How to Compare LCD TV Quality
Walk into any electronics retail store, and you will see such a diverse selection of brands, sizes and prices of LCD TVs that your head will spin. The key to finding the television that best suits you is understanding what makes one different from the next.
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Contrast Ratio
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Check the contrast ratio, which measures the television's ability to adequately display brightest whites and darkest darks simultaneously. According to the Imaging Science Foundation, this is the most important aspect of picture quality. Televisions with low contrast ratios will display washed out blacks and whites, whereas true blacks and brilliant whites accompany televisions with high contrast ratios.
Response Time
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Look for a TV with a short response time. This particular spec measures how long it takes for the pixels to change from total black to full white and back to total black again. Response time is measured in milliseconds. Screens with higher response times appear blurry or smeared when commotion (i.e. on sports programs) is being displayed. The lower the number of milliseconds, the better.
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Screen Resolution
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Focus on choices with a high pixel count. Most televisions coming out these days are "fixed-pixel displays." This refers to the images displayed on the screen being made up of a specific and unchanging number of pixels. Fixed-pixel displays all have a specific resolution, which describes the highest level of detail the television can produce. "1080p" and "720p" are the two most common resolutions. These two resolutions also are expressed as "1920x1080" and "1280x720." If you multiply these two numbers, the result is the number of pixels your television uses to produce the images shown. The pixel-count of a 720p television is almost 1 million, whereas 1080p televisions have more than 2 million. The higher the pixel count, the better the image.
Screen Size and Viewing Distance
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Establish what size screen is best for placement in your room. Two factors that will make the most of your television's screen resolution: Screen size and sitting the right distance away from your television. It is difficult to tell the difference between 1080p and 720p if the screen is small. With bigger screens, the differences in quality become quite apparent, especially when you sit at your TV's optimal viewing distance. See the chart on the electronics website Crutchfield to establish the best viewing distance from your TV.
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References
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