tft lcd vs hd led free sample

Confused about LED vs. LCD vs. TFT? Here"s everything you need to know. Creating or upgrading a device display or screen can involve a lot of different things, but it often comes down to one major question - what kind of display should you get?

So, there are 3 common displays LED, LCD and TFT available in the market. All terms refer to the flat-panel display, or screen, of a computer monitor or television set. In this article, we are going to differentiate between them. It will help you to choose a better one.

LCD stands for liquid crystal display. Works by adjusting the amount of light blocked. Usually has a backlight but might not (clocks, calculators, Nintendo Gameboy). The green-black ones can be very cheap and are a mature technology. Response time can be slow. An LCD display uses the light balancing qualities of crystals. Today LCDs are used in a great number of products and applications. Your TV, computer screen, calculator, cell phone and the dreaded alarm clock are all made of an LCD flat panel. Color LCDs produce the color based on two techniques: Passive matrix and active matrix. Passive matrix is the cheapest technology of the two. The other technology is called an active matrix or TFT. Active matrix displays produce really sharp and clear images.

This is a type of LCD with a thin film transistor attached to each pixel. All computer LCD screens are TFT since the early 2000s; older ones had slower response times and poorer color. Cost is now very good; power consumption is fairly good but dominated by the backlight. Has to be manufactured out of glass. The TFT layer is embedded in the screen itself, it reduces crosstalk between pixels. Crosstalk happens when a signal sends to a pixel also affects the pixel next to it. This makes the TFT technology the technology offering the best resolution and image quality. It also makes it a bit more expensive. Today TFTs have become the standard when producing LCD screens.

LED stands for a light emitting diode. As the name suggests, emits light rather than blocking it like LCD. Used for red/green/blue/white indicator lights everywhere. Some manufacturers advertise "LED" displays that are TFT screens with a white LED backlight, which is just confusing. Ones that are real LED screens are usually OLED.

Some devices actually have backlights made from Red, Green and Blue LEDs, normally referred to as RGB LED, which tend to have better color reproduction than any other display.

LED screen is just like saying that it is a plastic screen. You still have the WHOLE screen illuminated all the time and LED is "good" only for being more eco-friendly and probably more bright at max setting if you ever need this.

An LCD panel is, in fact, 2 layers of glass with some volume of Liquid Crystal in between. These two form the panel itself. The 2 layers are usually called Color Filter Glass (above) and TFT glass (below).

LCDs can’t completely prevent light from passing through, though, even during dark scenes, so dimming the light source itself aids in creating deeper blacks and more impressive contrast in the picture.

A standard TFT has a whole "lamp" behind it, illuminating the whole screen all the time. This way, you cannot have a true black, as it is still illuminated and stay grayish.

TFTs are a type of active matrix display that controls individual pixel updates several times per second on the screen to update the image relative to the content source.

TFT displays use more electricity than regular LCD screens, so they not only cost more in the first place, but they are also more expensive to operate.

LCDs use fluorescent lights while LEDs use those light emitting diodes. The fluorescent lights in an LCD are always behind the screen. On an LED, the light emitting diodes can be placed either behind the screen or around its edges.

Shopping for a new TV is like wading through a never-ending pool of tech jargon, display terminology, and head-spinning acronyms. It was one thing when 4K resolution landed in the homes of consumers, with TV brands touting the new UHD viewing spec as a major marketing grab. But over the last several years, the plot has only continued to thicken when it comes to three- and four-letter acronyms with the introduction of state-of-the-art lighting and screen technology. But between OLEDs, QLEDs, mini-LEDs, and now QD-OLEDs, there’s one battle of words that rests at the core of TV vocabulary: LED versus LCD.

Despite having a different acronym, LED TV is just a specific type of LCD TV, which uses a liquid crystal display (LCD) panel to control where light is displayed on your screen. These panels are typically composed of two sheets of polarizing material with a liquid crystal solution between them. When an electric current passes through the liquid, it causes the crystals to align, so that light can (or can’t) pass through. Think of it as a shutter, either allowing light to pass through or blocking it out.

Since both LED and LCD TVs are based around LCD technology, the question remains: what is the difference? Actually, it’s about what the difference was. Older LCD TVs used cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) to provide lighting, whereas LED LCD TVs used an array of smaller, more efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the screen.

Since the technology is better, all LCD TVs now use LED lights and are colloquially considered LED TVs. For those interested, we’ll go deeper into backlighting below, or you can move onto the Local Dimming section.

Three basic illumination forms have been used in LCD TVs: CCFL backlighting, full-array LED backlighting, and LED edge lighting. Each of these illumination technologies is different from one another in important ways. Let’s dig into each.

