Plasma screen pundits will also mention that some of the LCD screens on the market have a tendency to blur images, particularly during fast moving scenes in sports or in movies, it’s a bit like ghosting. While that was true conception of the earlier generation LCD screens, the later models have improved ten fold, so much so that the differences in performance between LCD screens and plasmas screens in this regard is almost negligible, so that  tells you how far the LCD screen technology has come. (Free tip for you when you go shopping next for LCD screens, check the pixel response time, measured in ms. The lower the measurement is, the better the image quality responds in fast moving scenes).

Apart from great contrast due to its ability to produce deeper blacks, plasma screens typically have better viewing angles than LCD. Viewing angles are how far you can sittting on either side of your flat screen before the picture’s quality is affected. You tend to see some brightness and colour shift when you’re on too far of an angle with LCDs, while a plasma’s picture remains fairly solid. This is steadily changing, however, with more and more LCDs entering the market plasce with viewing angles equal to or greater than some plasmas screen. Plasmas can also produce a brighter colour, once again due to light leakage on an LCD affecting its colour saturation. However Lcd’s are hot on the heels of the Plasma screen.

Those guys we call the entertainment specialists will advise you that for basic home theatre-like usage, plasma Tv screens have a slight edge over LCDs. This is because black is displayed more accurately on a Plasma screen than LCDs can, which means better contrast and detail in dark-colors television or movie scenes. The basis of LCD technology, where a backlight shines through the LCD layer, means it’s hard for it to achieve true blacks because there’s always some light contamination from between pixels. This technology is steadily progressing with every new generation of LCD screen, however the LCD technology is slightly behind it still has advantages, ie slimmer units and power saving.

Can you tell the difference in picture quality between Lcd and Plasma screens and normal CRT Televisions.The happenings behind the screen is less important, it’s how the screen performs as a television that is the most important factor. In that regard, both plasma and LCD Tv sets produce excellent pictures, however many home entertainment specialists and gamers still believe that the CRTs produce the best overall images (although the latest plasma tv’s are particularly good, and LCD are hot on there heals and likely to  catch up in terms of picture quality). But the conclusion is the flat screen technology is not quite as good as the old CRT.

Plasma and LCD screens may look similar, but the flat screen and thin profile is where the similarities end. Plasma screens, as its name suggests, uses a matrix of gas plasma cells charged by precise electrical current to create a picture. LCD screens (liquid crystal display) are in layman’s terms sandwiches made up of liquid crystal pushed in the space between two glass panels. Images are created by varying the amount electrical charge applied to the crystals. Each of  these technology has its strengths and weaknesses. However the swing from Plasma screens too Lcd’s is increasing making the plasma technology old hat.

Television has revolutionised communication, education and how people spend their recreational time. TV as we know it is quite a recent invention, many families only purchased their first set in the 1950s and 1960s. Recently other technologies have been introduced to household TVs with the aim of further improving picture and sound quality. In addition to this, new screen types can reduce the amount of space a large TV takes up in a room, especially when wall mounted (for example plasma screen and HYPERLINK “http://www.avnow.co.uk/p359/B-Tech_LCD_Screen_Wall_Mount_with_Articulated_Arm_-_BT7513/product_info.html”LCD wall brackets are easily obtainable).

The history of the television is full of contributing scientists and inventors from different countries. Their work, and later the work of electrical engineers, enabled the production of the very first TVs. Although the concept of transmitting images telegraphically had been in existence for a while, Paul Nipkow enabled progression to be made through his invention, the ‘Nipkow disc’ in the 1880s. This creation was utilised in a publically displayed mechanical television in 1926. The machine was demonstrated in Soho, London, and had been made by Scottish inventor, John Logie Baird (13-08-1888 – 14-06-1946). It is maybe not surprising that John Logie Baird showed an interest in similar technology from an early age. Reputedly he performed experiments at his parent’s house as early as 1903, unsuccessfully attempting to construct a selenium photo electric cell. By the 1920s, Alan A. Campbell-Swinton, an electrical engineer based in London proposed a new way of producing an electrical television using Cathode Ray Tubes as both transmitters and receivers. At this point, several others were already experimenting on methods of producing electronic TVs. Two of these were American born Philo Taylor Farnsworth, and Russian- American Vladimir K. Zworykin, the designer of the iconoscope.

Moving pictures on a CRT TV do not exhibit any sort of “ghosting” because the CRT’s phosphor, charged by the strike of electrons, emits most of the light in a very short time, under 1 ms, compared with the refresh period of e.g. 20 ms (for 50 fps video). In LCDs, each pixel emits light of set intensity for a full period of 20 ms (in this example), plus the time it takes for it to switch to the next state, typically 12 to 25 ms.

The second time (called the “response time”) can be shortened by the panel design (for black-to-white transitions), and by using the technique called overdriving (for black-to-grey and grey-to-grey transitions); however this only can go down to as short as the refresh period.

Video material, shot at 50 or 60 frames a second, actually tries to capture the motion. When the eye of a viewer tracks a moving object in video, it doesn’t jump to its next predicted position on the screen with every refresh cycle, but it moves smoothly; thus the TV must display the moving object in “correct” places for as long as possible, and erase it from outdated places as quickly as possible. LCD televisions are also a good component for video games.

Although ghosting was a problem when LCD TVs were newer, the manufacturers have been able to shorten response time to 2ms on many computer monitors and around an average of 8 ms for TVs.

There are two emerging techniques to solve this problem. First, the backlight of the LCD panel may be fired during a shorter period of time than the refresh period, preferably as short as possible, and preferably when the pixel has already settled to the intended brightness. This technique resurrects the flicker problem of the CRTs, because the eye is able to sense flicker at the typical 50 or 60 Hz refresh rates.

