Welcome to the HD LCD Televisions page, HD stands for high definition and states the ability for an LCD television to display high definition picture quality. HD LCD televisions are labeled with the HD Ready logo so it is easy to see if an LCD television has the HD functionality, if you are buying a new LCD television then it makes allot of sense to buy one that is HD ready. This is because soon all digital television, DVD's and console games will be made in high definition so you will need a high definition television to view this quality, it is well worth investing in HD as the quality is superb and much sharper and clearer than the current television transmissions.
The term high definition states that the television can produce high resolution imagery and also has the HDMI or DVI inputs so that the LCD television can receive perfect HD signals. HDMI is the best input as it carries video and audio and many HD LCD televisions have more than one HDMI sockets so that you can connect more than one piece of HD equipment. There are two main resolutions that HD sources such as Sky HD and high definition DVD players use and they are 720p and 1080i, the number states the number of horizontal lines used to make up the picture and the more lines it has the more detail the picture will have and therefore the better the quality will be. The letter tells you how the picture is sent to the television screen as some send all of the lines in one pass and some only send half of the lines in one pass but this is done so quickly that it is very hard to tell the difference. The televisions that send half of the lines in one pass are known as interlaced and that is that the 'i' stands for in 1080i and the ones that send all of the lines in one pass is known as progressive scanning and is where the 'p' comes from in 720p. So you can see that one resolution has a higher number of pixels but interlaced scanning (1080i) and one has a lower number of pixels but progressive scanning (720p) but in truth they are very similar, 1080i will look a little sharper but 720p can look smoother with fast moving images as it updates faster.
High definition programmes, films and games are usually made in a certain resolution such as 720p or 1080i and the HD LCD television will automatically switch to the resolution being used so there is usually no worry about the resolution and all HD ready LCD televisions can display both 720p and 1080i. There is also a 1080p resolution which is the best available as it has the higher resolution and the progressive scanning but this is rarely used, it is well worth looking for though if you are buying a new HD LCD television as in the future it will likely be used allot more.
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