For the most decades since the television has been invented it has been changed so greatly no one could ever imagine in the begining: we have LCD television, LED television, plasma television and OLED television, we have from edge-tit to full array televisions, from 120 Hz to 600 Hz, from 2D to 3D televisions.
For many many yea rs people needed tv sets for only one purpose: to get what the mass-media was broadcasting. You already know all about that: news, shows, movies and so on. For now... the first thing you must consider when buying a television is its purpose. What are you going to do with it? Are you only watching the news and movies and all kind of entertaiment shows? Or are you going to use it for doing something else? Something like using it as a computer monitor or playing Nintendo WII or any other type of game consoles? Or do you want to browse the Internet using your TV?
The second thing to consider is the size of the screen: it's not the same thing when you are buying a small LCD television for your bedroom, a huge plasma or projection TV to put on the bed of your living room or a TV to use instead a PC monitor.
The minimal distance between you and the screen is also important: it varies from 1 m (3-4 feet) to 3 meters (8-10 feet) or even more. Staying too close or too far away from your television can damage your eyes, especially when you are stareing at it all day.
When buying a television there are a few technical details you should consider in order to have a quality picture:
- darknes of picture tube or screen surface - the darker the screen is, the better the television is producing high-contrast picture. You can verify this when the television is turned off.
- screen flatness - projection, plasma and LCD televisions are already flat, but if you are buying a CRT set verify how flat is the screen.The flatter the tube is the less glare you will get from windows and lamps, and you get less shape distortion of objects displayed on the screen.
- comb filters - this is important for the large screen televisions. A TV without a comb filter will displat dot crawls along edges of objects in the picture. When the screen is small it's not noticeable, but on large screens it becomes distracting.
- scalling - this is the process where a television set (and, also, the DVD players) tries to eliminate the defects in a standard resolution image to make it look better on an HDTV. Usually, as the screen size gets larger the quality of the standard definition image is going down... so look at how well the TV deals with both high definition and standard defintion content.
When you are buying a television check the audio/video inputs, especially when you want to connect it to some other devices you have. The TV should have RCA-composite, S-Video and component video inputs, HDMI inputs for attachment of HD-Cable and satellite boxex, game systems and Blue-Ray disc players.
Make sure that the remote control is easy for you to use. If you need to control several television sets with the same remote and they don't have matching remote controls make sure that what you have it's a universal remote control and it's compatibile with the other components you have at home.
Finally, the size of your vehicle is also important: when you are buying a large screen television and you find out it's too big to fit in your car and to carry it home you are busted. You'll have to find hire some help.
