Plasma or LCD For A Beginners Guide To The First Flat Screen TV?

It would appear that latest and most prestigious in house fashion accessory for the home is the Flat Screen TV. What sort of Flat Screen TV do you purchase? Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), Plasma, TFT what do you go with and purchase?

From its infancy and the first shadowy images broadcast in 1925, viewing television has evolved and certainly changed over the years to the amazing LCD TV sets that we now view today. Such is the all embracing (some say insidious) nature of TV that once with it, it is very difficult to do without it.

So having established where and when television arrived in our daily lives, just what exactly is TV and how does it achieve the things that it does do if that is not too technical a description (joke)? Since its inception as an electromechanical system of receiving and broadcasting information the term television has become broadly synonymous with both the unit required to receive and play the information and also the technique and medium for broadcasting the data in the first place.

Television has problems that are similar to most emerging and developing technologies in that one of the problems that most people have is a total misunderstanding of the majority of the jargon and terms in use.

Perhaps it would be best now to move on to the latest developments within the industry and concentrate our coverage upon digital television, what it actually means; formats, bandwidth and an explanation of the technical jargon and terminology used.

So an accurate definition of Digital TV is what?

Here quite often we see the terms TFT, LCD and Plasma being bandied around as if they are the same yet though they may be similar technologies LCD and Plasma Screens are very different in practicality.

In a nutshell Flat Screen TV�s can either be Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) sets or can be Plasma screen but the two are different.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.

How does Digital TV differ from an analogue one? Using one of the newer LCD TV�s available will help us actually go through what all of this terminology actually means.

The LCD TV that we shall use for our illustrative purposes here is the B&O Beovision 7-32?

It is essential that we are familiar with the following key items of information.

The Screen resolution of the TV is possibly the most obvious place to start. 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? Hi Definition TV essentially makes a TV picture in a quality format that is at least four times better than conventionally available at present.

The next item that we would need to look at is what types of connectors are used between the peripherals used alongside the main Digital TV?

In this case we mean SCART Plugs and sockets and their usage. SCART stands for �Syndicat francais des Constructeurs d�Appareils Radio et Television (SCART).

Lastly on the technical side we would need to look at what types and what numbers of High-Definition Multimedia Interfaces (HDMI) are 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 7-32 is a 32in LCD TV and the prices for these are around 6000 pounds sterling or 12000 US dollars. The screen resolution is 1366 X 768 and with regards to being HD Ready the answer is no. The Beovision has 3 (3 RGB) scarts and the type and number of Multimedia interfaces the Beovision 7-32 uses is DVI and 1. The type of Tuner for this TV is Analogue and the Beovision is available from specialised outlets only.

All these points being taken into consideration, how would we view the B&O Beovision 7-32?

Well to start with our score for the picture quality is 8, next we would look at the sound quality and our view of this would be 10. Taking a look at the number of relevant connections and their availability, our score would be 8. As far as overall features are concerned we would give it 6 and for ease of use and overall value for money we would give it, 8 and 6 respectively.

Finally our overall opinion would be this has all the hallmarks of being possibly the best of B&O's current offerings but this has to be balanced with the fact that the price tag which we feel is way over the mark for the performance of the TV makes this sadly one where we feel that is not ideal value for money.

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.

Stephen Morgan writes quite regularly on the Internet about TV and Home Entertainment issues and more on the above can be found at best flat screen tv and also at bestflatscreentv.biz

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