CCFL backlighting is an older, now-abandoned form of display technology in which a series of cold cathode lamps sit across the inside of the TV behind the LCD. The lights illuminate the crystals fairly evenly, which means all regions of the picture will have similar brightness levels. This affects some aspects of picture quality, which we discuss in more detail below. Since CCFLs are larger than LED arrays, CCFL-based LCD TVs are thicker than LED-backlit LCD TVs.

Full-array backlighting swaps the outdated CCFLs for an array of LEDs spanning the back of the screen, comprising zones of LEDs that can be lit or dimmed in a process called local dimming. TVs using full-array LED backlighting to make up a healthy chunk of the high-end LED TV market, and with good reason — with more precise and even illumination, they can create better picture quality than CCFL LCD TVs were ever able to achieve, with better energy efficiency to boot.

Another form of LCD screen illumination is LED edge lighting. As the name implies, edge-lit TVs have LEDs along the edges of a screen. There are a few different configurations, including LEDs along just the bottom, LEDs on the top and bottom, LEDs left and right, and LEDs along all four edges. These different configurations result in picture quality differences, but the overall brightness capabilities still exceed what CCFL LCD TVs could achieve. While there are some drawbacks to edge lighting compared to full-array or direct backlight displays, the upshot is edge lighting that allows manufacturers to make thinner TVs that cost less to manufacture.

To better close the local-dimming quality gap between edge-lit TVs and full-array back-lit TVs, manufacturers like Sony and Samsung developed their own advanced edge lighting forms. Sony’s technology is known as “Slim Backlight Master Drive,” while Samsung has “Infinite Array” employed in its line of QLED TVs. These keep the slim form factor achievable through edge-lit design and local dimming quality more on par with full-array backlighting.

Local dimming is a feature of LED LCD TVs wherein the LED light source behind the LCD is dimmed and illuminated to match what the picture demands. LCDs can’t completely prevent light from passing through, even during dark scenes, so dimming the light source itself aids in creating deeper blacks and more impressive contrast in the picture. This is accomplished by selectively dimming the LEDs when that particular part of the picture — or region — is intended to be dark.

Local dimming helps LED/LCD TVs more closely match the quality of modern OLED displays, which feature better contrast levels by their nature — something CCFL LCD TVs couldn’t do. The quality of local dimming varies depending on which type of backlighting your LCD uses, how many individual zones of backlighting are employed, and the quality of the processing. Here’s an overview of how effective local dimming is on each type of LCD TV.

TVs with full-array backlighting have the most accurate local dimming and therefore tend to offer the best contrast. Since an array of LEDs spans the entire back of the LCD screen, regions can generally be dimmed with more finesse than on edge-lit TVs, and brightness tends to be uniform across the entire screen. Hisense’s impressive U7G TVs are great examples of relatively affordable models that use multiple-zone, full-array backlighting with local dimming.

“Direct local dimming” is essentially the same thing as full-array dimming, just with fewer LEDs spread further apart in the array. However, it’s worth noting that many manufacturers do not differentiate “direct local dimming” from full-array dimming as two separate forms of local dimming. We still feel it’s important to note the difference, as fewer, further-spaced LEDs will not have the same accuracy and consistency as full-array displays.

Because edge lighting employs LEDs positioned on the edge or edges of the screen to project light across the back of the LCD screen, as opposed to coming from directly behind it, it can result in very subtle blocks or bands of lighter pixels within or around areas that should be dark. The local dimming of edge-lit TVs can sometimes result in some murkiness in dark areas compared with full-array LED TVs. It should also be noted that not all LED edge-lit TVs offer local dimming, which is why it is not uncommon to see glowing strips of light at the edges of a TV and less brightness toward the center of the screen.

Since CCFL backlit TVs do not use LEDs, models with this lighting style do not have dimming abilities. Instead, the LCD panel of CCFL LCDs is constantly and evenly illuminated, making a noticeable difference in picture quality compared to LED LCDs. This is especially noticeable in scenes with high contrast, as the dark portions of the picture may appear too bright or washed out. When watching in a well-lit room, it’s easier to ignore or miss the difference, but in a dark room, it will be, well, glaring.

As if it wasn’t already confusing enough, once you begin exploring the world of modern display technology, new acronyms crop up. The two you’ll most commonly find are OLED and QLED.

An OLED display uses a panel of pixel-sized organic compounds that respond to electricity. Since each tiny pixel (millions of which are present in modern displays) can be turned on or off individually, OLED displays are called “emissive” displays (meaning they require no backlight). They offer incredibly deep contrast ratios and better per-pixel accuracy than any other display type on the market.

