What is LED LCD TV? What are its advantages?

LED LCD TVs are out of favor due to high prices

When the battle between plasma (PDP) and liquid crystal (LCD) in the flat panel market gradually faded away and each of them stopped, a new type of TV using LED backlight technology began to enter people's sight and was regarded by the industry as the mainstream of the future flat panel market. However, this high-end LED LCD TV promoted by major manufacturers did not seem to be as good as expected, and the high price became a barrier for consumers.

Joint venture brands want to expand their leading edge through LED

In December last year, faced with the low-price storm launched by domestic brands, joint venture brands did not follow up. Samsung, Sony and Sharp, which control upstream panel resources, all stated that they would switch to the high-priced LED LCD TV market.

What is LED? For example, the opening scroll at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games last year and the "Olympic Five Rings" rising slowly in the air are all masterpieces of LED. It is understood that LED is the abbreviation of Light Emitting Diode. LED applications can be divided into two categories: one is LED single tube application, including backlight LED, infrared LED, etc.; the other is LED display screen.

Recently, the reporter visited the home appliance stores in the city and learned that most of the current LCD TVs use traditional LCD display screens. Since the LCD panel itself does not emit light, it is necessary to add a CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent) backlight behind the panel to provide the brightness required for imaging. The LED LCD screen replaces the traditional LCD backlight with LED light-emitting diodes. Compared with traditional LCD TVs, LED LCD TVs have been comprehensively improved in terms of picture performance, environmental protection and energy saving, ultra-thin appearance, entertainment functions, color performance, etc. Therefore, they have been generally regarded as the upgraded products of LCD TVs in the international market in the future.

In order to avoid ruining their long-established high-end brand image, in December last year, faced with the price war launched by domestic brands, joint venture brands vigorously developed and promoted LED LCD TVs, hoping to further expand their technological advantages and continue to implement the profit-based strategy. Subsequently, domestic brands such as Hisense, Konka, and Skyworth also began to get involved in this field and launched their own LED TVs.

Excessive costs lead to high prices

However, this high-end LED LCD TV that is strongly promoted by major manufacturers does not seem to be as popular as imagined. Recently, the reporter visited the home appliance stores in the city and found that there are only a handful of LED LCD TVs. In addition to Hisense and Konka, which have organic samples, joint venture brands such as Samsung, Sony, Sharp, and Toshiba need to be pre-ordered because of their high prices.

"The current LCD TV market is still dominated by LCD." Jiangmen Suning's sales staff told reporters that compared with the average price of traditional LCD TVs, which has fallen by 1/3 in one year, the high price of LED LCD TVs is prohibitive. It is understood that the price of ordinary 42-inch LCD TVs has dropped to 5,999 yuan, and there are abundant products with high selection, while the price of domestic LED LCD TVs of the same size is 12,999 yuan, which is twice the price of the former, and the price gap of joint venture brands is even greater. For example, Sony's 55-inch LED TV is priced at 50,999 yuan, while the price of domestic ordinary LCD TVs of the same size has dropped to 9,999 yuan, which is more than 5 times the price of the latter. Even for the same technology, the price difference is huge, so the price has become a "stumbling block" to the popularization of LED LCD TVs.

Industry insiders told reporters that high cost is the main reason for the high price of LED LCD TVs. The larger the size and the better the picture quality, the more LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are needed, and the higher the cost of using LED backlight technology. At the same time, as an emerging display technology, LED backlight technology is not yet particularly mature. For example, due to the dense arrangement of LED dots, the problem of heat dissipation is difficult to solve, which will affect the use time of the LED diodes that are known to have a long life. Therefore, continuous technical improvement is still needed, so the R&D costs invested by manufacturers are also quite large. "In addition, there is a transformation cost. The production lines of the current mainstream first-line LCD manufacturers are all LCD modules. If the transformation is too fast, these existing production lines will be idle before the cost is recovered, which will cause huge waste." The person added. Many merchants said that in addition to price factors, consumers' lack of awareness of LED backlight LCD TVs is also one of the reasons affecting the popularity of LED TVs.

However, the industry is generally optimistic about the future development prospects of LED TVs, believing that any new product needs to go through a period of market cultivation. With the continuous improvement of LED backlight technology and large-scale commercial production, in the next few years, LED LCD TVs will be popularized from flagship products to high-end products and even mainstream product models, and become the market leader. (Text/Photo by our reporter Deng Rong)

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LCD TVs use electric current to change the molecular arrangement state. Applying different voltages to the liquid crystal can control the amount of light passing through, thereby displaying a variety of images. However, the liquid crystal itself does not emit light, so a backlight is required. Traditional LCD TVs use CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamp) as the backlight source. The light-emitting principle of CCFL is very similar to that of common fluorescent tubes, but the service life of CCFL is only about 50,000 hours. As the use time increases, the light emitted will become dim and yellow. In addition, the biggest defect of CCFL lies in its spectral characteristics. The white light emitted by the backlight source must finally pass through the RGB color filter film before it can form an image. Therefore, the wavelength of the three primary colors of R/G/B in the white light emitted by the backlight source (that is, the purity of the three primary colors) will directly affect the final color effect of the TV. In fact, the white light emitted by CCFL is not very ideal. At present, most LCD TVs on the market can only reach 60%-78% of the standard NTSC color gamut standard.

LED LCD TV uses LED (light-emitting diode) as the backlight module. According to the different luminous colors, LED can be divided into white light LED backlight and RGB-LED backlight. The advantage of white light LED technology is mainly reflected in power consumption, which is widely used in mobile devices with high power consumption requirements; RGB-LED backlight has a wide color gamut and is mainly used in high-end LCD monitors and LCD TVs. Compared with CCFL backlight technology, LED backlight technology has the characteristics of long life, wide color gamut, environmental protection, and low power consumption. The life of LED generally reaches about 100,000 hours, which is twice that of CCFL LCD TV. LED backlight does not contain mercury, which is more in line with current environmental protection needs. The light emitted by LED is very pure and has a wider color gamut, which can reach 105% of the NTSC color gamut, providing a guarantee for the color performance of LCD TVs. In addition, LED is very small in size, which is very suitable for the production of ultra-thin LCD TVs.