LED TV not as good as LCD TV

[Random Shout 10]

Recently bought a new TV, A 1080P LED Toshiba 40 inch, in comparison the tv is nowhere near as good as the picture of our previous TV. We have messed about with the TV settings with the colour / brightness / contrast ect and still the tv is no where near as good as our old one.

 

The picture on some channels is good don't get me wrong but overall is poor in comparison. Some of the channels that show older programmes the picture looks awful, very green looking. Our old TV was 1080i and LCD, but since we have Sky and Sky only outputs 1080i this shouldn't make any difference, just wondered if LCD are mainly better than LED's or could it be the Toshiba model that we have ? Most tv's now are LED buying a new LCD is quite rare these days. The Toshiba was a good bargain though at £300 instead of £380 but if we knew the picture was going to be like this I don't think we would have bothered and bought a more expensive one.

Edited July 7, 2013 by Random Shout

[dosxuk 10]

First up a few points:

- All 1080 panels are 1080p - your old TV will have been 1080p. The "p" / "i" is a method of sending the picture signal, the actual panels are identical.

- All LED TVs are LCD TVs - the only difference is the backlight. Older "LCD" TV's used things like flourescent and cold cathode lights. "LED" TVs use LEDs to illuminate the LCD panel. This is annoying because it masks the fact that it's not new technology, and when actual LED TV's start coming to reasonable prices there will be two completely different products with the same name.

 

Anyway, if your picture is green looking, it suggests there is a colour balance setting which is out. If it was red or blue it would probably just be the colour temperature setting, but green stays constant for that option and is unusual to get altered (often you need access to the maintenance menus to be able to alter the green levels). If the set is brand new, you could take it back as faulty and ask for a replacement.

 

Finally, it might be worth getting someone else to look at it - a fresh set of eyes - it may just be you've got used to a slightly iffy colour on your old set, and the new one is equally bad, just to the other direction, and you'll get used to it after a few days! The things the brain does with colour is incredible.

[Family0742 10]

I've just moved from a 37 inch full hd LCD TVs to a 42 inch led smart 3d TVs and there loads of difference in the picture it's way better. The new tv is dual core and stuff too

[AlexAtkin 10]

Toshiba are generally considered a good brand so if its showing up too green and fiddling with the colour temperature doesn't seem to help I would agree, it might be faulty.

 

As a general rule LED backlit TVs should be more blue than green, because that is about as close to neutral daylight you can get and it means more accurate colours showing from the LCD panel.

[Fudbeer 12]

I have a Sony lcd and an led and the led is definitely better.

 

When I worked in the trade Toshiba quality varied a lot on different models of TV but was generally ok.

[Random Shout 10]

I phoned up the customer support and they said try another HDMI cable so I did and the TV is great now, the reason why I didn't try another HDMI cable before is the fact that it worked ok before on our old TV set. Thanks everyone and yes the picture is better than LCD we now can tell.

 

So glad I don't have to mess about and take/send the tv back to be looked at or for an exchange.

[golfman1968 10]

As other sf users are saying it depends how good the Toshiba set is you bought

Ratio is a good aspect to off higher the ratio better the picture etc

I have a Samsung 9 series great picture and one of the 1st led tv's out

Ratio something like 1 million to 1

Early LCD / led tv's are only 750 to 1

[Ghozer 112]

First up a few points:

- All 1080 panels are 1080p - your old TV will have been 1080p. The "p" / "i" is a method of sending the picture signal, the actual panels are identical.

 

That's wrong, a "1080p" (Progressive) TV has a display panel that is capable of displaying a 1080p image, and has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, each line (row of pixels) of the image is transmitted, received, and displayed..

 

1080i is an interlaced image, meaning that (basically) every OTHER (each alternate) line of pixels is displayed..

 

1080i is what you would get, when displaying a 1080p image on a 720p display/panel

 

"HD Ready" means it will accept a 1080 signal, and display it, whether it's in full 1080p resolution, or 1080i depends whether the actual display panel has a 1080 pixel height, the "Resolution" is what you need to look for, most "HD Ready / 720p" screens are 1366x768 resolution..

 

- All LED TVs are LCD TVs - the only difference is the backlight. Older "LCD" TV's used things like flourescent and cold cathode lights. "LED" TVs use LEDs to illuminate the LCD panel. This is annoying because it masks the fact that it's not new technology, and when actual LED TV's start coming to reasonable prices there will be two completely different products with the same name.

 

yeah... "LED TV" means it's LED back lit, instead of CCFL (old type and plasma) "Edge Lit" means there's LED's around the edge of the screen, Edge lit is often the worst, as the middle of the screen can some times be duller than the edges...

 

if it's "Full LED" then it's just that, full LED, where each pixel is an individual LED, and these aer the best for image reproduction, contrast, (black levels) etc...