Because they don’t require a separate light source, OLED displays are also amazingly thin — often just a few millimeters. OLED panels are often found on high-end TVs in place of LED/LCD technology, but that doesn’t mean that LED/LCDs aren’t without their own premium technology.

QLED is a premium tier of LED/LCD TVs from Samsung. Unlike OLED displays, QLED is not a so-called emissive display technology (lights still illuminate QLED pixels from behind). However, QLED TVs feature an updated illumination technology over regular LED LCDs in the form of Quantum Dot material (hence the “Q” in QLED), which raises overall efficiency and brightness. This translates to better, brighter grayscale and color and enhances HDR (High Dynamic Range) abilities.

And now to make things extra confusing, part of Samsung’s 2022 TV lineup is being billed as traditional OLEDs, although a deeper dive will reveal this is actually the company’s first foray into a new panel technology altogether called QD-OLED.

For a further description of QLED and its features, read our list of the best TVs you can buy. The article further compares the qualities of both QLED and OLED TV; however, we also recommend checking outfor a side-by-side look at these two top-notch technologies.

There are more even displays to become familiar with, too, including microLED and Mini-LED, which are lining up to be the latest head-to-head TV technologies. Consider checking out how the two features compare to current tech leaders in

In the world of TV technology, there’s never a dull moment. However, with this detailed research, we hope you feel empowered to make an informed shopping decision and keep your Best Buy salesperson on his or her toes.

TFT LCD is a mature technology. OLED is a relatively new display technology, being used in more and more applications. As for Micro LED, it is a new generation technology with very promising future. Followings are the pros and cons of each display technology.

TFT Liquid Crystal Display is widely used these days. Since LCD itself doesn"t emit light. TFT LCD relies on white LED backlight to show content. This is an explanation of how TFT LCD works.

Relatively lower contrast：Light needs to pass through LCD glasses, liquid crystal layer, polarizers and color filters. Over 90% is lost. Also, LCD can not display pure black.

Organic Light-Emitting Diode is built from an electro-luminescent layer that contains organic compounds, which emit light in response to an electric current. There are two types of OLED, Passive Matrix OLED (PMOLED) and Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED). These driving methods are similar to LCD"s. PMOLED is controlled sequentially using a matrix addressing scheme, m + n control signals are required to address a m x n display. AMOLED uses a TFT backplane that can switch individual pixels on and off.

Low power consumption and flexible: OLED doesn"t rely on backlight and consumes less power. OLED is essentially created on plastic film. It is bendable and easy to process.

High contrast and vivid color: OLED emits light itself, can produce very bright image with beautiful color. And because OLED can be turned off, it can produce true black.

Stroboscopic effect: most OLED screen uses PWM dimming technology. Some people who are easy perceive stroboscopic frequency may have sore eyes and tears.

​Micro LED, sometimes called μLED is made up of tiny LED, measure less than 100μm. Another way of looking at this is that MicroLEDs are simply traditional LEDs shrunk down and placed into an array.

Replacing organic material with inorganic GaN material eliminates the need of polarizing and encapsulation layer, found in OLED. Micro LED is smaller and thinner, consumes less power.

TFT LCD image retention we also call it "Burn-in". In CRT displays, this caused the phosphorus to be worn and the patterns to be burnt in to the display. But the term "burn in" is a bit misleading in LCD screen. There is no actual burning or heat involved. When you meet TFT LCD burn in problem, how do you solve it?

When driving the TFT LCD display pixels Continously, the slightly unbalanced AC will attract free ions to the pixels internal surface. Those ions act like an addition DC with the AC driving voltage.

Those burn-in fixers, screen fixer software may help. Once the Image Retention happened on a TFT, it may easy to appear again. So we need to take preventive actions to avoid burn in reappearing.

For normal white TFT LCD, white area presenting minimal drive, black area presenting maximum drive. Free ions inside the TFT may are attracted towards the black area (maximum drive area)

A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technologyactive matrix LCD, in contrast to passive matrix LCDs or simple, direct-driven (i.e. with segments directly connected to electronics outside the LCD) LCDs with a few segments.

