In our last blog, we talked about practical things to consider when purchasing a new television… now let’s get a little more technical.
Television technology has evolved from giant boxes that weighed as much as a refrigerator to displays so thin you wonder where they put everything.
The picture quality has improved tremendously. Unfortunately, so has the industry’s ability to confuse people.
OLED, QLED, QD-OLED, Mini-LED, RGB, HDR, 4K, 8K… the TV industry has never met an acronym it didn’t like.
Let’s sort through some of this alphabet soup and explain what these technologies actually do, without requiring an engineering degree or a decoder ring.
First, Let’s Talk About Black Levels
One of the most important characteristics of a great television is its ability to reproduce black. Why? Contrast!
Contrast—the difference between the darkest and brightest parts of an image—is a major contributor to how realistic and dimensional a picture looks. If you leave your TV on but turn the source off, the TV is still creating an image, albeit a black one… this is as black as your TV and picture can get.
Imagine watching a movie scene at night. On a lesser television, the black sky will look more dark gray. On a great display, the sky looks black while the stars remain bright and detailed… and on that great set, you’ll see what’s lurking in the shadows. Additionally, the whole color palette is derived from the ability to create accurate black. If black is off, so is the rest of the color spectrum.
That doesn’t mean you should go into the settings and max out the contrast and brightness. Let’s talk about the settings a bit.
Picture Menu Settings
Most TVs come out of the box set to “Vivid” in the picture settings. This is also how the big-box stores display them. Sure, it’s bright, but you may need a welding mask if you plan to watch longer than 10 minutes. Vivid causes all kinds of picture issues and will shorten the life of the TV if left selected. You have a couple of options: pick one of the preset settings that fits you and your environment, get a setup disc, or have a professional perform the setup.
The Alphabet of TV Technologies
OLED – Organic Light-Emitting Diode
With OLED, every individual pixel produces its own light and can turn completely off. This delivers outstanding black levels, excellent contrast, and generally exceptional off-angle viewing.
My Take: Movies have great depth if you can control the room light and glare.
QLED – Quantum-Dot Light-Emitting Diode
Most QLED televisions are LCD displays with LED backlighting and a quantum-dot layer. These dots help produce accurate, saturated colors, particularly at higher brightness levels. While they don’t reach the black levels of OLED, advanced models feature local dimming to help improve contrast.
My Take: Not a huge fan. Glare is handled by filtering the screen—you know, like those truck-stop sunglasses. There is a significant difference in premium models, but at that point, you’re in the RGB price point.
QD-OLED – Quantum-Dot OLED (OLED and QLED Combined)
Rather than relying on a conventional LCD backlight, QD-OLED uses OLED light sources and quantum dots to produce the image. This offers much-improved black levels, excellent viewing angles, and impressive color performance. Think of it as OLED’s excellent contrast combined with the color advantages associated with quantum dots.
My Take: It’s a premium-priced technology, worth considering when picture quality is the priority. However, with the advent of RGB technology, it may get kicked to the curb soon.
Mini-LED – Miniature Light-Emitting Diode
This isn’t a different type of panel technology, but rather a more advanced way of backlighting an LCD TV. By using much smaller LEDs, it creates more local dimming zones. These zones can brighten or darken different areas independently, improving contrast and reducing the grayish blacks associated with less sophisticated LCD sets. Mini-LED still doesn’t have the individual-pixel control of OLED.
My Take: Great bang-for-the-buck tech. It handles bright rooms well and offers much-improved black levels compared to traditional LED.
RGB LED – Red, Green, Blue Light-Emitting Diode
Red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light used to create a TV image. Traditional LED and Mini-LED televisions generally use white or blue-based backlighting systems. RGB TVs use separate red, green, and blue LEDs, allowing more precise control of light color to deliver greater color volume, brightness, and black levels.
My Take: A huge leap forward, especially in 85”+ sizes. Manufacturers have struggled to make XXL TVs look as good as their under-85” counterparts—one reason we usually saw the 98” category filled with less-than-top-line models. If you don’t know this by now, you may have nodded off a few times! With black levels being so important, take the Sony 115” 90 Series True RGB as an example: when you turn the source off, the screen is virtually as black as the bezel. Now that is black level!