 

 

so, with regards to the Original Post, some stations/channels might look lower quality, as they are displaying none HD content, on a FULL HD (1080p resolution) panel, where-as your old TV was probably only "HD Ready / 720p" which has a lower resolution than FULL HD, and thus older / none HD content will look lower quality

 

If you imagine looking at a standard photo, you cannot see the dots of ink that make up the photo, but then take that photo at the SAME RESOLUTION (how many dots there are left to right / up and down to make the image) - then put it on a piece of paper 4 times larger, (at same resolution) - the dots are further appart, and more noticeable, and so the image will look lower quality (when it's exactly the same)

[dosxuk 10]

That's wrong, a "1080p" (Progressive) TV has a display panel that is capable of displaying a 1080p image, and has a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, each line (row of pixels) of the image is transmitted, received, and displayed..

 

1080i is an interlaced image, meaning that (basically) every OTHER (each alternate) line of pixels is displayed..

 

1080i is what you would get, when displaying a 1080p image on a 720p display/panel

 

Sorry Ghozer, but you've got the wrong end of the stick here.

 

1080i and 1080p both have 1080 active lines of image data. To show either picture format unscaled, you need a panel with 1080 lines - you can't convert 1080i to a progressive format by ignoring half the lines, and even if you did, you would only have 540 lines, not 720. Both 1080i and 1080p are "Full HD".

 

Also, when you talk about progressive/interlaced, frame rate becomes important too. 1080p25 can be transmitted as 1080i50 for example (and often is - the so called "film effect" used by many dramas).

 

Things like what you're saying are why the marketing people are printing "1080p" on boxes now, even when the older TVs had 1920x1080 panels, capable of displaying full 1080p images under the "1080" description.

 

"HD Ready" means it will accept a 1080 signal, and display it, whether it's in full 1080p resolution, or 1080i depends whether the actual display panel has a 1080 pixel height, the "Resolution" is what you need to look for, most "HD Ready / 720p" screens are 1366x768 resolution..

 

A 1080 video source has 1080 lines of resolution. A 720 video source has 720 lines of resolution. 1080i is not a synonym of 720p. An "HD Ready" TV, will not be able to display a 1080i picture in full resolution.

[Ghozer 112]

Yeah, my bad, sorry, " i " is alternate lines lines 1, 3, 5 etc are drawn, then lines, 2, 4, 6, etc... been wound up by another thread on here and my mind wasn't fully on this thread...

 

but still, a 720p display, will only show a 1080i image, and not 1080p (it will accept a 1080p input, but won't display it progressivly, and it will be down scaled)

 

But "HD Ready" means it's a 720 resolution panel, able to accept a 1080 signal, "Full HD" means it's a 1080 resolution panel...

 

but any ways, the OP saying "my old TV was 1080i" - it is likely that it is actually a 720p display... so my point about the resolution being higher, displaying a lower resolution image etc is still valid...

[PlayStation 10]

we jumped from a 40" Sony Bravia Full HD 1080p LCD to a 42" Panasonic Viera Full HD 1080p LED 3D and this panasonic is by far the hardest tv we have ever set up.

 

we have had it for a around a year now and sometimes i still dont think the picture looks right. on some programmes people will look fine and then on others they look orange. some programmes are dull and some are bright.

 

we still dont have that perfect ballance yet. but the picture is much clearer and sharper than the sony.

 

the panasonic came with a feature called intelligent frame correction which adds extra frames to give you a smoother image.

 

we had to turn that off because it was annoying, the way people moved just didn't look real and was quite freaky.

 

but this new panasonic is a 3D and its just a brilliant tv all round. we have iplayer, youtube, skype, web browers and a whole bunch of other apps which we can get off the viera store.

 

LED is the better choice if you want a sharp image, but they can be tricky to get right with colour ballance and brightness.

Edited July 10, 2013 by PlayStation

[AlexAtkin 10]

Yeah, my bad, sorry, " i " is alternate lines lines 1, 3, 5 etc are drawn, then lines, 2, 4, 6, etc... been wound up by another thread on here and my mind wasn't fully on this thread...

 

but still, a 720p display, will only show a 1080i image, and not 1080p (it will accept a 1080p input, but won't display it progressivly, and it will be down scaled)

 

But "HD Ready" means it's a 720 resolution panel, able to accept a 1080 signal, "Full HD" means it's a 1080 resolution panel...

 

but any ways, the OP saying "my old TV was 1080i" - it is likely that it is actually a 720p display... so my point about the resolution being higher, displaying a lower resolution image etc is still valid...

 

A 720p display can only display at maximum 720p, period. It always has to deinterlace and downscale a 1080i image.

 

Early HD Ready displays could only accept a 1080i signal and not 1080p (I had one such display) which could be where the old "my old TV was 1080i" came from.

 

Also, UK HD Ready TVs for some dumb reason are actually 1366x768, so a 720p image could not be displayed with a 1:1 pixel ratio, making them upscale which kills picture detail. This meant downscaling a 1080i image was usually a better picture than native 720p.

 

As far as I am aware the only native 1080i TV was very early CRT HDTVs, and they could ONLY accept 1080i, not even 720p. I'm not sure we ever had them in the UK.