Big Screen TV Buyers Guide

Are You Going To Buy A Plasma or an LCD Flat Screen TV?

It seems that everyone either has or wants to get the latest Flat Screen TV for their home. Taking price and money out of the equation which type of Flat Screen TV do you purchase? OK are you going to go with a Plasma TV (older technology, been around since 1964) or do you go with Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) for the Flat Screen TV?

Television has come a long way since a series of shadowy images of wriggling fingers was first broadcast by John Logie Baird in his laboratory in 1925, through the early Cathode Ray TV�s now to the latest in Liquid Crystal Display /Flat Screen TV sets. The television has now become one of the �must haves� in almost every household, certainly within the developed world.

Much like the conventional approach to driving a car and our understanding of how the Internal Combustion Engine works (or not depending on your point of view) very few people understand entirely what happens behind the screen of a TV or do they? The broadest definition of television (often abbreviated to TV) refers to it as a widely used telecommunications system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance.

Television has problems that are similar to most emerging and developing technologies in that one of the problems that most people have is a total misunderstanding of the majority of the jargon and terms in use.

Perhaps it would be best now to move on to the latest developments within the industry and concentrate our coverage upon digital television, what it actually means; formats, bandwidth and an explanation of the technical jargon and terminology used.

So then the question is what is Digital TV?

Quite often confusion reigns here as to what exactly we are talking about and the use of terms can be misleading such as TFT, LCD and Plasma etc, all used and are similar but not the same.

The two main types of Flat Screen TV or screens available today are either Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) or Plasma.The main difference between the two (apart from base technologies) are that with LCD TV�s the main technology used is TFT (Thin Film Transistor) which means that by and large you can make the screens smaller and more energy efficient.

Digital television is much more flexible and efficient than conventional analogue television and digital signals provide a much clearer picture, much better sound quality and a far greater choice and availability of programming.

So what do all of the terms surrounding Digital TV mean? Using one of the newer LCD TV�s available will help us actually go through what all of this terminology actually means.

The LCD TV that we shall use for our illustrative purposes here is the B&O Beovision 8.

The following items of information have to be understood before you can make a proper valued judgement regarding your new Flat Screen TV?

The first item we need to consider is the Screen Resolution of the TV In this case it refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed.

Whether the TV is Hi-Definition Ready would be the next thing to look at. Hi Definition TV essentially makes a TV picture in a quality format that is at least four times better than conventionally available at present.

The next item that we would need to look at is what types of connectors are used between the peripherals used alongside the main Digital TV?

In this case we mean SCART Plugs and sockets and their usage. Here the definition of SCART refers to �Syndicat francais des Constructeurs d�Appareils Radio et Television (SCART).

The final item we would look at would be what is the nature and number of the High-Definition Multimedia Interfaces (HDMI) being used. The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a licensable audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams between digital audio/video sources such as set-top box, HD DVD Player etc.

The Beovision 8 is a 26in LCD TV and the prices for these are around 1800 pounds sterling or 2900 US dollars. The screen resolution is 1366 X 768 and with regards to being HD Ready the answer is yes. The Beovision has 2 (2 RGB) scarts and the type and number of Multimedia interfaces the Beovision 8 uses is HDMI and 1. The type of Tuner for this TV is Analogue and the Beovision is available from specialised outlets only.

So how would we rate the B&O Beovision 8?

The most obvious place to start with as far as TV's are concerned would be the picture quality and our score here would be 8, and closely tied in to the picture quality is the sound quality and our score for this would be 8. Another useful aspect to review is the availability and number of relevant connections and our score here would be 6. As far as overall features are concerned we would give it 6 and the final individual verdicts would relate to the ease of use and overall value for money and our scores here would be, 4 and 6 respectively.

Finally our overall opinion would be this is definitely one to consider if you don't mind paying a huge premium for the appearance and looks

With regards to the prices in this article we have tried in all cases to take an average across the industry from a number of well known web sites and so we ask you to bear this in mind and treat these prices as advisory only rather than absolutes.

Scott James writes quite regularly on the Internet about TV and Home Entertainment issues and more on the above can be found at sony flat screen tv and also at http://bestflatscreentv.biz

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