In February 1957, John Wallmark of RCA filed a patent for a thin film MOSFET. Paul K. Weimer, also of RCA implemented Wallmark"s ideas and developed the thin-film transistor (TFT) in 1962, a type of MOSFET distinct from the standard bulk MOSFET. It was made with thin films of cadmium selenide and cadmium sulfide. The idea of a TFT-based liquid-crystal display (LCD) was conceived by Bernard Lechner of RCA Laboratories in 1968. In 1971, Lechner, F. J. Marlowe, E. O. Nester and J. Tults demonstrated a 2-by-18 matrix display driven by a hybrid circuit using the dynamic scattering mode of LCDs.T. Peter Brody, J. A. Asars and G. D. Dixon at Westinghouse Research Laboratories developed a CdSe (cadmium selenide) TFT, which they used to demonstrate the first CdSe thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD).active-matrix liquid-crystal display (AM LCD) using CdSe TFTs in 1974, and then Brody coined the term "active matrix" in 1975.high-resolution and high-quality electronic visual display devices use TFT-based active matrix displays.

The circuit layout process of a TFT-LCD is very similar to that of semiconductor products. However, rather than fabricating the transistors from silicon, that is formed into a crystalline silicon wafer, they are made from a thin film of amorphous silicon that is deposited on a glass panel. The silicon layer for TFT-LCDs is typically deposited using the PECVD process.

Polycrystalline silicon is sometimes used in displays requiring higher TFT performance. Examples include small high-resolution displays such as those found in projectors or viewfinders. Amorphous silicon-based TFTs are by far the most common, due to their lower production cost, whereas polycrystalline silicon TFTs are more costly and much more difficult to produce.

The twisted nematic display is one of the oldest and frequently cheapest kind of LCD display technologies available. TN displays benefit from fast pixel response times and less smearing than other LCD display technology, but suffer from poor color reproduction and limited viewing angles, especially in the vertical direction. Colors will shift, potentially to the point of completely inverting, when viewed at an angle that is not perpendicular to the display. Modern, high end consumer products have developed methods to overcome the technology"s shortcomings, such as RTC (Response Time Compensation / Overdrive) technologies. Modern TN displays can look significantly better than older TN displays from decades earlier, but overall TN has inferior viewing angles and poor color in comparison to other technology.

Most TN panels can represent colors using only six bits per RGB channel, or 18 bit in total, and are unable to display the 16.7 million color shades (24-bit truecolor) that are available using 24-bit color. Instead, these panels display interpolated 24-bit color using a dithering method that combines adjacent pixels to simulate the desired shade. They can also use a form of temporal dithering called Frame Rate Control (FRC), which cycles between different shades with each new frame to simulate an intermediate shade. Such 18 bit panels with dithering are sometimes advertised as having "16.2 million colors". These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and highly bothersome to some.gamut (often referred to as a percentage of the NTSC 1953 color gamut) are also due to backlighting technology. It is not uncommon for older displays to range from 10% to 26% of the NTSC color gamut, whereas other kind of displays, utilizing more complicated CCFL or LED phosphor formulations or RGB LED backlights, may extend past 100% of the NTSC color gamut, a difference quite perceivable by the human eye.

The transmittance of a pixel of an LCD panel typically does not change linearly with the applied voltage,sRGB standard for computer monitors requires a specific nonlinear dependence of the amount of emitted light as a function of the RGB value.

Less expensive PVA panels often use dithering and FRC, whereas super-PVA (S-PVA) panels all use at least 8 bits per color component and do not use color simulation methods.BRAVIA LCD TVs offer 10-bit and xvYCC color support, for example, the Bravia X4500 series. S-PVA also offers fast response times using modern RTC technologies.

When the field is on, the liquid crystal molecules start to tilt towards the center of the sub-pixels because of the electric field; as a result, a continuous pinwheel alignment (CPA) is formed; the azimuthal angle rotates 360 degrees continuously resulting in an excellent viewing angle. The ASV mode is also called CPA mode.

TFT dual-transistor pixel or cell technology is a reflective-display technology for use in very-low-power-consumption applications such as electronic shelf labels (ESL), digital watches, or metering. DTP involves adding a secondary transistor gate in the single TFT cell to maintain the display of a pixel during a period of 1s without loss of image or without degrading the TFT transistors over time. By slowing the refresh rate of the standard frequency from 60 Hz to 1 Hz, DTP claims to increase the power efficiency by multiple orders of magnitude.

Due to the very high cost of building TFT factories, there are few major OEM panel vendors for large display panels. The glass panel suppliers are as follows:

External consumer display devices like a TFT LCD feature one or more analog VGA, DVI, HDMI, or DisplayPort interface, with many featuring a selection of these interfaces. Inside external display devices there is a controller board that will convert the video signal using color mapping and image scaling usually employing the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in order to convert any video source like CVBS, VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc. into digital RGB at the native resolution of the display panel. In a laptop the graphics chip will directly produce a signal suitable for connection to the built-in TFT display. A control mechanism for the backlight is usually included on the same controller board.

