Liquid-crystal display televisions (LCD TV) are television sets that use LCD technology to

produce images. LCD televisions are thinner and lighter than CRTs of similar display size, and
are available in much larger sizes. This combination of features made LCDs more practical than
CRTs for many roles, and as manufacturing costs fell,their eventual dominance of the television
market was all but guaranteed.

In 2007, LCD televisions surpassed sales of CRT-based televisions worldwide for the first time,
and their sales figures relative to other technologies are accelerating. LCD TVs are quickly
displacing the only major competitors in the large-screen market, the plasma display panel and
rear-projection television. LCDs are, by far, the most widely produced and sold television
technology today, pushing all other technologies into niche roles.

In spite of the LCD's many advantages over the CRT technology they displaced, LCDs also have
a variety of disadvantages. A number of other technologies are vying to enter the large-screen
television market by taking advantage of these weaknesses, including OLEDs, FED and SED,
but as of 2010 none of these have entered widespread production.

Advantages

Most of the manufacturers have come up with very fast response times and gamers can now
consider buying an LCD monitor. As far as photo editing goes, there are some of us who still
have to rely on the CRT monitors since the ultimate colour purity that the CRT offers for editing
colours cannot be had in an LCD monitor. This colour purity issue may have already been
addressed in the manufacturer’s labs but a commercially viable product which an average Joe
can afford has not yet hit the market. However if you are a gamer and were waiting for the
technology to take off, read on!
 
The gamers needs have been adequately addressed as the LCD monitors available in the market
have very fast response times – as low as 12 ms and getting better. These response times are fast
enough to even satisfy die hard gamers who want the best and are not willing to compromise.
 
History

Passive matrix LCDs first became common in the 1980s for various portable computer roles. At
the time they competed with plasma displays in the same market space. The LCDs had very slow
refresh rates that blurred the screen even with scrolling text, but their light weight and low cost
were major benefits. Screens using reflective LCDs required no internal light source, making
them particularly well suited to laptop computers.

Refresh rates were far too slow to be useful for television, but at the time there was no pressing
need for new television technologies. Resolutions were limited to standard definition, although a
number of technologies were pushing displays towards the limits of that standard; Super VHS
offered improved color saturation, and DVDs added higher resolutions as well. Even with these
advances, screen sizes over 30" were rare as these formats would start to appear blocky at normal
seating distances when viewed on larger screens. Projection systems were generally limited to
situations where the image had to be viewed by a larger audience.

Nevertheless, some experimentation with LCD televisions took place during this period. In 1988,
Sharp Corporation introduced the first commercial LCD television, a 14" model. These were
offered primarily as boutique items for discerning customers, and were not aimed at the general
market. At the same time, plasma displays could easily offer the performance needed to make a
high quality display, but suffered from low brightness and very high power consumption.
However, a series of advances led to plasma displays outpacing LCDs in performance
improvements, starting with Fujitsu's improved construction techniques in 1979, Hitachi's
improved phosphors in 1984, and AT&Ts elimination of the black areas between the sub-pixels
in the mid-1980s. By the late 1980s, plasma displays were far in advance of LCDs.

Comparing

Competing systems

In spite of LCD's current dominance of the television field, there are several other technologies
being developed that address its shortcomings. Whereas LCDs produce an image by selectively
blocking a backlight OLED, FED and SED all produce light directly on the front face of the
display. In comparison to LCDs, all of these technologies offer better viewing angles, much
higher brightness and contrast ratio (as much as 5,000,000:1), and better color saturation and
accuracy, and use less than 1/10 as much power. In theory, they are less complex and less
expensive to build.

Actually manufacturing these screens has proved more difficult than originally imagined. Sony
abandoned their FED project in March 2009,[24] but continue work on their OLED sets. Canon
continues development of their SED technology, but announced that they will not attempt to
introduce sets to market for the foreseeable future.[25]