| Flat panel televisions are physically lighter and thinner than traditional television sets and computer display units that use cathode ray tubes, usually having a thickness of less than 10 cm (4 inches). The booming technological advances implemented in a flat panel TV encompass different approaches to achieve higher quality viewing at reduced costs, offering true to life images.
A flat panel TV uses an LCD screen, a TFT-LCD screen, or a Plasma screen for displaying moving images. An LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) TV or a TFT-LCD TV is based on a grid of tiny pixels filled with liquid crystals, regulating the color and intensity of light, for displaying parts of the image by passing electric currents through the pixel grid. A single set of pixels is usually made up of three basic colors – Red, Green Blue. The pixels light up according to the current and in entirety construct the complete picture. A Plasma screen TV uses a similar concept of passing current through pixels, except that the pixels hold inert gases such as Neon and Xenon in tiny chambers. These gases emit photons, when subjected to electric current, which in turn emit a colored light corresponding to the color of the pixel chamber.
A flat panel TV comes in many dimensions and resolutions. The lowest resolution available in a flat panel TV is 800 x 600 pixels, with the highest figure being around 1280 x 1024 pixels. With such high resolutions, the screen size dramatically increases with the smallest flat panel TV measuring around 20 inches and the largest, more than 100 inches. A flat panel TV has a screen refresh response time of less than 20 milliseconds, thus avoiding any “Ghosting” of a moving picture. Most of the TVs support an array of connectivity options such as S-video, component video, and standard red-green-blue RCA video inputs to offer compatibility among standards such as the regular PAL and SECAM broadcasts, HDTV, Ultra HDTV, and Digital Video Broadcasts. The product can even double up as a monitor for a personal computer. Sound standards such as Dolby Digital, Dolby Surround or the SRS WOW are also a common feature along with multi-speaker setups to support high quality digital broadcasts in the near future. |
