According to Samsung, its “LED TV” is “a whole new species of television”. Well, sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but it isn’t really a LED TV and it really isn’t a whole new species of television. Samsung’s LED TV is really a LCD TV. To be more specific, it is a LCD TV with a LED edge-lit backlight that allows for thinner designs. Is this a whole new species? Hardly. Notebooks have had edge-lit LED backlights for a while now. The challenge was to control the light coming out of a row of edge-lit LEDs and spread it across a large LCD. That rather old-ish technology is now being incorporated into LCD TVs. So, no, it’s not a new species let alone a new technology. I’m afraid Samsung is confusing the consumer and getting dangerously close to false advertising. If you look at its website for televisions, “LED TV” is a separate category along with LCD TV and Plasma TV leading viewers to believe that it is not a LCD TV. Not good.
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JIN, I agree with you. I was recently looking on Samsung’s website and saw the “LED TV” category. I knew that they probably meant LCD TVs with LED backlighting but I thought their intention was to deceive the consumer into believing that this was a newer/better technology.
If you are curious, look at the Vizio VF551XVT which I have seen (demo) and seems to be almost exactly the same as the Samsung. 80 zones of 12 LEDs each with local dimming, 240hz, etc. MSRP $2199 vs Samsung $3999. They just call it an HDTV set with TruLED, which is just what it is. In fact the sets with LED direct backlights use white LEDs, which work well to improve overall gray scale contrast, but I’ve seen a few show demos (Chi Mei had a great one) that use RGB modules instead of white. So not only do you get the gray scale contrast improvement, but the color intensity was unbelieveable. Uses way to many LEDs to be cost effective o practical at this point, but give it some time and it will be the ‘new LED TV’ I’m sure.
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