Durable TV Brands

[jhnkvn]

Hi Cathy,

The difference between LCD and LED is that LED is a type of LCD technology. In other words, all LED displays are LCDs but not all LCDs and LEDs. The main difference is the type of light sourced being used with the latter using LED diodes while the other is usually a CFL backlight.

A great read for this is CNET's take on it: LED LCD vs. plasma vs. LCD - CNET

When it comes to branding, ganito lang yan. The giants in the industry is Samsung Electronics (#1), LG Electronics (#2) followed by the smaller players like Sony, Sharp, etc. Are all of these the same? Roughly speaking - almost. For example, you'll be surprised that some LG models use Samsung's flat panel displays and vice versa. This is because there's a limited amount of actual flat panel display manufacturers who "manufactures" the actual display. Again, the largest among these is Samsung followed by LG. Sony, who has been bleeding cash for years, has already sold their panel manufacturing and outsources their display to Taiwan's AU Optronics which is a merger of Acer and BenQ way way back.

This "vertical integration" is one of the reasons why I heavily favor Samsung in my room. Although they do have a price premium at least I have the quality assurance of #1 behind it. Sony is also relatively expensive because brand-wise, Sony did pioneer TV sets and this perception is still highly prevalent today.

For the smaller manufacturers like MyView, Prestigz, Devant, etc. these are mainly Chinese manufacturing companies who churn out TVs en-masse with the intention of capturing the lower-end of the market (where prices are more sensitive). One of the largest among these is actually Skyworth which is an OEM manufacturer of TV sets of known brands. For example, if Samsung Electronics is trying to introduce a new model and needs additional capacity to produce these they outsource some of their production to Skyworth.

I will urge you that reliability is highly subjective. For example, a friend might have a problem with Samsung sets but have a good experience with Panasonic. However, the inverse can also be said. It is generally accepted that known manufacturers are better in "reliability" due to better quality control and "branding" than your standard Chinese display manufacturers. Whether the premium is worth it is really wholly up to the buyer.

TV sizes has generally gone up. While in 2003 most TV sizes were of 32" varieties (and these were considered expensive na then) nowadays the "norm" seems to be 40". My suggested screen size is the size you are comfortable with and get the next size bigger. It might be dizzy to look at for the first few days but your eyes will be accustomed to the dimensions soon enough. Funny as it is, my primary desktop screen monitor is actually a Samsung 32" full-array LED TV display. Everybody who has seen it will claim "holy crap, it's a giant" but really.. I love typing in it and it fills out my field of vision quite nicely.

If you want to know the cheapest, you need to search of Sights and Sounds. They're formerly situated in Shangri-La Plaza but due to the ongoing renovation, they're "shop-less" as of now. However to people familiar in the industry knows that SnS has the "more volume, lowest cost" policy among TV retailers and truly ships out a huge number of TV sets daily. Although they also sell some home audio goodies, their forte is their television distribution. The manager is Sir Vic and you can probably contact them through their FB for updates.

Hope this helps Cathy!