The low level interface of STN, DSTN, or TFT display panels use either single ended TTL 5 V signal for older displays or TTL 3.3 V for slightly newer displays that transmits the pixel clock, horizontal sync, vertical sync, digital red, digital green, digital blue in parallel. Some models (for example the AT070TN92) also feature input/display enable, horizontal scan direction and vertical scan direction signals.

New and large (>15") TFT displays often use LVDS signaling that transmits the same contents as the parallel interface (Hsync, Vsync, RGB) but will put control and RGB bits into a number of serial transmission lines synchronized to a clock whose rate is equal to the pixel rate. LVDS transmits seven bits per clock per data line, with six bits being data and one bit used to signal if the other six bits need to be inverted in order to maintain DC balance. Low-cost TFT displays often have three data lines and therefore only directly support 18 bits per pixel. Upscale displays have four or five data lines to support 24 bits per pixel (truecolor) or 30 bits per pixel respectively. Panel manufacturers are slowly replacing LVDS with Internal DisplayPort and Embedded DisplayPort, which allow sixfold reduction of the number of differential pairs.

Backlight intensity is usually controlled by varying a few volts DC, or generating a PWM signal, or adjusting a potentiometer or simply fixed. This in turn controls a high-voltage (1.3 kV) DC-AC inverter or a matrix of LEDs. The method to control the intensity of LED is to pulse them with PWM which can be source of harmonic flicker.

With analogue signals like VGA, the display controller also needs to perform a high speed analog to digital conversion. With digital input signals like DVI or HDMI some simple reordering of the bits is needed before feeding it to the rescaler if the input resolution doesn"t match the display panel resolution.

Kawamoto, H. (2012). "The Inventors of TFT Active-Matrix LCD Receive the 2011 IEEE Nishizawa Medal". Journal of Display Technology. 8 (1): 3–4. Bibcode:2012JDisT...8....3K. doi:10.1109/JDT.2011.2177740. ISSN 1551-319X.

K. H. Lee; H. Y. Kim; K. H. Park; S. J. Jang; I. C. Park & J. Y. Lee (June 2006). "A Novel Outdoor Readability of Portable TFT-LCD with AFFS Technology". SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers. AIP. 37 (1): 1079–82. doi:10.1889/1.2433159. S2CID 129569963.

Focus Displays offers a wide range of standard full color TFT displays. 64 million unique colors, high brightness, sharp contrast, -30C operating temperature, and fast response time are all good descriptions of a TFT display. This is why TFT technology is one of the most popular choices for a new product.

Thin Film Transistor (TFT) display technology can be seen in products such as laptop computers, cell phones, tablets, digital cameras, and many other products that require color. TFT’s are active matrix displays which offers exceptional viewing experiences especially when compared to other passive matrix technologies. The clarity on TFT displays is outstanding; and they possess a longer half-life than some types of OLEDs and range in sizes from less than an inch to over 15 inches.

CCFL’s are still available, but are becoming a legacy (obsolete) component. TFT displays equipped with a CCFL require higher MOQs (Minimum Order Quantities) than displays with LED backlights.

Red, Green and Blue (RGB) backlights are built with either a single LED that produces red, green and blue colors or with three separate Red, Green or Blue LEDs.

Backlight brightness (Luminance) is measured in nits. A nit being the amount of light that one candle delivers in a 1 square meter box. The intensity of the LED backlight can be critical when operating in low light or in direct sun light and is usually controlled by adjusting the DC voltage. In many applications this is accomplished through pulse-width modulation (PWM)

The majority of TFT displays contain a touch panel, or touch screen. The touch panel is a touch-sensitive transparent overlay mounted on the front of the display glass. Allowing for interaction between the user and the LCD display.

Some touch panels require an independent driver IC; which can be included in the TFT display module or placed on the customer’s Printed Circuit Board (PCB). Touch screens make use of coordinate systems to locate where the user touched the screen.

Resistive touch panels are the lowest cost option and are standard equipment on many TFT modules. They are more common on smaller TFT displays, but can still be incorporated on larger modules.

Contrast ratio, or static contrast ratio, is one way to measure the sharpness of the TFT LCD display. This ratio is the difference between the darkest black and the brightest white the display is able to produce. The higher the number on the left, the sharper the image. A typical contrast ratio for TFT may be 300:1. This number ratio means that the white is 300 times brighter than the black.

TFT LCD displays are measured in inches; this is the measurement of the diagonal distance across the glass. Common TFT sizes include: 1.77”, 2.4”, 2.8”, 3”, 4.3”, 5”, 5.7”, 5.8”, 7”, 10.2”, 12.1 and 15”.

