These days, Liquid Crystal Display televisions have specifications that manufacturers use to rate their technology and quality. This “response rate” is designed to tell you how fast your television screen will present moving images.
The LCD technology in these televisions is complex, but it uses crystals to pass or block light to create images. An image is made up of pixels. The response rate also tells you how fast a pixel can change colors.
One major criticism of the LCD television system is that it has difficulty tracking motion and fast-moving objects. This creates blur or lag on the screen. Problems are most prevalent when watching sporting events or action sequences in movies, and playing video games.
Unit Measurements Defined
LCD response rates are measured in milliseconds. More importantly, you want an LCD TV that is rated with the least amount of milliseconds, because that means it has a faster response rate. An LCD television with a response rate of two milliseconds will be better than one with a 12-millisecond response rate.
Another unit used to measure response rate is the Hertz. Hertz refers to the number of times the image is updated per second. Most recently, manufacturers have increased response times to 120Hz and 240Hz. At 120Hz, an image on a television screen is refreshed 120 times per second. This technology has improved greatly over the years, making any blurriness on the screen barely noticeable.
LCD Television-Is it right for you?
Most of these ratings, equations, and units are meant to confuse consumers and convince them to upgrade and pay for better technology. Often manufacturers make suspicious or unreliable claims to convince you to spend more money when most of the time it makes little or no difference to your viewing pleasure.
The major reason you should consider these ratings is if you are purchasing an LCD television that, you will mainly play fast-moving video games and/or watch sports. If this important to you, by all means, try to get the LCD television with the best response rates. If not, consider other options first. Plasmas and regular CRT televisions can offer better prices and be significantly cheaper than LCD televisions.
My advice is to use your own two eyes to make the final decision. Visit a store, in person, to see what suits you. This is the only way you will be guaranteed to make an educated decision based on your own evidence and research.
