Are You Going To Buy A Plasma or an LCD Flat Screen TV?

It seems that everyone either has or wants to get the latest Flat Screen TV for their home. Of the many and varied types of Flat Screen TV available (and there are) which one do you purchase? OK are you going to go with a Plasma TV (older technology, been around since 1964) or do you go with Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) for the Flat Screen TV?

Now available in all types (and colours), television sets have certainly changed over the years moving on from cathode ray to digital and now LCD TV sets that we assume to be the norm today. The television has now become one of the �must haves� in almost every household, certainly within the developed world.

Highly complicated yet when reduced to its basics quite frighteningly simple in execution the process of the television broadcast is one that very few people actually understand entirely or do they? The broadest definition of television (often abbreviated to TV) refers to it as a widely used telecommunications system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance.

As in most industries, along with technological development and innovation has arisen a large range of technical descriptions and phrases that if the truth be known confuses most people.

Rather than continue with a basic history of the industry, it might be best to stop and take a look at the latest developments within the industry mainly that of digital television, what digital television actually means, its formats, bandwidth and the technical terminology and jargon used today.

So an accurate definition of Digital TV is what?

Quite often confusion reigns here as to what exactly we are talking about and the use of terms can be misleading such as TFT, LCD and Plasma etc, all used and are similar but not the same.

The two main types of Flat Screen TV or screens available today are either Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) or Plasma.The main difference between the two (apart from base technologies) are that with LCD TV�s the main technology used is TFT (Thin Film Transistor) which means that by and large you can make the screens smaller and more energy efficient.

Digital television is much more flexible and efficient than conventional analogue television and digital signals provide a much clearer picture, much better sound quality and a far greater choice and availability of programming.

So what do all of the terms surrounding Digital TV mean? Let us look at this whilst analysing one of the newer LCD TV�s available.

The LCD TV that we shall use for our illustrative purposes here is the B&O Beovision 8.

Now the key items of information that we need to be familiar with are as follows.

Firstly we have to understand the phrase Screen Resolution and all of that implies. Here we refer to the exact number of pixels that can be displayed in each dimension.

Next up is whether the TV is Hi-Definition Ready and what does this mean? By Hi Definition Ready we mean that is the TV is ready and suitable to take advantage of the latest Hi Definition TV pictures that more and more programmes are being broadcast in.

We would need to look next at what types of connectors are used to connect the various peripherals that go to make the entire Digital Package work.

We are referring here to the exact nature and number of the Scarts Sockets and Plugs in use. Here the definition of SCART refers to �Syndicat francais des Constructeurs d�Appareils Radio et Television (SCART).

The final item we would look at would be what is the nature and number of the High-Definition Multimedia Interfaces (HDMI) being used. The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a licensable audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams between digital audio/video sources such as set-top box, HD DVD Player etc.

The Beovision 8 is a 26in LCD TV and the prices for these are around 1800 pounds sterling or 2900 US dollars. The screen resolution is 1366 X 768 and with regards to being HD Ready the answer is yes. The Beovision has 2 (2 RGB) scarts and the type and number of Multimedia interfaces the Beovision 8 uses is HDMI and 1. The type of Tuner for this TV is Analogue and the Beovision is available from specialised outlets only.

So how would we rate the B&O Beovision 8?

The most obvious place to start with as far as TV's are concerned would be the picture quality and our score here would be 8, and closely tied in to the picture quality is the sound quality and our score for this would be 8. Another useful aspect to review is the availability and number of relevant connections and our score here would be 6. As far as overall features are concerned we would give it 6 and the final individual verdicts would relate to the ease of use and overall value for money and our scores here would be, 4 and 6 respectively.

Finally our overall opinion would be this is definitely one to consider if you don't mind paying a huge premium for the appearance and looks

With regards to the prices in this article we have tried in all cases to take an average across the industry from a number of well known web sites and so we ask you to bear this in mind and treat these prices as advisory only rather than absolutes.

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