Things to Consider Before you Buy your Flat Screen Tv

When you are thinking about which Television to buy, you need to carefully consider size and location, especially if your options are a Plasma TV, LCD flat screen TV or a rear projection TV. Flat screen TV technologies are limited by screen size. You can get LCD TVs in a variety of sizes ranging right from tiny to the very large. Plasma TVs are best viewed starting from 37 inches. The HDTV screens tend to be a lot wider than their height, appearing rectangular. Because of this, the space requirement varies from TV to TV. The specialty of flat screen TVs is that they can also be wall mounted or placed on stands, making them a space saving unit.

Room Size
A 30 to 40 inch HDTV might be suitable for a small room particularly if you plan to place it in an entertainment unit or against a narrow wall. But for a big room where you have sufficient wall area, a rear projection TV of a larger size will look good. For those who plan to go in for the home theater system, front projections TVs are a good choice. After you've decided where you will place your TV, you need to consider how far you will sit from your TV screen when you watch it. If there is enough distance, a large screen TV is fine. But if viewing distance is very limited, and you opt for HDTV, bigger need not mean greater picture clarity. You cannot view a small screen from too far off or a huge screen from very near.

Viewing Distance, Angle And Lighting
The best way to figure out the ideal distance to maintain between you and your screen is to divide the screen size by 5. Seat yourself so that you are looking directly at the middle of the screen. While considering performance of TVs, the angle at which you view them matters a lot. With plasma TVs, which have a 160-degree wide viewing angle, you can put them anywhere in your room. The viewing angle for LCD TVs is lesser at 120 degrees; while rear projection TVs are at 90-100 degrees. So if you are not sitting directly opposite the TV the lesser the viewing angle, the less satisfying the picture quality. Bright lights are suitable for plasma and LCD TVs but for projection TVs you must have little or no light.

Picture Quality
A perception of picture quality can vary from person to person, and TV to TV. It depends on how the TV is constructed and the internal processing method. The TV must have good black levels since these produce better details. CRT TVs are capable of better black levels. Digital TVs like plasma, LCD and DLP produce black that looks more like dark gray. When the picture shows good contrast, the impact is much more. Incidentally, there's something called "burn in" that happens in Plasma TVs that ends up showing ghostly images on the screen, especially when you are watching a favorite sports channel or happen to be enjoying video games.

Thus, viewing criteria and location are important considerations when you shop for your flat TV.