LED TV Glossary

The meaning of this glossary is to explain to you most of the terms that you can find in product descriptions of LED TV’s. Some terms in this list are belong only to specific brands.

LED Backlit

This is when an LCD television uses LED backlighting. By using LED backlighting the panels are alot thinner, the displays come with better contrast levels and are brighter then the original LCD screens.Thanks to the use of LED the power consumption is decreased and the heat dissipation is much better.

Edge-lit LED

Edge-lit LED means that the LED lights are positioned around the edge of the screen. The LED light is then spread out across the back from the sides.

HD Ready & FULL HD

HD means High Definition. Thanks to new technologies these HD tv’s have a higher resolution and faster refresh rate. HD ready televisions have a minumum screen resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. Full HD televisions have an even higher resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. Both types of tv have digital inputs, called HDMI or DVI.

1080p

Television with 1080p have the highest possible screen resolution. The p means ‘progressive scan‘, which means that all 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution are fully used. Most LED TV’s if not all have this feature.

Native Display Resolution

Native resolution is the highest resolution of the monitor and is the resolution the display should run on.

Contrast Ratio

The contrast ratio is measured by looking at the difference in brightness on the screen. Manufacturers will measure from the darkest to the brightest portion on the screen. Once measured they will use the highest contrast ratio they can find which varies throughout the screen. Manufacturers like to show you big numbers when it comes to the dynamic contrast ratio so make sure you check the normal contrast ratio as well.

Refresh rate

This basically means the number of times per second a display refreshes an image. This is expressed in Hz (hertz). The higher this number is, the better.

Ambient Lighting / Light Sensor / Autoview / Intelligent Sensor

When led tv’s have this feature it automatically adjusts the color and brightness to ambient light. Each manufacturer seem to give it their own name.

SRS Audio

SRS stands for Sound Retrieval System, this is a 3D audio processing technology and is built in many televisions.

HDMI

HDMI stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. This is a connector for audio and video signals in uncompressed digital form. Whereas previous signals where anolog.
With HDMI you can connect digital audio/video sources such as dvd players, PC’s, game consoles and camcorders to digital audio devices like digital tv’s, computers display’s and video projectors.

Ethernet

Ethernet is a network protocol with which computers can communicate in a LAN (Local Area Network). Some tv’s provide internet services to which you can connect by using the ethernet connection.

Wi-Fi

Some tv’s have built-in Wi-Fi so you can access your wireless network to use the services provided by the manufacturer of the tv. Such services can include Facebook, Flickr, Pandora, Twitter, YouTube and more.

Optical Digital Audio Output

It’s a way of transmitting digital signals between components in audio equipment.

RGB

RGB stands for Red, Green & Blue. With these colors the whole colorspectrum can be produced.

SPDIF Digital Optical Output

This is a digital audio interconnect and is used in consumer audio equipment.
To transmit the signal, either a coaxial cable with RCA connectors is used or a fiber optic cable with Toslink connectors.

Response Time

LCD monitors consists of pixels, the time it takes pixels to go from one value to another and back again is measured in milliseconds (ms).  The lower number, the better (faster).

Motionflow

Motionflow in Sony televisions creates smoother images by inserting new frames between standard frames. It reduces motionblur, improves picture quality and picture clarity in fast moving scenes. Great during sports and gaming.

24p True Cinema

Sony 24p True Cinema allows you to watch films the way the director intended it for the big screen. When films are shown on tv it has to be adjusted and plays back faster than the films do in the cinema. The reason for this is that they are shot at 24 frames per second, the standard television uses 25 fps.

Analog Audio Input

Is used to connect your stereo to the television.

ATSC Tuner

ATSC stands for Advanced Television Systems Committee, which is for the reception of over the air ATSC digital television signals. These types of signals are broadcast in the United States.

NTSC Tuner

NTSC stands for National Television System Committee, this is for the reception of NTSC signals. It’s used in most of North America and South America. Most over the air NTSC transmissions are now replaced with digital NTSC in the US.

QAM Tuner

QAM stands for quadrature amplitude modulation, digital cable channels are encoded by this format and transmitted via the cable television providers.

ClearFrame 240

ClearFrame 240 comes from Toshiba, 240 is the frame rate which makes for a smooth blur free picture. Besides ClearFrame 240 there is also ClearFrame 120 (120 frames per second).

TruMotion 120Hz

TrueMotion 120Hz comes from LG, TrueMotion 120Hz technology sharpens/smoothens fast moving objects. As you can see, most brands have this kind of technology that all do the same thing.