New Technology TV

With the prices of HDTV sets falling, and anticipated to continue falling over the next year by many analysts, there's a lot of interest in all of the types of TV technologies available right now. For example, if you're shopping around for a TV right now, you can choose among a variety of flat screen technologies including LCD screens and Plasma screens. Each of these technologies has advantages over the other. LCD screens are based on the fact that some types of crystals react to electrical current by changing shape. In an LCD TV screen, these crystals are arranged in a grid pattern and supported by what's called a transparent film transistor. The transparent film transistor can apply current to each individual crystal in the screen and, depending on how much voltage is applied to the crystal, it will change its shape in various ways to block out light coming from a fluorescent lamp behind it. Not only will they block out light completely to make black, but these crystals will also block out different wavelengths of light to let through different colors. Each crystal represents a pixel on the screen. LCD screens have the advantages of being extremely energy efficient, rendering an good picture in a variety of light levels, and lend themselves well to displaying output from computers. LCD displays have the disadvantages of blurring slightly while displaying fast movement due to the time that the crystals need to change shape. LCD screens also don't show very deep shades of black- especially in lower light levels- due to the amount of energy that they need to block out the light completely. Both of these problems are becoming less and less noticeable as the technology becomes more advanced. Plasma screen TV's are based on the fact that some exotic gases can glow in different colors when different amounts of electric current are passed through them. Each pixel in a Plasma screen is composed of a small pocket of gas and each one can be excited individually to glow at different wavelengths. The result is a screen with an incredible range of colors that reacts to changes of the images very quickly. Plasma screens tend to be easier to make in larger sizes than LCD screens and display fast action without blurring, but have a number of disadvantages. For one thing, Plasma screens consume about twice the amount of electricity as LCD screens. They also tend to produce and annoying buzzing sound when they're operating at altitudes in excess of six thousand feet. Plasma screens aren't bright enough to function well in higher light levels and their brightness fades with time and use.

If you want even more bang for the buck in terms of size, you might want to consider an HDTV projector. Projectors are a good way to get large TV screen sizes with a minimum of space taken up by equipment. Digital Light Processing is a popular type of technology for projectors and can create an image that measures anywhere from seven feet to fifteen feet across!

In all there are a lot of options for HDTV screens available right now.