Difference Between LED and LCD TV

Difference Between LED and LCD TV

Television is probably one of the greatest inventions. Today television defines your lifestyle and media is a big industry. There is so much talk today about LED and LCD TV’s. They almost look alike. So what is the difference between them?

LED

Let us first examine what an LED is. LED is an abbreviation for Light-emitting diode.  In the early days LED was a used as a practical electronic component. Ever noticed the traffic lights, it uses LED blubs. The advancement of technology has been so phenomenal that these simple LED blubs have been advanced to be used in commercial products like remote controls, appliances and now in televisions as well. But can you own an LCD TV?

Myth Busted

Many people are being sold TV’s categorizing them to be LED televisions. LED is not a television but a backlighting system in new television technologies like the LCD or Liquid Crystal Display televisions.

Now that we have understood that LED is a technology used to aid television manufacturing, let us look at how LED works in an LCD.

A standard LCD TV uses CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) as the backlight. But using a CCFL proved disadvantageous because when it was used for longer hours, it heated up and thereby reduced the life of the television. It was found that LED was the best alternative backlight.

Classification

LED’s can be classified into two types:

RGB- LED backlight

The RGB-LED backlight is commonly used in LCD tv’s as it meets color requirements. There are two kinds of RGB-LED backlight arrangement:

Full Array:

In this arrangement there are several rows of LED’s place across the entire screen.

The advantage of using this arrangement is that you have more control over the brightness and darkness as each LED or a group of LED’s can be switched ON and OFF.

Edge Lighting:

In this arrangement the LED is place around the outer edges of the screen.

The advantage of using this arrangement is that the television is thinner than a Full array arrangement. But you will not get the full, deep black effect as the sides of the screen will be brighter that the center.

White LED backlight

This backlight is similar to CCFL and produce white light. The Samsung UA40B710 uses this backlight.