What are LCD TVs? A liquid crystal display television uses a series of CCF, or cold cathode fluorescent, lamps to produce a brilliant image capable of high definition resolutions. Millions of tiny liquid crystal display shutters, arranged in a neat grid, are made to repeatedly open and close, allowing only a specific amount of white light through each time. Every shutter is coupled with its own colored filter in order to limit the colors from the original white source to just red, green or blue. These pairs are called sub-pixels, and by limiting the intensity of light passing through each of them, an LCD TV can effectively control the millions of different shades that, together, produce a fantastic image.
Some TV manufacturers, including Samsung and Sony, are now moving towards LED (light-emitting diode) TV displays. Unlike LCDs, LED TVs use white and colored electronic sources, rather than the white CCF.
Advantages of LCD TVs
There are a few reasons LCD TVs have, over the past 10 years or so, steadily replaced traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs, on the throne of most everyone's home theater shelf. For one, they're much thinner. CRT TVs and DLP TVs (digital light processing) produce an electronic beam by heating a filament, so they need a vacuum in order to keep things cool. LCD TVs avoid that because CCF lamps require only a tiny vacuum and produce little heat, so they don't need a heavy glass screen to keep the warmth inside. This means that DLP and LCD televisions are much thinner and lighter than their CRT predecessors.
Another big advantage: width. Because so much atmospheric force is placed on the front glass of a CRT TV, the screen must get thicker with every additional inch of width. It just isn't practical to build a CRT larger than 34 to 36 inches wide. However, LCD TV technology allows for much wider screens; it isn't rare these days to see 42 inch LCD TVs or even 50 inch LCD TVs in the average living room.
Disadvantages of LCD TVs
Critics laughed at the image quality of early LCD TVs, and indeed some manufacturers still struggle to bring out the deep blacks and vibrant colors the technology offers. Even today, some video snobs prefer the picture of a CRT HDTV to either LCD or plasma. However, most consumers interested in LCD won't have that problem so long as they stick with name brands, such as Sony or Samsung LCD TVs.