Well it's about time somebody out there in electronics manufacturing is doing their bit. To my mind its still not enough but it's a start!
By the way if you are eviromentally concious you could easily today be running your TV of Solar panels! There is an $8,000 Government rebate being offered to anybody in Australia who wants to do their bit.
PLEASE READ ON
For the 1.6 billion people living in areas without utility-supplied electricity, Sharp has designed a TV that can get 100% of its power from the sun. The company plans to exhibit the 26-inch LCD prototype at the Hokkaido Toyako Summit, or G8 Summit, in Hokkaido, Japan, on July 7-9.
The TV uses about one-fourth the power and has about one-third the annual energy consumption of a conventional CRT TV with the same screen size. Compared to today´s LCD TVs, the low-power prototype uses about one-third the power, and about one-half the annual energy consumption.
This extremely low power consumption allows the TV to be powered from one of Sharp´s triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules, with a surface area of about the same size as the LCD screen. The company plans to market the TV and solar energy system as a combination pair.
The technology could bring TV to the 1.6 billion people worldwide who live off the grid, improving their lives not just with entertainment, but also access to news and information. The company predicts that environmentally-conscious consumers would also be interested in such a product.
Besides the low-power TV prototype, Sharp will also exhibit other energy-saving technologies at the G8 Summit, including a 57-inch AQUOS TV, a solar-LED lighting module, and a super-thin (20-mm) 65-inch LCD TV that uses about half the annual energy consumption of conventional LCD TVs.
In addition, the company will display a semi-transparent "see-through" solar cell module. Developed with a laser-trimming process to create large numbers of optically transparent slits over the surface of the cell, the modules could be used as architectural elements, such as in skylights and curtain walls.
MAXTV have introduced some informative Video Below
About display devices
Fixed pixel displays are LCDs, Plasmas and projectors
A fixed-pixel display is any HD TV or monitor that uses pixels to produce an image.
The rules a fixed pixel display goes by are:
No matter the resolution of the source material, such as VHS, DVD or HD TV, a fixed-pixel display will always scale the source material or picture to fit its native resolution.
If the incoming source has more pixels than the display's native resolution, some visible detail and sharpness is lost, however often what you're left with still looks good.
If the incoming source has less pixels than the native resolution, you're not getting any extra sharpness from the television's pixels. In other words if you play a VHS movie on a HD TV it will not look any good plus most movies on VHS cassette are in a 4:3 aspect ratio.
Picture Quality
According to the Imaging Science Foundation, the most important aspect of picture quality is contrast ratio.
Display resolution (probably the most talked about aspect of display devices) comes fourth behind colour saturation and colour accuracy.
So what to look for in a display aside from the size:
The highest contrast ratio
The highest colours
The best colour accuracy
The highest Display resolution
All at the price I want to pay
Above all trust your eyes. If you're out there shopping take your favourite movie (preferrably not an animation) with you and ask the sales assistant to hook up the best player using the best connection from that source to the best connection of the display. See for yourself.
Put it this way, if you are taking the step from the humble Tube TV to a HD plasma or HD LCD, it is a big one. The wow factor is there even for the base models, however if you already have a high definition display, upgrading to an even higher definition screen can get harder to appreciate because the difference in resolution diminishes. A higher definiton only becomes noticeable if your upsizing to a larger TV and are sitting closer.
The next thing you should look at is inputs and how many of each. Starting from best to worst:
HDMI
Component
S video
Composite
Source devices
(DVD players, DVD recorders, Digital TV, set top boxes and Surround sound amplifiers)
"What goes in is what comes out"
At the moment the top output for a DVD player is 1080p,1080 stands for 1080 lines per inch the P stands for progressive scan. The only devices capable of outputting that resolution are blue ray disc players and other HD DVD players. The only display devices capable of displaying this type of resolution are true HD Screens which at the moment cost a pretty penny.
Don't worry if you have established a large movie library already on DVD most of these source devices are or will be reverse compatible so you will be able to play your old discs on them.
Progressive-scan DVD player's. Channel Seven, ABC and SBS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Analog and regular TV
Up to 576 lines
All
No
No
No
TV display resolution
We've looked at the source, now let's look at the televisions. As we mentioned above, all fixed-pixel LCD's and plasma's etc scale the incoming resolutions to fit the available pixels, discarding information if they have fewer pixels and interpolating information if they have more pixels than the source.
Native resolution
Frequency
TV types
1,920x1,080
Expensive and rare high-end televisions
Flat-panel LCD; DLP, LCD, and LCoS projection
1,366x768
Common in all screen sizes
Flat-panel LCD; 50-inch plasma
1,280x72
Common in rear-projection but not flat-panels
DLP, LCD, and LCoS projection
1,024x768
most common plasma resolution
37- and 42-inch plasma
852x576
found in budget models
37- and 42-inch plasma
Basically put, match the source output quality with the display quality and there you have it.
Another important thing to consider is screen size. The further back you sit the better a picture looks. In other words unless you like looking at the pixels dancing about the screen its not a good idea to put a large screen in a tiny room unless the TV is true High definion capable of at least 1080i coupled with an equal output device pumping out the same.
