The TV trade is second to none in the case of deceptive, obscure, hyperbolic, and ineffective terminology and specs. Manufacturers attempt to baffle you with bull… Err, bedazzle you with numbers and fancy names. Case in level: it’s an trade that may preserve a straight face whereas telling you that 3840 horizontal pixels equals 4K horizontal pixels (4K equals 4096, however who’s counting?)
Don’t fear, we’re right here to assist with no-hype, no-frills, plain-language (or as shut as we will get) definitions of the phrases and specs you’ll encounter if you buy groceries in your new TV. We’ll additionally current some primary recommendation that can have you ever education your native big-box retailer professional very quickly.
Rather than current the whole lot in alphabetical order in a single lengthy doc, forcing you to resort to Ctrl-F to seek out what you’re in search of, we’ve organized the phrases into 4 linked segments. You can use the table-of-contents instrument on the prime of every web page to leap backwards and forwards.
Sony’s 900F is very like its mannequin 900E. Processing is improved, however the primary expertise and flaws stay the identical.
Before we dive into our definitions, clarifications, and truth-telling, right here’s a key piece of recommendation: Trust what you see. Display the proper materials on the TVs you’re contemplating shopping for, and your eyes will let you know the distinction. No vendor ever put a demo on its TV that will reveal a shortcoming, however you need to use the YouTube app that’s current on practically each TV to seek for “TV testing video.” These can reveal picture-quality points the producer’s cherry-picked demos received’t.
Since there’s no assure the TV on the showroom flooring might be linked to the web, you would possibly need to discover these demos along with your pc, first and obtain them to a USB thumb drive and play them practically all TVs will play recordsdata from mass storage.
Terms describing the dimensions, pace, and determination of shows are created and thrown about in such an advert hoc trend that it may be formidable to steer by means of the mess. That’s a terrific place to start out, so permit us to make clear issues for you on this first installment.
Screen sizes
32-inch, 42-inch, 55-inch, and so forth: The diagonal measurement of a TV show, i.e., the space from the higher left nook of the lively a part of the show to the decrease proper.
Inch class: A rounding time period used for advertising functions. For occasion, when a show measures 42.5 inches, it’s marketed as 43-inch class (distributors invariably spherical up). Read the specs for the precise dimension.
LGSince when does 3,840 equal 4K? When the patron electronics trade decides it’s expedient for the needs of promoting and promoting.
Resolution
For the needs of this glossary, decision is the variety of horizontal rows and vertical columns of pixels on a flat-panel show. Modern TV show resolutions embody 1280×720 (HD), 1920×1080 (Full HD), 3840×2160 (4K UHD), and 7680×4320 (8K UHD).
More particularly:
720p/720i: Resolution of 1280×720 pixels. This can be generally known as HD, Standard HD, or SHD. The “p” stands for progressive scanning (every row of pixels is drawn sequentially), and the “i” for interlaced scanning (odd-numbered rows of pixels are drawn first, after which the even-numbered rows are drawn).
1080p/i: Resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. Also referred to as Full HD or FHD. The “p” stands for progressive scanning, and the “i” for interlaced (defined above).
2160p: Resolution of 3840×2160 pixels. Also referred to as 4K UHD (Ultra High Definition). The “p” stands for progressive scanning (defined above). There are not any interlaced 4K UHD shows.
4320p: Resolution of 7680×4320 pixels. Also referred to as 8K UHD. Once once more, the “p” stands for progressive scanning. There are not any interlaced 8K UHD TVs.
SamsungThe Q900’s picture is the very best Samsung has produced up to now. The 8K is fantastic, and the 4K UHD renderings are higher to our eyes than on a local 4K show.
QHD (Quad HD): A tweener decision of 2560×1440 pixels (1440p), which has a 16:9 side ratio and is 4 instances 720/Standard HD. It’s unlikely you’ll see this in TVs, but it surely’s widespread in pc shows. It’s generally known as WQHD, although we’ve additionally seen 21:9, 3440×1440 known as WQHD which can additionally known as UWQHD, or Ultra Wide Quad HD. Yes, there are fully too many show decision acronyms; even specialists can get confused.
