LCD Vs HDTV - Is There a Difference?

Well, there is a big difference. In fact it is difficult to compare two so different things. They are all related to television picture but mean different things. Years ago there was mainly only one television "definition" or television picture resolution (actually there were few of them but pretty similar) which was in technical circles known as standard definition (SD). The only available type of displaying TV picture was Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) display. The things were pretty simple despite the fact that there were few color TV standards (PAL in Europe and in many other countries, NTSC in USA and Japan, SECAM in Russia and France). In last years all TV sets were capable of displaying all TV standards used around the world.

With the introduction of the digital TV broadcasting television has changed significantly. There are now many different services that were not possible with analog broadcasting. HDTV is one of them. HDTV means High Definition TeleVision. High definition means picture with more lines and more pixels (points) in a line. The good old SD television picture uses between 525 to 625 lines depending on the system used. This system was good enough and survived for decades. The only improvement was addition of colors in late 1950s (or early 1960s in Europe). Two facts contributed to this pretty long life of the old standard definition TV. The first one is than there was no easy way to add features or to modify basic picture or transmission parameters. The second one was that the picture was pretty good (less true for NTSC used in USA and more true for PAL used in Europe). With the introduction of digital broadcasting one of the first major improvements was the introduction of HDTV. It means a picture with more lines. HDTV picture brings more sharpness and more details.

LCD on the other hand is a technology to display TV or computer picture. There are currently two technologies to display HDTV picture: plasma and LCD. Each has some advantages and disadvantages. You should not be concerned by technical details that mean nothing to you. If you are choosing a new TV set then simply take a look at the picture. Compare different models, features and prices. Usually larger TV sets use plasma technology while smaller ones are using LCD displays.

Now you know that LCD is one of the technologies to make panels that can display HDTV picture. LCD panels are used not just for TV sets but also for computer monitors and smaller displays in embedded systems.

It is also possible to watch TV on a computer LCD monitor or to use plasma or LCD TV set as a computer display. You can find more about the LCD technology at the http://computerlcdmonitors.org/ website.