LCD Television: The Future's Standard in Home Theater

LCD televisions are incredible, space-saving appliances. LCDs possess extremely thin, flat screens that can be mounted on a stant or even hung on a wall in your family or entertainment room. In the case of the latter, hanging an LCD television on a wall provides consumers with additional space in the room in which the television is placed; allowing much more space for furniture and decorating. Furthermore, many LCD televisions include the option to tilt and pivot their direction, allowing the viewer to easily adjust the screen to their preferences.

LCD (liquid crystal display) projectors usually contain three separate LCD glass panels, one each for red, green, and blue components of the image signal being fed into the projector. As light passes through the LCD panels, individual pixels ("picture elements") can be opened to allow light to pass or closed to block the light, as if each little pixel were fitted with a Venetian blind. This activity modulates the light and produces the image that is projected onto the screen.

LCDs possess a number of advantages over Plasma televisions and standard television sets. Such advantages pertain to their cost effectiveness, their space saving capabilities, and their image producing capabilities. In fact, in the future, the market is likely to see a rise in the sale of LCDs that surpasses the selling of both Plasma and standard television (SDTV) sets; such a rise in the sale of LCDs will directly parallel the increase in technology.

One benefit of LCD is that it has historically delivered better color saturation than you get from a DLP projector. That's primarily because in most single-chip DLP projectors, a clear (white) panel is included in the color wheel along with red, green, and blue in order to boost brightest or total lumen output. Though the image is brighter than it would otherwise be, this tends to reduce color saturation, making the DLP picture appear not quite as rich and vibrant.

However, some of the DLP-based home theater products now have six-segment color wheels that eliminate the white component. This contributes to a richer display of color. And even some of the newer high contrast DLP units that have a white segment in the wheel are producing better color saturation than they used to. Overall however, the best LCD projectors still have a noteworthy performance advantage in this area.

LCDs are more energy efficient as well. LCD projectors usually produce significantly higher ANSI lumen outputs than do DLPs with the same wattage lamp. In the past year, DLP machines have gotten brighter and smaller--and there are now DLP projectors rated at 2500 ANSI lumens, which is a comparatively recent development. Still, LCD competes extremely well when high light output is required. All of the portable light cannons under 20 lbs putting out 3500 to 5000 ANSI lumens are LCD projectors.

LCDs are more cost effective; this does not mean that they are less expensive than other television brands, but they are, however, money saving in the long run. Due to the fact that LCDs require less electricity to operate, the long term savings on electricity can really add up. The reason that LCD televisions are cost effective is because they do not require florescent lighting to work, and their flat shape produces less heat. Thus, if consumers are looking for a television that can save them money on their monthly electric bill, then LCD television is definitely the way to go.

LCD televisions are praised for their ability to produce sharp, crystal clear images. In fact, the crystal clear imagery produced by LCDs can be attributed to the fact that their screens are literally comprised of crystals. Every crystal either obstructs or allows light to pass through it and such lighting produces the images seen by the viewer on the screen. Furthermore, because LCD screens are flat, there is very unlikely that glare from other lights in the room will present a problem.

Directly related to the clearer pictures, is the fact that LCDs produce sharper images and consumers will experience far fewer occasions in which eye fatigue occurs. Many consumers enjoy watching television for several hours at a time; thus, the clearer images and less glare that are provided from the screens of LCDs can prove to be quite beneficial in alleviating eye fatigue.

Finally, for those individuals that are environmentally conscious, LCDs offer less radiation emission as well as a lower frequency of electromagnetic field emissions. Electronic magnetic fields have been scientifically associated with a number of health risks, including cancer.