Comparison of Television Display: Lcd and Led

Running head: COMPARISON OF TELEVISION DISPLAYS/SCREENS: LCD AND LED

The advancement of technology has allowed us to produce products we once thought were impossible to create. The television industry is no different. Just 20 years ago, we had televisions that were almost as wide as a door entrance. Today, we have manage to produce a better quality picture from a much thinner television set: as thin as 1.2 inches! The two most popular television are the LCD and LED screens.

Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology has been around for nearly 50 years, but it was not until 1971 when it was first introduced to the television industry. Hoffmann-LaRoche along with his team, Wolfgang Helfrich and Martin Schadt, patented the twisted nematic field effect, which allows for the twisting and untwisting of liquid crystals in the display to allow light to pass through. A LCD display is simply made up of two flat sheets of glass that are treated to allow polarization. This allows for light to only pass through one of the panels. Between the two sheets of glass are the liquid crystals. When current is applied to the circuit, it flows through the liquid crystals, enabling them to shift their form and allow light to pass through in any configuration, producing the picture.

Light Emitting Diode (LED) televisions were first introduced by Samsung in 2008. Though new to the market, they are quickly finding shelter in many Americans' homes. LEDs are nothing more than just a semiconductor diode that emits light when current flows through it. LED TVs contain a cluster of LEDs that actually allows the backlight, along with the picture, to change.

Both LCD and LED TV screens have the High Definition Television (HDTV) feature standard. An article from tech-faq.com defines HDTV as "having higher quality video, audio and a wider image aspect ratio than standard television broadcast signals". Prior to HDTV, most TV's were Standard (SDTV) that contained 480 lines of picture. HDTV allows for a clearer, higher quality picture because the numbers of lines, in most cases, are more than doubled. Both screens are virtually immune to screen burn in, originally a major problem in plasma TVs. Screen burn in occurs when a non-moving picture is present for a prolonged amount of time, such as a channel's logo. This perk allows for LED and LCD screens to be ideal for computer use. The refresh rate is the number of times a TV produces a new picture in a second. Most LED's have a higher refresh rate than LCD's; however, it is interesting to know that the screen type has no effect on the speed of refresh. Instead, manufacturers decided to make their LED TV line-up more marketable by advertising a higher refresh rate.

Even though LCD and LED TV screens are both popular, they still hold many differences that separate themselves from one another. The biggest, most important difference is the price. Being the newest type of television screen, LED is generally much more expensive, usually about 50% more than the LCD. However, the technology will decrease through time, which in turn will decrease the price gap

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