(no subject)

[chhotii]

Today I was waiting for yoga class to start, so I went into the Best Buy downstairs from the gym and looked at televisions. Doesn't matter that Best Buy is evil-- I was just browsing! Really! I have no reason to be looking at new televisions. ;-)

It seems to me that if you're looking for a new television, you just about can't go wrong. Well, if you accept the idea that you're going to be spending a certain (large) amount of money. It did not look to me like there are any bad televisions. To an eye that grew up in the '70s, viewing those clunky old CRT televisions, all the new televisions are gorgeous. The picture quality these days is good-- too good perhaps. (Like, wow, even people on television have pores! Did I really need to know that?)

I don't understand the reputation LCD televisions have for having a poor viewing angle. All the LCDs I looked at were quite viewable even from quite an acute angle. I just don't get it.

I could see, though, that the color black in the picture is not quite black. It seems to me that the manufacturers missed an obvious and inexpensive measure to address this. My understanding of how the visual system works is that your eyes tag the darkest thing in your visual field-- if it is reasonably dark enough, and has no hue-- as "black". All colors are judged relative to each other. So, obviously, it seems to me, that if you have a television that can't do a really dark black, avoid having anything else in the area of the television that is actually black; then your eye has nothing else to tag as black except the so-called black in your television picture. Anything else in the area, for example-- such as the frame of the television itself. Guess the color of every single television frame on display. That's right, black! D'oh!

Comments

[marmota.livejournal.com]

A big 'gotcha' to watch out for with monitors/televisions these days is that they have a shorter lifetime than most people expect. Plasma TVs are rated for about two(!) years, and LCD for four. The failure mode is dimming over time, and pixels going unresponsive. It just takes one of those stuck on bright blue for example right in the middle to be really annoying. Granted, this assumes households where it is on constantly, but damn my parents still have and use a color crt tv with knobs and no remote that's easily old enough to vote, so I was a bit appalled to find this out.

edit: Googled a bit on it to see if this was currently the case and
found this, so it might not be all that bad anymore:

"Life-time: The rare gases used in plasma display panels have a life
and will fade over use. Earlier plasma TV sets had a quoted
half-lifetime of between 20,000hrs, following which the image
brightness will fall to half its original value. However, the latest
plasma displays can boost anything between 30,000 and 60,000 hours. On
the other hand, LCD displays have a guaranteed lifetime of between
50,000hrs and 60,000 hours. This degradation in image brightness takes
place gradually over time. Now, the average household in the US
replaces their TV set every 7 years. Taking a conservative figure of
30,000 hours for either technology, this corresponds to well over 6hrs
usage a day - every day - for over a period of 14 years! In other
words, both plasma and LCD displays are extremely stable and reliable
devices. This means that life-time should not be an issue with either
display technology. At the same time, keep in mind that there is no
way to re-generate the gases in a plasma display or to repair pixels
in an LCD display - the only option in such circumstances will be to
replace the display."

[skreeky]

Ask Rich to explain "video black" to you. (For added geekiness, ask him to explain the bottom row of boxes on NTSC color bars.) It has never been black, and will never be black until all CRTs, all NTSC signal, and all of its vestiges are dead, dead, dead.