Another approach is to double the refresh rate of the LCD panel, and reconstruct the intermediate frames using various motion compensation techniques, extensively tested on high-end “100 Hz” CRT televisions in Europe.

LCD technology is based on manipulation of polarized light. Two thin polarizing sheets are laminated to two glass substrates containing a thin layer of liquid-crystal. A regular 2-dimensional grid of electrodes allows each pixel in the array to be selected and activated individually. Several LCD technologies are used for the realization of large format television screens (e.g. TN, IPS, PVA, FFS), all in combination with active-matrix addressing.

It had been widely believed that LCD technology was suited only to smaller sized flat-panel televisions at sizes of 40″ or smaller. Early LCDs could not compete with plasma technology for screens larger than this because plasma held the edge in cost and performance.[1] However, LCD TVs can now offer acceptable performance in larger sizes.[2]

As CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) television was gradually becoming more and more efficient, so was another new technology that would one day surpass it. Studies into Liquid Crystals had begun in the late 1800s, surprisingly, after Friedrich Reinitzer discovered that cholesterol extracted from carrots was crystalline in nature. From this point onwards, experiments into the potential of Liquid Crystals continued, and in 1972, the first active-matrix Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) panel was produced in the US.

CRT televisions have been widely used since around the 1950s in many households. More recently, the two concepts that had grown alongside each other for over a century have been combined, and LCD TVs have been available to consumers for a number of years. It is said that at the end of 2007, worldwide sales of LCD TVs outnumbered those of CRT TVs for the first time.

When sitting down to relax of an evening, watching your favourite show, it sometimes helps to remember all the hard work that went into making your viewing possible. It is almost impossible for some generations to imagine a time before TVs, so important have they become to modern culture. The latest flat screens have also been perfected over the years, and are a product of many great minds and hours of experiments and research. Modern TVs are quite amazing (and expensive!) bits of equipment, so make sure they are correctly looked after, and fixed using LCD wall brackets when necessary.

Current sixth-generation panels by major manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, LG Display, and the Sharp Corporation have announced larger sized models:

·        In October 2004, 40″ to 45″ televisions became widely available, and Sharp had announced the successful manufacture of a 65″ panel.

·        In March 2005, Samsung announced an 82″ LCD panel.[3]

·        In August 2006, LG Display Consumer Electronics announced a 100″ LCD television[4]

·        In January 2007, Sharp displayed a 108″ LCD panel branded under the AQUOS brand name at CES in Las Vegas.[5]

·        In November 2008, Silicon Mountain announced Allio, a 42″ High-Definition LCD TV with an integrated Blu-ray player and full function media center PC.[6]

Manufacturers have announced plans to invest billions of dollars in LCD production over the next few years, with televisions expected to be a key market.

Improvements in LCD technology have narrowed the technological gap, allowing producers to offer lower weight and higher available resolution (crucial for HDTV), and lower power consumption. LCD TVs are now more competitive against plasma displays in the television set market. It is noted that LCDs are now overtaking plasmas, particularly in the important 40″ and above segment where plasma had enjoyed strong dominance.[7]HYPERLINK  \l “cite_note-7″[8] TVs based on PVA and S-PVA LCD panels deliver a broad viewing angle, up to 178 degrees.[9] They also deliver an adequate contrast ratio for viewing bright scenes, as well as dark scenes in bright rooms. The dynamic contrast technique improves contrast when viewing dark scenes in a dark room. Alternatively, some manufacturers produce LCD TVs that throw light on the wall behind it to help make dark scenes look darker. PVA and S-PVA panels generally have difficulty with ghosting when going between different shades of dark colors, however in new televisions this is compensated to some degree using a technique called overdriving.

Recent research

Some manufacturers are also experimenting with extending color reproduction of LCD televisions. Although current LCD panels are able to deliver all sRGB colors using an appropriate combination of backlight’s spectrum and optical filters, manufacturers want to display even more colors. One of the approaches is to use a fourth, or even fifth and sixth color in the optical color filter array. Another approach is to use two sets of suitably narrowband backlights (e.g. LEDs), with slightly differing colors, in combination with broadband optical filters in the panel, and alternating backlights each consecutive frame.

Fully using the extended color gamut will naturally require an appropriately captured material and some modifications to the distribution channel. Otherwise, the only use of the extra colors would be to let the viewer boost the color saturation of the TV picture beyond what was intended by the producer, but avoiding the otherwise unavoidable loss of detail (”burnout”) in saturated areas.

Instead of strong demand, LCD TV sales sputtered during the tournament, flooding the market with excess products and driving down prices. Prices of LCD TVs are actually almost always falling as makers improve efficiency at factories and pass on savings to users, but rapid declines such as what the industry saw over the previous three months don’t come often. The rapid decline sank panels makers’ earnings, prompting some to pare production.

While slowing production lines can help avoid a serious glut, it didn’t stabilize prices in the second quarter. But continued vigilance among panel makers and anticipated greater demand among consumers in the third quarter are expected to firm prices and could send them slightly higher.

LG.Philips LCD, one of the world’s largest LCD panel makers, said it expects to see LCD prices begin to stabilize and LCD TV sales grow throughout the second half of the year, particularly in the fourth quarter.

LCD prices fell off so sharply during the second quarter that the company posted a loss of $343 million.

One of LG.Philips’ top rivals, AU Optronics even predicted a further downside to LCD panel prices in the third quarter.

The company said the price of LCD panels used in TVs would likely fall by a few percentage points during the three months ended September 31, due to high inventories in the market.

“Prices are falling faster than we can reduce costs,” Hui Hsiung, an executive vice president at AU, said at a news conference, adding that a rebound wasn’t likely until September.