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Hack&Lube · 08-22-2010, 02:40 PM

I would recommend a plasma personally.

As others have said, an LED is simply an LCD where instead of a CCFL backlight (a florescent tube like the kind that lights an old bathroom or kitchen), they use an array of LEDs behind the screen to light it up. The LCD portion is actually just the pixels in the screen which change color but you still need something to light it from behind.

There are two kinds. The first is edge lit LED which isn't any much better than the CCFL backlights as there are generally just one or more bars of LEDs that light up the screen. Because of this, you cannot get decent black levels as there is always a washed out shimmering grey appearance to blacks on the screen.

LED array backlighting however, is able to dim certain LEDs through local dimming in a general area of the screen to help improve black levels on dark areas of the screen.

I would still get a plasma if you are shopping over 40"

Plasmas have 68 billion colors versus 16.7 million colors on an LCD (interpolated).
Plasmas have generally higher contrast ratios
Plasmas have superior viewing angles
Plasmas generally have superior response time and therefore less lag and ghosting and motion blur

08-22-2010, 02:40 PM	#10
Hack&Lube Atomic Nerd Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Calgary Exp:	I would recommend a plasma personally. As others have said, an LED is simply an LCD where instead of a CCFL backlight (a florescent tube like the kind that lights an old bathroom or kitchen), they use an array of LEDs behind the screen to light it up. The LCD portion is actually just the pixels in the screen which change color but you still need something to light it from behind. There are two kinds. The first is edge lit LED which isn't any much better than the CCFL backlights as there are generally just one or more bars of LEDs that light up the screen. Because of this, you cannot get decent black levels as there is always a washed out shimmering grey appearance to blacks on the screen. LED array backlighting however, is able to dim certain LEDs through local dimming in a general area of the screen to help improve black levels on dark areas of the screen. I would still get a plasma if you are shopping over 40" Plasmas have 68 billion colors versus 16.7 million colors on an LCD (interpolated). Plasmas have generally higher contrast ratios Plasmas have superior viewing angles Plasmas generally have superior response time and therefore less lag and ghosting and motion blur Last edited by Hack&Lube; 08-22-2010 at 02:45 PM.