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shallowdeep -> RE: Entering the 21st century.... (12/3/2012 9:53:41 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Aylee
LED is Light-emitting diode. There are a gazillion in the screen of an LED tv. So. . . pulling an example COMPLETELY from random. . .let's say that you have a small child that comes up with this brilliant idea of tapping on the screen with a fine point ball pen. . . only one diode might be damaged, leaving the tv screen pretty much unaffected.
The marketing and terms can be confusing, but this information is not correct. An LED television set is an LCD – the only difference between other LCDs is the type of backlight used. LCDs are a bit like (lots and lots of very tiny) stained glass windows, each with a transistor-controlled venetian blind; some sort of light is needed to shine through the pixels from the back so that you can see them lit up from the front if the blind is open. Traditionally, this backlight was supplied by cold-cathode fluorescent lamps. Sets advertised as LED displays have simply replaced the fluorescent tubes behind the LCD panel with several white LEDs instead. This doesn't confer much resistance to damage, but it does have other advantages: LED sets tend to be more power efficient, the backlight should have a longer life, and, with edge lighting, sets can be noticeably thinner than they can with fluorescents. As an added bonus, there's no mercury or UV involved.
As an aside, Sony actually did show off a prototype of a a direct LED display TV earlier this year, where each sub pixel is, in fact, a separate LED, but it isn't the sort of thing you can currently buy. OLEDs work similarly, with the pixel elements being the light sources and they have made it into some smart phones and other small screens, but big OLED screens probably aren't going to be available until next year and will be quite expensive. The advantage of both is about image quality rather than durability, however.
As a general response to the original post, the specs you want in a TV will depend on how you use your TV and what you want to be able to do with it. Things to consider: How large do you want the display to be? Where will you be viewing it from - in terms of both distance and ambient light? What devices might you be hooking up to it? What content do you want to be able to view on it? Do you have a budget?
With that said, an LED-backlit LCD is probably a good option for most use. Unless you are getting a small set, it's probably worthwhile to get 1080p (1920x1080 pixels, sometimes referred to as "Full HD") resolution. 1080p can give higher image detail than 720p (1280x720 pixels) resolution, providing the source material is also high resolution. Television isn't actually currently broadcast in 1080p, but Blu-ray Discs, some online content, still photographs, and, increasingly, some home videos can take full advantage of it. It also means the TV can be more more useable as a computer monitor.
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