LCD Alternatives

There are many LCD alternatives in the marketplace for home entertainment theatres.

Cathode Ray Tube (CRT)

Cathode Ray Tube televisions are the most common form of home entertainment TVs but have quickly been overtaken in the popularity stakes with the advent of the new sleek, sexy, large flat panel screens.

The German physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) in 1897. The CRT is a glass envelope that contains an electron gun that releases a stream of electrons that hit a fluorescent screen giving us our images.

Vacuum fluorescent display (VFD)

Vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) is a type of display that is very similar to the display seen on digital clocks in the home. It is used on many consumer-electronics items such as car radios.

Vacuum fluorescent display works with similar technology to the cathode ray tube and is prevalent in most cars that have digital instruments. The main disadvantage of VFD turned into a big advantage and selling point when car manufacturers first started to look at using digital instruments.

VFD requires a large battery charge so things like watches and calculators couldn’t be considered as a selling point this is an issue that you don’t have to worry about in cars. The main advantage of VFD in cars is that the display is very bright.

Digital Light Processing (DLP)

Digital Light Processing (DLP) is technology invented by Dr. Larry Hornbeck in 1987 at Texas Instruments. DLP is used in large flat panel television screens.

A semiconductor chip called a Digital Micromirror Device or DMD chip has up to two million mirrors on it. The size of these mirrors is one fifth that of a human hair and each mirror represents a pixel.

A mercury vapor arc lamp is the light source for a DLP with the mirrors repositioning themselves to reflect the light, giving us our images.

Plasma display panel (PDP)

Plasma display panel (PDP) home theatre screens have proven popular with consumers. Donald L. Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow and Robert Wilson first invented the plasma display in 1964 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Pioneer started selling the first Plasma television in 1997 and Plasma screens enjoyed a dominant market share of the home theatre television market thanks to their superior quality and availability of larger sized screens.

However, in recent times, new technology has seen LCDs enjoy a resurgence in sales with larger high definition flat panel LCDs now available at a far cheaper cost to consumers wanting to buy a large flat panel TV screen.

Field emission display (FED)

Field emission display (FED) is very similar to cathode ray tubes with the notable difference being the size of these flat panel screens. While a cathode ray tube television set is bulky these thin flat panel screens are only a few millimeters.

The cathode ray tube works with a single electron gun, while an FED works through a process called field emission when many carbon nanotubes position behind each phosphor dot on the screen. FED flat panel screens produce better quality pictures than both LCD and Plasma screens but their life expectancy is only a third of the time of their flat screen television competitors.

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED)

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is one product electronic companies are continuing to research and develop. OLED displays have one advantage over their competitors in that they don’t require a backlight to produce images.

OLED technology is inexpensive which should see their flat panel television sets be very cheap in the home theatre market. However, OLED technology will first have to overcome the short life expectancy of the organic materials that they currently experience.

We use OLED technology in small screens for mobile phones, car radios and now flat panel television screens.

Surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED)

Surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED) is another of the new flat panel screen display technology being developed by electronic companies Toshiba and Canon. SED uses surface conduction electron emitters for every individual display pixel to give us our images.

These large flat screen display panels seem to hit constant production snags with a release date of 2008 announced but unlikely to eventuate. The cost of these flat screen TV panels is expected to be sufficient that they will be only available to corporations and not regular consumers.

Liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS)

Liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) is another of the major competitors to LCD flat panel home entertainment screens. LCOS technology is similar to DLP projectors but instead of using individual mirrors to reflect images LCOS flat panel screens use liquid crystals.

LCOS flat panel screens enjoy a price advantage over their competitors with LCOS screens cheaper and less expensive to run. LCOS technology brings high-definition television that produce a high picture quality at very inexpensive cost to consumers.