LCD television is becoming a viable alternative to the standard CRT television set and also competes with plasma TV to find a niche in television market. As LCD technology is advancing on faster pace in recent years, LCD television sets continue to come with larger screen sizes while prices are dropping down to a level that many customers are tempted to replace their older sets with modern, sleek and stylish LCD TVs.

However, before you shop around for the best LCD flat panel television, bear in mind that there are lot many choices available in the market so it can be rather confusing when it comes to deciding on which LCD model can best suit your needs.

The rule of thumb is to look for the key features that you would like your LCD TV should have and see for yourself how it performs in these areas. Our LCD TV buying tips will provide all the facts that you need to make an informed decision

LCD television sets are so thin and much lighter, and also take much less space, so you can either install them using table or wall mounts. However, viewing distance should be considered first before you use any of these options. If you plan to buy LCD TV with 40” screen, make sure that the room provides at least a distance of 8 feet between the screen and the viewer. For larger LCD TV screens of 50” +, it requires a viewing distance between 12 and 16 feet.

If you want to use wall mount, make sure that it suits the dimensions of the wall and also there is enough ventilation and the connections are proper so it is not a bad idea if you do it with some professional help.

Native Resolution

Resolution refers to how many pixels are on the screen. Most LCD TVs come with screen/native resolution of at least 1280 x 720 pixels and some of them offer higher resolutions like 1280×768 pixels, or 1366×768 pixels. The highest possible resolution is 1920 x 1080 pixels, which is ideal for larger screens and HDTV and available for much higher price tags.

Higher resolutions offer more picture details and picture looks smoother and crisp clear but a lot more depends on the video sources you are likely to use and they should match the capacities of such high end models.

Brightness levels

Although LCD Televisions look decently bright in most light conditions, make sure that your TV has a brightness level of 550 cd/m2 or more. As LCD screens do not glare off in ambient conditions, this brightness level should be sufficiently enough for most viewers to get better picture from any distance.

Contrast ratio

Contrast ratio indicates the capacity of your LCD to show variations in the white and black shades on the screen. High contrast ratios produce deep black levels and better colour reproduction so the images look much better.

There is a lot of confusion arising from the two types contrast ratios – standard and dynamic contrast ratios and you can find both when you inspect the technical details. Make sure that your LCD TV has a standard contrast ratio of 1500:1 or more.

Response Time

Also known as motion response time or screen refresh rate, this is an important feature you should consider. Some of the older LCD televisions did not have faster motion response time resulting in blurring of images while showing fast action sequence. However, the latest LCD TV sets come with better response time like 12ms (milliseconds) or 8 ms which have quite fixed up this problem.

For optimum performance, LCD TV with response time of 8 ms is the best option and it does not blur when showing sports or action movies.

Viewing Angle

LCD TV should have wider viewing angles and this helps you to watch it from the sides, but the picture quality should remain intact. In the past, LCD TV had a drawback of narrow viewing angles with colours and brightness getting faded when viewed from the wide angles. However, newer LCD screens come with improved viewing angles of 1600 +, so you can sit as far as 800 from the central axis of the screen.

Video processing

More depends on how your LCD TV processes the signal input that it receives from video sources. So, it is an important feature to consider, as its way it digitizes the video information will affect the picture quality and the performance. Good video processing unit in a LCD TV does upscaling and downscaling of video signals to fit them to the native resolution of the LCD screen much more efficiently and enhances over-all picture quality.

Sony uses its Bravia Engine Ex and Live Colour Creation Technologies to reproduce life-like picture.

(Tip: Just verify the picture quality on the screen using various input devices like DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray.)

Other features and Connections

Picture-in-Picture (PIP)

Most LCD TVs come with NTSC tuners to connect to get standard video signals while some models feature additional features like picture-in-picture (PIP). PIP feature enable the LCD screen to show more than a channel with the second image displayed in the corner of the screen.

A good home theater system requires LCD TV to provide optimum theatrical experience

High-end LCD TVs provide 3 HDMI inputs – 2 on rear and 1 on side

If you want to watch high-definition videos or HDTV broadcast, make sure that your LCD TV has HDMI socket or at least a component input. As newer LCD models should have these HDTV tuners, it is important to check out for this feature in your LCD TV

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