TFT resolution is the number of dots or pixels the display contains. It is measured by the number of dots along the horizontal (X axis) and the dots along the vertical (Y axis).

Certain combinations of width and height are standardized and typically given a name and a letter representation that is descriptive of its dimensions. Popular names given to the TFT LCD displays resolution include:

Transmissive displays must have the backlight on at all times to read the display, but are not the best option in direct sunlight unless the backlight is 750 Nits or higher. A majority of TFT displays are Transmissive, but they will require more power to operate with a brighter backlight.

A primary job of the driver is to refresh each pixel. In passive TFT displays, the pixel is refreshed and then allowed to slowly fade (aka decay) until refreshed again. The higher the refresh frequency, the sharper the displays contrast.

The TFT display (minus touch screen/backlight) alone will contain one controller/driver combination. These are built into the display so the design engineer does not need to locate the correct hardware.

If you do not see a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) Display module that meets your specifications, or you need a replacement TFT, we can build a custom TFT displays to meet your requirements. Custom TFTs require a one-time tooling fee and may require higher MOQs.

Ready to order samples for your TFT design? Contact one of our US-based technical support people today concerning your design requirements. Note: We can provide smaller quantities for samples and prototyping.

Plasma TV production ended in 2015. However, they are still being used and sold in the secondary market. As a result, it"s helpful to understand how a Plasma TV works and how it compares to an LCD TV.

Within each cell, a narrow gap that contains an insulating layer, address electrode, and display electrode, separates two glass panels. In this process, neon-xenon gas is injected and sealed in plasma form during the manufacturing process.

Each group of red, green, and blue phosphors is called a pixel (picture element — the individual red, green, and blue phosphors are called sub-pixels). Since Plasma TV pixels generate their light, they are referred to as "emissive" displays.

Plasma TVs can be made thin. However, even though the need for the bulky picture tube and electron beam scanning of those older CRT TVs is not required, Plasma TVs still employ burning phosphors to generate an image. As a result, Plasma TVs suffer from some of the drawbacks of CRT TVs, such as heat generation and possible screen burn-in of static images.

LCD crystals do not produce light, so they need an external source, such as fluorescent (CCFL/​HCFL) or LEDs, for the picture created by the LCD to become visible to the viewer.

Unlike a Plasma TV, since there are no phosphors that light up, less power is needed for operation, and the light source in an LCD TV generates less heat than a Plasma TV. There is no radiation emitted from the screen.

Plasma TVs are more vulnerable to burn-in of static images. However, this problem diminished over the years due to "pixel orbiting" and related technologies.

Potentially shorter display lifespan. Early models had 30,000 hours or 8 hours of viewing a day for nine years, which was less than LCD. However, screen lifespan improved and 60,000-hour lifespan rating became the standard, with some sets rated as high as 100,000 hours, due to technology improvements.

The lower real-contrast ratio is not as good as rendering deep blacks, although the increasing incorporation of ​LED backlighting has narrowed this gap.

Not as good at tracking motion (fast-moving objects may exhibit lag artifacts). However, this has with the implementation of 120Hz screen refresh rates and 240Hz processing in most LCD sets, but that can result in the "Soap Opera Effect," in which film-based content sources look more like a videotape than film.

Narrower effective side-to-side viewing angle than Plasma. On LCD TVs, it is common to notice color fading or color shifting as you move your viewing position further to either side of the center point.

Although LCD TVs do not suffer from burn-in susceptibility, single pixels can burn out, causing small but visible, black or white dots to appear on the screen. Individual pixels are not fixable. Replacing the whole screen is the sole option if the pixel burnout becomes unbearable.

An LCD TV was typically more expensive than an equivalent-sized (and equivalent featured) Plasma TV. However, that is no longer a factor, since companies have ceased manufacturing Plasma TVs.

Manufacturers chose to incorporate 4K resolution only in LCD TVs, using LED back and edge-lighting, and, in the case of LG and Sony, incorporating 4K into TVs using OLED technology.

Although it was possible to incorporate 4K resolution display capability into a Plasma TV, it was prohibitively expensive. When the sales of Plasma TVs started declining, TV makers decided against bringing consumer-based 4K Ultra HD Plasma TVs to market, which was another factor in their demise. The only 4K Ultra HD Plasma TVs manufactured were for commercial application use.

Click calculate to find the energy consumption of a 22 inch LED-backlit LCD display using 30 Watts for 5 hours a day @ $0.10 per kWh. Check the table below and modify the calculator fields if needed to fit your display.

