Choosing for the latest Screen technology is a tough job. There are plenty of choices in market and a lot of factors need to be considered in order to choose the right type of TV screen. For years, the question of which technology reigned supreme has remained unanswered. The flat TV screen industry is filled with thin, more energy-efficient LCDs, backlighting etc. Recently, OLEDs, plasma displays have come up and changed the TV screen technology. In the past couple of years, with the advent of increasingly sophisticated LED backlighting, we finally have a true winner. With its unmatched energy efficiency, LED-based LCD is the best flat-panel HDTV technology. Unfortunately, it’s also generally the most expensive. Let’s try to get down to the basics of the latest TV screen technologies in the market and compare them.

The Basics: What’s the Difference Between LCD, LED, and Plasma?

The three technologies are vastly different; particularly how each the screen is lit. In plasma HDTVs, the phosphors that create the image on the screen light up themselves, and don’t need any backlighting. For LCD HDTVs, however, the liquid crystal screen does not illuminate, requiring a separate light source. That’s where the difference between “regular” LCD screens (also known as CCFL-backlit LCD) and LED-backlit LCD screens (also known as LED-LCD, or just LED screens) come in. Traditional LCD HDTVs use cold cathode fluorescent lights (CCFLs) to illuminate the screen. CCFLs are similar to the fluorescent lights you might see in your lamps and overhead light fixtures. They use a charged gas to produce light. LED-LCD screens, like their name implies, use light emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the display.

Image Quality

The best picture of screen decides which the best of them all is. How good the picture looks is the most vital aspect of any HDTV. Specifically, peak white and black levels determine how detailed a picture can look on a screen.

Poor white levels mean fine details can get washed out in bright scenes, while poor black levels mean shadows swallow up parts of the picture in dark scenes. A very wide gamut from dark to light lets the HDTV show the tiniest details, regardless of how bright or dark the movie gets. In our tests, we measure white and black levels by luminance using a chromameter.

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