How Do LED TVs Work and What Makes Them Different From LCD TVs

First off it's important to realise that LCDs and LEDs do not differ as greatly as some marketing professionals would have you believe.

LED technology is the new innovation which powers the backlight on TVs, the technology is not responsible for producing the image that's displayed.

First off let's see how older Liquid Crystal Display works:

LCD Backlighting

The chips and pixels at work in LCDs are not capable of producing their own light. For a TV of this kind to work, and make an image that the viewer can see, the pixels have to be backlit. Older models use flourescent tubes to provide the lighting. These flourescent tubes are a great leap forward in terms of performance and aesthetic over the older CRT tellies.

LED Backlighting

An LED TV uses LED backlights rather than flourescent backlights. So a more accurate term would be LCD Television powered by an LED Backlight (but obviously this isn't an easy marketing angle)

LED Technology works in two main ways.

The 1st style of backlighting is known as Edge Lighting. In Edge Lighting, a sequence of LED backlights are position along the outer edges of the screen. The light from these backlights is then spread across the display. The benefits of this technology is that theTV can be made a lot thinner than TVs used with other techniques.

On the downside, one of the the downfalls of Edge lighting is that blacks do not look as deep and the edge of the screen can appear brighter than the middle of the screen.

The second method of LED backlighting is known as Full-Array. With Full Array, several rows of LEDs are located behind the whole screen. The huge plus point with this technique is that these sets can use a technique known as "local dimming". Local dimming describes how each LED or a unique group of LEDs can be switched on and off in certain areas of the screen.

This gives more control of the darknes and brightness for each of those areas independently. So the TV can react to the material being viewed. When this technology is employed the result is often a TV that is a lot chunkier than a normal LCD or an Edge Lighting model.

There's no way to tell which model will suit you best, so take a stroll to your local showroom and see which you prefer (keep an eye out for the old sales trick of making cheaper TVs look inferior though!!)

The used of LED backlighting compared to standard lighting systems, produces a number of benefits:

1. Less energy consumption - better for you and the environment

2. No Mercury used again better for the environment

3. More balanced color contrast and stronger, more vivid colours.

4. Much better and deeper black levels than a normal LCD TV

LED backlighting is a significant advance in High Definition technology. It brings LCD TVs up to the quality levels of Plasma TVs. With black level performance that gives some of the best Plasma's a run for their money.

Still these advancements come at a cost. As always because the technology is new the cost is going to be higher so you should expect to pay a little bit more for an LED TV

Of all the recent releases of LED TVs the one that really catches my eye is the range from sharp aquos The new range from sharp combines high end performance, incredible future proof connectivity and stunning good looks.

Although better known for their Plasma models the engineers at Panasonic have clearly been hard to produce a range of LED TVs that match the quality of the more established Viera range. These TVs use the patented IPS Alpha Panel Technology to produce quality images that have to be seen to be believed. Several of the better established players will really have to raise their game to catch up with Sharp or Panasonic

This article was written by Richard Havon. He's written a number of articles for EzineArticles and for a number of media outlets in the UK. He supports Leicester City (for his sins) and runs a number of websites including 1080p LCD TV

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