LG 50 PC1D TV reviews and prices: 50" HD Ready Plasma screen

Most small flatscreen TVs have LCD screens. Some larger TVs have plasma screens. Some very new TVs have LED screens. Traditional TVs are called Standard or CRT.

‘HD Ready’ is a Europe-wide standard designed to made HD technology less confusing. HD Ready TVs must have
• Minimum resolution of 720 horizontal lines (in widescreen format)
• Ability to display 720p and 1080i formats
• An HDMI or Digital Video Interface (DVI interface)
Full HD is a higher standard. Full HD TVs have screen resolutions of 1080p and can output at least 24 frames per second.
Full HD is becoming common, but you won’t see Full HD on normal TV channels for a long time, so it remains optional for many people.

Freeview is free digital terrestrial TV. FreeSat is a free digital satellite TV service, which gives you HD programming from people like the BBC without having to pay for a subscription to a service like Sky. You need a dish to receive Freesat but not Freeview.

For more information see the Freeview site or the Freesat site.

FreeSat is a free digital satellite TV service. The main benefit is that you can get HD programming from people like the BBC without having to pay for a subscription to a service like Sky.

You’ll need a dish to recieve the signals though.

Scart sockets are places where you can connect other devices to your TV. If you already have a DVD player, a VCR and a Playstation you might want to make sure your new TV has enough Scart interfaces so you don’t have to keep crawling round the back of the TV.

A TV’s frequency is how often the picture is updated per second, and is measured in Hertz (Hz). A higher frequency, such as 100 Hz, means that a TV is more likely to show fast-moving images with high detail.

This figure is designed to tell you how much difference there is between dark and light colours on the TV. It is quoted as a ratio, between the brightest white and the darkest black. 500:1 means the brightest white is 500 times more bright than the darkest black. Plasma screens have historically boasted better contrast ratios than LCD screens.

Brighter TVs, such as LCDs, tend to provide a better experience in lighter rooms, whereas TVs with a lower brightness, such as many plasma TVs, are often better suited to darker rooms.

TVs with this feature have an on-screen guide to all the programmes that are currently showing or coming up, so you can find your way around all the extra digital channels easily.