LED & LCD screens use the same TFT LCD (thin film transistor liquid crystal display) technology for displaying images on the screen, when a product mentions LED it is referring to the backlighting. Older LCD monitors used CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent) backlighting which is generally 20-30% less power efficient compared to LED-backlit LCD displays.

The issue in accurately calculating the energy consumption of your tv or computer display comes down to the build quality of the screen, energy saving features which are enabled and your usage patterns. The only method to accurately calculate the energy usage of a specific model is to use a special device known as an electricity usage monitor or a power meter. This device plugs into a power socket and then your device is plugged into it, electricity use can then be accurately monitored. If you are serious about precisely calculating your energy use, this product is inexpensive and will help you determine your exact electricity costs per each device.

In general we recommend LED displays because they offer the best power savings and are becoming more cheaper. Choose a display size which you are comfortable with and make sure to properly calibrate your display to reduce power use. Enable energy saving features, lower brightness and make sure the monitor goes into sleep mode after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity. Some research studies also suggest that setting your system themes to a darker color may help reduce energy cost, as less energy is used to light the screen. Also keep in mind that most display will draw 0.1 to 3 watts of power even if they are turned off or in sleep mode, unplugging the screen if you are away for extended periods of time may also help.

In this Arduino touch screen tutorial we will learn how to use TFT LCD Touch Screen with Arduino. You can watch the following video or read the written tutorial below.

The next example is controlling an RGB LED using these three RGB sliders. For example if we start to slide the blue slider, the LED will light up in blue and increase the light as we would go to the maximum value. So the sliders can move from 0 to 255 and with their combination we can set any color to the RGB LED,  but just keep in mind that the LED cannot represent the colors that much accurate.

As an example I am using a 3.2” TFT Touch Screen in a combination with a TFT LCD Arduino Mega Shield. We need a shield because the TFT Touch screen works at 3.3V and the Arduino Mega outputs are 5 V. For the first example I have the HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor, then for the second example an RGB LED with three resistors and a push button for the game example. Also I had to make a custom made pin header like this, by soldering pin headers and bend on of them so I could insert them in between the Arduino Board and the TFT Shield.

Here’s the circuit schematic. We will use the GND pin, the digital pins from 8 to 13, as well as the pin number 14. As the 5V pins are already used by the TFT Screen I will use the pin number 13 as VCC, by setting it right away high in the setup section of code.

I will use the UTFT and URTouch libraries made by Henning Karlsen. Here I would like to say thanks to him for the incredible work he has done. The libraries enable really easy use of the TFT Screens, and they work with many different TFT screens sizes, shields and controllers. You can download these libraries from his website, RinkyDinkElectronics.com and also find a lot of demo examples and detailed documentation of how to use them.

After we include the libraries we need to create UTFT and URTouch objects. The parameters of these objects depends on the model of the TFT Screen and Shield and these details can be also found in the documentation of the libraries.

Next we need to define the fonts that are coming with the libraries and also define some variables needed for the program. In the setup section we need to initiate the screen and the touch, define the pin modes for the connected sensor, the led and the button, and initially call the drawHomeSreen() custom function, which will draw the home screen of the program.

So now I will explain how we can make the home screen of the program. With the setBackColor() function we need to set the background color of the text, black one in our case. Then we need to set the color to white, set the big font and using the print() function, we will print the string “Arduino TFT Tutorial” at the center of the screen and 10 pixels  down the Y – Axis of the screen. Next we will set the color to red and draw the red line below the text. After that we need to set the color back to white, and print the two other strings, “by HowToMechatronics.com” using the small font and “Select Example” using the big font.

drawDistanceSensor(); // It is called only once, because in the next iteration of the loop, this above if statement will be false so this funtion won"t be called. This function will draw the graphics of the first example.

getDistance(); // Gets distance from the sensor and this function is repeatedly called while we are at the first example in order to print the lasest results from the distance sensor

So the drawDistanceSensor() custom function needs to be called only once when the button is pressed in order to draw all the graphics of this example in similar way as we described for the home screen. However, the getDistance() custom function needs to be called repeatedly in order to print the latest results of the distance measured by the sensor.

