The plasma and LCD TV market is full of models from all brands, all competing for a place in your living-room.
The same model can cost more than $USD 400 depending on the point of sale. You have to take precautions and do your home-work if you want to save some money when buying a plasma or LCD TV set.
Screen resolution and diagonal size
The given size of any Plasma and LCD TVs set is the measure of its diagonal, in inches. The TV screen dimension is determined by primarily by the area available in the area where the TV set will be placed. As a standard, the range amongst the recommended equipment and the place where you will be sitting would be wise to remain about 3 times the diagonal display screen size: 3,2 meters if you have a 42” screen (1,07 m), 2.8 meters if the TV is 37 inches and 2,5 meters for a 32”. That’s what all manufacturers recommend. Of course that you can ad some margin to that, let’s say about a 30% variation.
Nowadays it’s hard to find a TV without the Full HD specification, the famous 1080 horizontal lines of resolution. But be advice that actually having the HD resolution sign (1080p), the TV set may not have much better image compared to others with a resolution of 720 or 768 lines. Our eye at an adequate range from the Television set, does not really discern the disparity amid the 2 resolutions.
Consumption of flat panel TV sets grows along with the actual dimensions of these and is significantly bigger in plasma TV’s, particularly in the Full HD ones. Generally speaking, a plasma HD consume an extra 60% and a Full HD plasma TV a hundred thirty percent more compared to a equivalent sized Liquid crystal display.
The TV sets that come with the MPEG4 DBV-T digital tuner for digital broadcasts has to exhibit the identifying logotypes of this technology, either DTV1080P or HDTV logos. The very fact of displaying the DBV-T sign is not enough, because this might suggest the transformation of data is made in MPEG2, a technology that is not used in all countries. The solution to this problem is adding a set-top box to the system.
To connect player like DVD records, blue-ray equipments, set top boxes, game consoles, etc you need HDMI and SCART slots.
The VGA input allows anyone make use of ones Television as personal computer screen. Whenever not accessible, you may well make use of an HDMI adapter designed for DVI. This kind of connection offers an image quality higher than the VGA.
The USB connection is extremely useful: it allows you to connect the TV to virtually any digital camera, pen-disk and also hard drives to watch movies or photos.
A few brands of Plasma and LCD TVs offer models with a reader for memory cards. In this case you need to be sure that you memory cards fit in that reader, otherwise this function can be pretty useless.
Nowadays it’s even possible to find in the market LCD’s with the 3D Ready function. These are the most advanced and, therefore, the most expensive LCD’s available.