HDTVs are the wave of the future when it comes to television entertainment. If you’re behind that wave, and especially if you want to be on top of it, then you should pick up on a few of these industry tips about what an HDTV is.
The HDTV shows the advancement of technology. If you don’t have one, you’re behind the times; in fact, the vast majority of electronics stores don’t even sell televisions that aren’t HDTVs. If you pay for HD programming with your television provider, and you don’t have an HDTV to watch it on, then you are definitely not getting the full experience – and that means that you’re wasting money.
The first thing you should know is that there are different kinds of HDTVs. There are LCD TVs (liquid crystal display), which can have either a fluorescent backlight or an LED (light emitting diode) backlight (the latter is commonly called an “LED TV”); there are plasma TVs, which use neon-xenon gas and phosphors to produce an image; and there are “true LED” TVs, also called OLED (organic light emitting diode) TVs. Regular LCD TVs have poor contrast and a slower refresh rate; plasma TVs have the tendency to burn in static images; LED LCD TVs fix some of the problems of LCD TVs, but are more expensive; and OLED TVs are the most expensive of all, but for good reason. There is also the DLP (digital light processing) HDTV, which uses rear projection; it has clear, full HD capability and is good for 3D video, but it consumes a lot of power and takes up a lot of space.
You also need to consider resolution. There are two factors in resolution: the number of pixels on a vertical side, or the number of horizontal scan lines (represented by the number in a resolution sequence, such as 720 or 1080), and the refresh rate (either interlace, represented with an “i,” or progressive, represented with a “p”). Interlace means that the screen changes the scan lines every other refresh cycle, whereas progressive means that the screen changes the scan lines every refresh cycle. 1080p, then, is considered “full HD,” because it is the best quality; most HD programming, however, is broadcast in only 720p, so the only way you can really use full HD is if you have a Blu-ray player.
HDTVs are the wave of the future, but when you catch up, make sure you’re buying what you want and need, both in terms of display system and resolution.