Resolution: 1080p, 4K, 8K
Resolution describes how many pixels make up the image, as well as the aspect ratio that defines screen dimensions. TVs were 4:3 (4 units wide by 3 units high) prior to the high-definition standard, then shifted to 16:9. Movies are natively wider than our TV standard, leading to black bars… or the ultimate slap in the face: “This movie has been formatted to fit your screen,” a line we’ve all seen on broadcast TV. This just means they chopped off parts of the picture to make it fit.
A 1080p display has approximately 2 million pixels, a 4K display approximately 8.3 million, and an 8K display approximately 33 million.
More pixels don’t automatically mean a better picture… screen size, viewing distance, source quality, contrast, and video processing all influence what you ultimately see. Keep in mind, native 8K content is still extremely rare—mostly limited to high-end PCs, select console features, or dedicated media players like Kaleidescape.
HDMI – High-Definition Multimedia Interface
HDMI refers to the cables, inputs, and outputs used to transmit uncompressed digital audio and video.
HDCP 2.1 – High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection
This is digital copy protection encrypted on electronics and cables to prevent piracy. Why are we talking about it here? Because HDMI 2.1 features updated HDCP revisions (like HDCP 2.2 and 2.3). If you purchase a new TV, it will support the latest standards, but your AV receiver, cables, or older source devices might run an older version. Here’s the fun part: it may work with occasional handshaking glitches, especially when trying to watch protected content from major media networks.
HDR – High Dynamic Range
HDR allows compatible televisions to display a greater dynamic range between dark and bright areas, along with richer color. Of course, a television advertising HDR support doesn’t necessarily mean it has the actual peak brightness or contrast capabilities to reproduce HDR well.
It’s a little like putting a racing stripe on a minivan. The stripe doesn’t make it faster.
A good rule of thumb for major brands like Sony, Samsung, and LG: the higher the model series, the better these enhancements perform. If it’s a cheap TV, they cut corners somewhere.
Refresh Rate and Dynamic Contrast Ratio
Refresh Rate
Measured in hertz (Hz), refresh rate indicates how many times per second the display updates the image on the screen. 60Hz used to be the default, but it often created motion blur, especially during fast live sports. 120Hz is the preferred native rate and usually the first key separator between entry-level and high-performance TVs. What about advertised “240Hz” or effective motion rates? Often, these use motion smoothing software that causes more artifacts than benefits, so we usually turn those features off.
Dynamic Contrast Ratio
Dynamic contrast automatically adjusts backlight brightness based on the scene. To put this nicely… it’s mostly pure marketing fluff.
DTS and Dolby
DTS and Dolby are audio encoding formats and enhancement technologies found on TVs, AV receivers, and streaming services.
Having a DTS or Dolby badge isn’t an automatic guarantee of incredible sound; it simply indicates adherence to a licensing standard.
Most built-in TV speakers sound terrible! Everyone wanted TVs to be sleek, ultra-thin, and bezel-free. So what happened to the speakers? Manufacturers had to make them tiny and position them on the back—echoing between plastic and drywall—or try using the screen glass itself. No wonder so many viewers rely on closed captions!
Did that sound like a rant? Good!
There are a couple of exceptions. Loewe, a German manufacturer, builds high-quality forward-firing speaker bars right across the bottom. And models like the Samsung Frame, which have a slightly thicker chassis, manage better-than-average built-in audio—just don’t mount it too flush against an overhanging mantel.
So, What to Buy?
There isn’t one technology that’s best for every situation.
Technology, video processing, glare handling, viewing angle, overall panel quality, and of course the price make significant differences between televisions that look similar on paper.
My Final Advice
Don’t buy the acronym—buy the picture! If you find yourself standing in front of that wall of displays at a big-box store wondering whether you need OLED, QLED, QD-OLED, Mini-LED, or RGB, remember that you’re buying something to enjoy football and movies on—not launching a spacecraft or staring at a demo loop of rotating fruit.
At Sellhorst Security & Sound, we believe in having a trusted partner to demystify the jargon, understand your needs, and make the technology work seamlessly for the way you live. If you need help selecting the right TV and having it installed by the best in the business, contact us at 402-504-9527