Innovative Technology

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of electronics stores advertising their inventory of “LED TVs.” As someone who knows a little (not a lot mind you, but a little) about LEDs, this confused me. I mean, I know LEDs can do a lot, but can they actually make up the technological bulk of an entire television, enough to warrent the product being named for them? Apparently, other people have been asking this question too, wondering: “what exactly is an LED TV, and what do the LEDs in that TV do?” The answer is fairly straightforward. An LED TV is an LCD or plasma television that uses LEDs to back light the display. Traditional models of LCD screens used florescent tubes to light the screen, which could not achieve the deeper tones of black necessary to create a sharp image. For that reason, a lot of consumers were disappointed with the clarity of their LCD screens. And besides achieving blacker blacks, and therefore, more clarity, screens lit with LEDs also use less power than plasma TVs or LCD TVs lit with florescent tubes. According to a NY Times article about the subject, there are two ways to use LEDs to light a TV screen: “…either by placing LEDs across the entire back of the display, or by placing LEDs just around the perimeter, which is called an “edge lit” display.” There are pros and cons to both methods, though typically edge-lit TVs are less expensive and super-thin, while back-lit TVs can create deeper blacks through a technique called “local dimming.”  Either way, it looks like LEDs are once again leading the way by creating better, more efficient products. The same NY Times article said it best: “After all, “LED” is the acronym du jour, a technology that’s all the rage as a new, perhaps revolutionary lighting source. It’s as emotive a term as “HDTV” and “digital” were in their heydays.” And, in case you were wondering, a TV made entirely of LED lights IS in fact possible, with one LED light per pixel on a 2-million pixel LCD screen. Check out the Wallgreens LED Sign in Times Square!