24p (the input signal provided by the Blu-Ray is also in 24p) does no marked improvement and even degrade the image in some cases. The 100 Hz mode can, in turn, provide a fairly clear improvement of fluidity, especially at relatively slow tracking shots, but it almost invariably produces artifacts when the image becomes too fast. For now, the interest of these two modes is therefore limited.

Connectivity

If you want to mount your flat panel tv on the wall, the screen must have front, or side connectivity. Indeed, the catch is then easily accessible. A headphone output, an S-Video and HDMI are a minimum in order to connect various devices in common use (camcorder, camera, etc..) And a USB port can also be helpful to connect your computer or laptop to your flat screen tv.

Plasma or LCD?

Two flat screen technologies are available today, the LCD and plasma. The first largely dominates the market, the second reserved for large dimensions (screens with a diagonal exceeding 40 inches), is becoming increasingly rare. There are some "objective" differences between the two. LCDs have less "deep" blacks and a fairly high directivity while plasma models typically consume more energy.

Power Consumption of Flat screens

Watching television when one is equipped with a flat screen is not insignificant in terms of power consumption. It varies depending on screen size and technology (LCD or plasma), and should not be neglected. On average, the average american watch television 3 hours per day, accounting for a TV power consumumption of 450 W, an energy expenditure of 9.5 kWh or as much as the use of 6 cycles of washing dishes by week (average power consumption of 1.4 kW).

A halftone Contrast Ratio

The contrast ratio remains one of the "cream pies" used to regularly boast about the quality of a flat panel TVs. The test is interesting, but beware of the values advertised by the manufacturers: they are not usually worth much. With a luminance of 300 cd/m2 and a black level of 0.6 cd/m2, we obtain a contrast ratio of 500. If the black level falls down to 0.3 cd/m2, contrast ratio is multiplied by two and goes to 1 000. The problem, especially on LCD screens is that if the machines are capable of providing a black level as low, they are often at the expense of rendering shades of gray and are, in many cases, impossible to look with such a setting and makes this contrast ratio meaningless.

Response time and life span of LCDs

Although much less used with computer monitors, LCD response time is, however, sometimes provided by the manufacturers of television sets in the list of features. Besides the fact that the afterglow due to this technology is not noticeable on the TV screen using an LCD panel (however it can sometimes be annoying on a computer screen playing video games very fast) values given by manufacturers are not absolutely reliable. The response time, as the contrast ratio are useless arguments when buying.

100Hz and 24p

The frequency of recording movies on the media is in 24 frames per second, but the proposed output is 60 Hz. Readers should use an algorithm "3.2 pulldown" to convert the signal. Without going into too much detail, we can say that this conversion introduces flickers during tracking shots. To avoid the inconvenience that manufacturers offer, a mode called "100 Hz" or a 24p mode (which is used when the Blu-Ray produces a signal in multiples of 24p or 24p: 48 or 72 Hz).

You will have no problem buying your flat tv if you follow this simple Flat Panel Tv Guide.