Plasma and LCD TV – Are Contrast Ratios Useful in Your Buying Decision?
People tend to get caught up with the numbers game when shopping around for that new flat screen television. Manufacturers love this fact and they play it to the hilt in their marketing efforts. While most of the numbers they come up with are pretty significant and would directly relate to image quality and viewer experience (e.g. refresh rate, resolution, energy consumption, etc.), there are some features that have become meaningless throughout the years. Take, for example, the case of the contrast ratio. This number is being thrown around like it’s something that should be very important to TV buyers but the fact is, contrast ratios just do not matter anymore. By definition, contrast is the difference between the brightest and darkest areas of an image. The higher the contrast, the bigger that difference is. A contrast ratio of 5000:1 should mean that the brightest areas are 5000 times as bright as the darkest areas. The problem with the contrast ratio is that there is no agreed upon
