Thursday, January 29, 2009

LCD TVs - What you need to know before you buy

By Michael Hiltone

Lcd Televisions are now the most popular type of television screen and one that is supported by all television manufacturers.

The nature of a television image is that it is constantly changing both in colour and in contrast.

To create different levels of brightness and contrast there must be a mechanism to enable and restrict the amount of light passing through the lcd television. All LCD televisions have at the back of the appliance a backlight.

The inherent properties of a crystal will allow this to occur, as firstly a crystal state is cylindrical in nature and therefore has the ability to allow light to pass through; secondly it has a twisted property which can be accentuated dependant on how much electrical charge is submitted. Increase the current and the crystal will tighten and therefore become more opaque in nature. Reduce the current and it will relax and allow more light to pass through. Do be aware though that the complete restriction of light is impossible as a crystal cannot completely inhibit the transfer of light. Also as each pixel is so tightly arranged to the next, even with polarized glass, you do get a cross contamination from one pixel to another. Resultant issue is an inability to achieve a true real black.

As regards creating colour the pixels are subdivided into three coloured crystals based on the primary colours. The interaction between these red, green and blue crystals produces the lcd televisions colour palette or the lcd tv`s contrast ratio!

The liquid crystals are sandwiched between two pieces of polarized glass " sometimes described as mother glass. The polarization effect of the glass focuses the light source which is how LCD televisions can achieve such razor sharp images. One of these sheets of glass is coated with a special polymer which secures the thousands of crystals required to create an lcd television display.

The driving force of the lcd television is the matrix of transistors which disseminates the information to each of the individual pixels. By distributing the information effectively, the appropriate pixel produces the necessary colour and hue, and as this can be performed upto 100 times a second, this is more than enough to create a very fluid and accurate image.

As can be seen, to create a final picture, the lcd television needs to perform rapid fire actions on a micro level to create an image on a macro level. This synergy of components is something which is being further refined by lcd television manufacturers and it is still surprising how far television engineers are taking the concept in the strive to make the perfect screen. - 16492

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