SUHD: This shouldn’t be a decision, however Samsung’s advertising terminology for its 4K UHD TVs that make the most of color-enhancing quantum-dot expertise and another superior tweaking options.
Ultra HD (UHD): You’ll see this appended to each 4K (3840×2160 pixels) and 8K (7680×4320 pixels) TVs. You would possibly see 8K TVs described as Full UHD.
Terms related to decision
Aspect ratio: The variety of horizontal pixels (or rows) for each vertical pixel (or column). This is mostly described as an entire quantity ratio (16:9 for 1920×1080, 16:10 for 1920×1200, and so forth), but it surely will also be expressed in decimal kind as as 1.77 (16:9) or 1.6 (16:10). Nearly all trendy TVs have a facet ratio of 16:9, which is the usual utilized by practically each kind of media content material, together with DVD and Blu-ray.
ThinkstockNearly all trendy TVs have side ratios of 16:9, the extra sq. 4:3 side ratio having fallen out of favor.
Interlaced (i): Short for interlaced scanning; i.e., refreshing the even-numbered rows of pixels in a single cycle, after which refreshing the odd-numbered rows within the subsequent cycle. As it take two cycles to refresh all the show, a acknowledged refresh price of 60Hz would possibly successfully be solely 30Hz. Interlaced shows are largely extinct aside from the second-hand market.
Progressive (p): Short for progressive scanning, which suggests all the rows of pixels are refreshed in sequence each cycle. Here once more, cycles are acknowledged as refresh charges: 60Hz, 120Hz, and so forth.
Speed
Refresh price, scanning price, or vertical frequency: The variety of instances per second a show is redrawn. 60Hz means 60 instances (cycles) per second, 120Hz means 120 instances per second. That’s as quick as they go in client TVs (there are some 144Hz pc screens, however that’s past the scope of this text.
Faux charges employed in advertising, similar to Effective Frame Rate, Motion Rate, et al, are indicative, however fuzzy numbers that will also be deceptive. Higher fake charges are usually higher, however they consider strategies (e.g., body insertion and strobing the backlight) used to reduce artifacts similar to judder (jerks within the video stream). Look for the true refresh price within the on-line specs. A show that may refresh at 120Hz, or 120 cycles refresh per second will ship a greater image than a 60Hz TV; in any other case, distributors wouldn’t hassle.
Response Time: This would extra precisely be known as refresh time, because it’s a measure of how lengthy it takes in your show to redraw itself. Good luck discovering response time listed in TV specs, however when you can’t see movement blur, it’s fast sufficient: Probably lower than 12 milliseconds for a 60Hz TV, lower than 8ms for a 120Hz TV, and hopefully sooner than that.
SamsungDon’t confuse Samsung’s Clear Motion Rate with an precise refresh price, it’s a advertising time period that comes with three elements of Samsung’s TVs.
AquoMotion, Clear Motion Rate, MotionStream, TruMotion, et al: These are the fake refresh charges described above. Most trendy TVs create interpolated frames (a mixture of one body and the following) and insert them in between the actual frames to scale back artifacts. This is feasible as a result of most video materials performs at 24fps or 30fps, whereas the TVs are redrawing both 60 or 120 instances per second. While interpolation makes for smoother-appearing motion scenes, it comes on the expense of sharpness and element as the method might be lower than 100-percent correct.
These phrases, which usually embody a quantity, are completely not true {hardware} refresh charges. As defined above, all TVs refresh at 60Hz or 120Hz, and both price is greater than sufficient to the duty of displaying 30fps video, however the extra cycles, the simpler the methods are.
FreeSync (AMD), Adaptive-sync (VESA), G-sync (Nvidia): These phrases describe the flexibility of a TV to change its refresh price to match the variety of frames arriving from a supply. This can get rid of artifacts similar to picture tearing when gaming, the place the variety of frames per second delivered by a GPU can fluctuate wildly. FreeSync relies on Adaptive-sync and is free; G-sync is proprietary to Nvidia.
Click to learn our subsequent phase: Display types and technologies.