Video:What to Look for When Buying a LCD TV

Transcript:What to Look for When Buying a LCD TV

Hi, My name is Bob Murphy, I am the branch manager at Listen Up in Boulder, Colorado.  I am here for About.com and today we are talking about what to look for when buying an LCD TV.

Consider the LCD TV's Size and Shape

When you are buying an LCD TV, you are first going to want to look at the size of the TV, what is going to fit in the room. One of the advantages of the flat panel TV, like the LCD, is that it fits in places where you couldn't have a TV previously. If you are replacing an old style tube TV, the shape is different. If you had a 26 inch TV in the past, you need the 32 inch TV, in the wider format, just to have the same image height.

Consider the LCD Varieties

When comparing TVs, some of the things you are looking for are obvious. Picture quality is obviously something that everyone wants, and the best picture, for the price. One of the things you are going to find when you are shopping for a LCD TV, is that you will be hit with acronyms. LED and LCD are the most common acronyms you are going to see. The confusion is that LCD and LED are two different kinds of TVs. They actually are not. They are both variations on the LCD, with a different way of lighting from behind.

There is LCD with the fluorescent backlight, which typically does not have a particularly good off-axis viewing. Then there is two kinds of LED. There is the edge-lit LED, which is not as good for off-axis viewing, and then there is the dynamic, or the local dimming LED, which has a better off-axis viewing. Initially LCD's is using a fluorescent or cold cathode fluorescent backlight. This lighting that comes through the back of an LCD is what gives you the picture, but it also creates it's own unique challenges. One of them is that it is thicker, and heavier, and a little more expensive. In the last few years they have come up with a way to make LED the backlighting system of choice. Currently any of the better quality TVs that we are selling is an LED TV.

Look at the LCD TV from Many Angles

Another thing you should look at when you are shopping for an LCD TV, is look at it not only from head-on, but also look at it from the side, because there are differences from one TV to the next, based on how it looks off to the side. You have to think about where you are going to put your TV in the room, and are you going to be straight in front of it all the time, or are you going to be off to the side. If you are going to be off to the side, you want to look at how good that TV looks from off-axis, or at an angle.

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