Ok next is the RGB LED Control example. If we press the second button, the drawLedControl() custom function will be called only once for drawing the graphic of that example and the setLedColor() custom function will be repeatedly called. In this function we use the touch screen to set the values of the 3 sliders from 0 to 255. With the if statements we confine the area of each slider and get the X value of the slider. So the values of the X coordinate of each slider are from 38 to 310 pixels and we need to map these values into values from 0 to 255 which will be used as a PWM signal for lighting up the LED. If you need more details how the RGB LED works you can check my particular tutorialfor that. The rest of the code in this custom function is for drawing the sliders. Back in the loop section we only have the back button which also turns off the LED when pressed.

drawDistanceSensor(); // It is called only once, because in the next iteration of the loop, this above if statement will be false so this funtion won"t be called. This function will draw the graphics of the first example.

getDistance(); // Gets distance from the sensor and this function is repeatedly called while we are at the first example in order to print the lasest results from the distance sensor

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TFT (Thin Film Transistor) LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) dominates the world flat panel display market now. Thanks for its low cost, sharp colors, acceptable view angles, low power consumption, manufacturing friendly design, slim physical structure etc., it has driven CRT(Cathode-Ray Tube) VFD ( Vacuum Fluorescent Display) out of market, squeezed LED (Light Emitting Diode) displays only to large size display area. TFT LCD displays find wide applications in TV, computer monitors, medical, appliance, automotive, kiosk, POS terminals, low end mobile phones, marine, aerospace, industrial meters, smart homes, handheld devices, video game systems, projectors, consumer electronic products, advertisement etc. For more information about TFT displays, please visit our knowledge base.

There a lot of considerations for how to choose a most suitable TFT LCD display module for your application. Please find the check list below to see if you can find a right fit.

It is the start point for every project. There aretwo dimensions to consider: outside dimension (width, height, thickness) and AA (active area or pixel area). Orient Display’s standard product line ranges from 1.0” to 32”. Our OLED size can go down to 0.66” which fit for wearable devices.

Resolution will decide the clearance. Nobody likes to see a display showing pixel clearly. That is the reason for better resolution, going from QVGA, VGA to HD, FHD, 4K, 8K. But higher resolution means higher cost, power consumption, memory size, data transfer speed etc. Orient Display offers low resolution of 128×128 to HD, FHD, we are working on providing 4K for our customers. For full list of resolution available, please see Introduction: LCD Resolution

TFT screen brightness selection is very important. You don’t want to be frustrated by LCD image washout under bright light or you drain the battery too fast by selecting a super brightness LCD but will be used indoor only. There are general guidance listed in the table below.

Orient Display offers standard brightness, medium brightness , high brightness, and high end sunlight readable IPS TFT LCD display products for our customers to choose from.

If the budget is tight, TN type TFT LCD can be chosen but there is viewing angle selection of either 6 o’clock or 12 o’clock. Gray scale inversion needs to be taken of carefully. If a high-end product is designed, you can pay premium to select IPS TFT LCD which doesn’t have the viewing angle issue.

It is similar to viewing angle selection, TN type TFT LCD has lower contrast but lower cost, while IPS TFT LCD has much high contrast but normally with higher cost. Orient Display provides both selections.

Normal TFT LCD displays provide wide enoughtemperature range for most of the applications. -20 to 70oC. But there are some (always) outdoor applications like -30 to 80oC or even wider, special liquid crystal fluid has to be used. Heater is needed for operating temperature requirement of -40oC. Normally, storage temperature is not an issue, many of Orient Display standard TFT display can handle -40 to 85oC, if you have any questions, feel free to contact our engineers for details.

Power consideration can be critical in some hand-held devices. For a TFT LCD display module, backlight normally consumes more power than other part of the display. Dimming or totally shutdown backlight technology has to be used when not in use. For some extreme power sensitive application, sleep mode or even using memory on controller consideration has to be in design. Feel free to contact our engineers for details.

High Level Interfaces: Orient Display has technologies to make more advanced interfaces which are more convenient to non-display engineers, such as RS232, RS485, USB, VGA, HDMI etc. more information can be found in our serious products. TFT modules, Arduino TFT display, Raspberry Pi TFT display, Control Board.

If you can’t find a very suitable TFT LCD Display in our product line, don’t be discouraged. The products listed on our website is only small part of standard products. We have thousands of standard products in our database, feel free to contact our engineers for details.

If you like to have a special display, Orient Display is always flexible to do partial custom solution. For example, to modify the FPC to different length or shape, or use as fewer pinouts as possible, or design an ultra-bright LCD display, or a cover lens with your company logo on it, or design an extreme low power or low cost TFT display etc. our engineers will help you to achieve the goals. The NER cost can start from hundreds of dollars to Thousands. In rare case, it can be tens of thousands of dollars.

A fully custom TFT LCD panel can have very high NRE cost. Depending on the size of the display, quantity and which generation production line to be used. The tooling cost can start from $100,000 to over $1M.