42 LED TV

Thanks for visiting our 42 LED TV site. We’ll be featuring stories on every brand and model of 42 inch LED TV. Our first order of business should probably be to clear up some confusion regarding the technology. Some of the manufacturers have no doubt contributed to this confusion with somewhat agressive marketing.

What’s being referred to as an ‘LED TV’ should more accurately be called an ‘LED LCD TV’. Why? Well, conventional LCD televisions use a liquid crystal display (LCD) for their screen – and these LED TVs also use a liquid crystal display. The difference is in the source of light behind the screen.

The conventional LCD sets use fluorescent bulbs called CCFLs (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps). These are rather large and they preclude any fine adjustments in the color levels on the screen. Replacing the CCFLs with LED bulbs has a number of advantages.

First, if the LED bulbs are placed around the perimeter of the screen (called edge-lighting), it allows the TV to be made extremely thin. Some LED TVs are barely over an inch deep. One of these hung on the wall is extremely impressive. Almost like a painting, until you turn it on.

However, If the LED bulbs are instead arrayed across the back of the screen, the small LEDs allow much more localized control of light levels. This is referred to as ‘local dimming’, and it can allow the color levels, especially the blacks, to approach the quality of plasma televisions. The black levels on LCD sets have always greatly lagged behind those of plasma. While they’re still not quite at the same level, the playing field is now much more even.

Finally, the LED TVs are much more green (as in earth-friendly, not the color ). As you may know from seeing LEDs in flashlights, christmas tree bulbs and some consumer home lighting fixtures, they use much less energy than fluorescents. Some LED TVs use close to half as much power as comparable conventional LCD sets.

There are a few more environmental advantages. Since LED sets can be made much thinner, they use less raw materials and require less fossil fuel for transport, and LEDs eliminate the mercury found in fluorescent tubes.

So there are some real advantages to LED LCD TVs, and the 42 inch size is a great compromise between compactness to fit in tight spaces while still being large enough to impress viewers. At the time of this writing, there aren’t a lot of examples of the 42 LED TV commercially available, but we’ll cover all that we can find, and as the technology becomes more mainstream, I’m sure additional brands and models will become available.