Many people head out to buy a new HDTV, but have no idea what all of
the technical specs mean, and get overwhelmed while shopping. Different
sales people give different opinions, and in the end, a lot just end up
leaving confused. What do all these specs mean? Here's a rundown of some
of the big specs and what you should look for.
First
off, before we get into the details, let's talk about technical specs
versus "marketing speak". Technical specs are those aspects of an HDTV
(or other consumer electronic product) that are easily verifiable with
industry standard tests. Something like contrast ratio can actually be
verified with a standard test, while marketing speak is something
designed to try and help sell the product and can often times not be
easily, if at all, verified. These usually come in the form of something
that sounds impressive, but can't be quantified easily. For example, if
the box for the HDTV proclaims something like "Intellicolor Advanced II
for improved picture clarity", that is just a term marketing came up
with to try and make their product sound impressive. Sure enough, if you
look at another manufacturer's HDTV box, you won't find that same
"feature" listed. That's because their marketing department will have
come up with some other impressive sounding feature that will make their
product sound better.
Now, this isn't to say that these marketing
terms aren't based on something real, like some function in the HDTV's
hardware or software, but often times if you try and find out exactly
what that means by asking a salesperson or checking the manufacturers
website, you won't be able to get a clear answer. And sometimes a lower
priced TV from the same manufacturer will have the same feature, but
they won't list it on the box because they want the higher priced TV to
sound more impressive. My advice, for the most part, is to just ignore
these terms. If it sounds flashy and fancy and vague, its just marketing
speak.
On to the actual technical specs and what they mean. We'll
go over the biggies, let you know what they mean, and what you should
look for when shopping for your HDTV.
Resolution
This
is the first thing you should look for when shopping for an HDTV.
Commonly you'll see terms like 720P, 1080i or 1080P. This comes from how
TVs display their images. Each image on your HDTV is made up of tiny
little dots called pixels, and each pixel shows one tiny dot of the
picture. For example, a TV specified as 720P is actually showing 720
rows of pixels on your TV, and 1280 columns of pixels. If you were to
draw it out, it would look like a table with 720 rows and 1280 columns,
and each little square in the table would be one pixel. That means a
720P HDTV actually contains 720x1280=921,000 pixels.
A 1080P TV is
actually 1080x1920=2,073,600 pixels. That means that a 1080P picture is
actually made up of over 2 million little dots and will give you a much
clearer picture than a 720P HDTV. If you see a TV marketed as an HDTV
with a resolution other than one of these two, stay away from it, as it
won't be able to display the image without scaling it it larger or
smaller, and it won't give you the best picture.
It's also
important to note that a 1080P HDTV and can display a 720P image and
will just scale it up to fit the whole screen, while a 720P TV can
typically display a 1080P image but it will scale it down (and you'll
lose resolution in the process).
My recommendation is to get a
1080P TV, it will give you the best resolution image overall, and as you
watch HD content on your new TV, you'll know you're watching the best
possible resolution. Now, as for the difference between 1080i and 1080p,
this is a difference in how the image is displayed on the TV. Most
people will never be able to notice the difference, but if you want to
know, the best is 1080p, but if the 1080i TV is more affordable to you,
and the picture looks great to you, rest assured, you're still getting a
fine TV.
Contrast Ratio
The contrast ratio
of a TV is how black the blacks get, versus how white the whites get.
Early LCD TVs had really bad contrast ratios, such that blacks in a
scene never really looked black, and the whites never looked very
bright. This became a problem when you would watch a movie, and there'd
be a scene where the character was walking around a dimly lit alley, for
example. The TV would not be able to discern the difference between all
those dark colors, and everything would look like a muddy black mess
and you'd lose a lot of the picture detail simply because the TV was
unable to show the subtle variations in color actually present in the
picture.
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