Here in the fall of 2009, the latest and most heavily promoted advancement in television technology is LED lighting.  Several manufacturers have become so enamored with this advance that they have renamed the whole television an “LED TV,” even though LED lighting is just one part of how the picture is produced.

There are some good reasons to be excited about LED lighting, but let’s start by taking one step back.  In the world of flat panel televisions, there are still two main varieties: LCD TVs and plasma TVs.  Both produce a great picture, but also have their pros and cons.  The right choice depends on the size of screen you need, the kinds of programming you normally watch and certain facts about the room where the set will be located.

The two kinds of televisions work differently, too.  In plasma TVs, the pixels that produce the colors also produce the light.  In LCD TVs, on the other hand, the light is produced by a separate, dedicated light source.  Traditionally, that light source is a (sophisticated) fluorescent bulb.
Enter the LED.  Instead of using a fluorescent bulb to illuminate the LCD panel, we have now developed ways to use LEDs (light-emitting diodes) for that purpose.  We can skip the technical details to note that LEDs are a particularly compact and efficient light source.

And now comes the excitement.  LCD televisions that use LEDs for their light source can be built very thin, on the order of an inch deep.  Even very large panels can be built this thin.  In addition, LED-driven televisions use about 40% less energy than similarly sized, fluorescent-driven televisions.  Plus, LEDs have a longer life than fluorescent bulbs and are better at retaining their original color so that reds, blues and greens in later years will look like those same colors when the set was new.

So, is there a catch?  Of course.  Because the LED-driven panels are new, production runs are shorter and costs are higher—and that means higher consumer prices than traditional LCD TVs.  The question then becomes whether the aesthetics, energy savings and picture advantages are worth the extra cost.  And, we’re still working out some kinks.  LED TVs are less forgiving of viewing off-axis, so that noticeable changes in picture quality can be seen as you move too far from watching the set head-on.  Also on some models, brightness levels are not even over the entire screen surface (the edges being brighter than the center).

Still, the technology shows great promise, and even now the picture and aesthetics are eye-popping.  Even for the veterans, it’s hard not to stop every morning in the store, peek behind the new TVs, and marvel at their astonishing depth.

Tags: LCD, LED, LED TVs, Television

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Televisions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.