Why viewing angles of a LCD TV are so important?
In the beginning, LCD displays were generally considered suitable for computer monitors and television sets with small screen sizes. These systems did not require much off-axis viewing as the viewer usually sits closer to the screen. When LCDs started to become an integral part of home theatre unit, the narrow viewing angles of older LCD TVs needed to be improved by the manufactueres. Wide viewing angles make the LCDs suitable for a large room where a large number of viewers can watch the pictures with uniform picture quality. Narrow viewing angles means you have to sit at right in front of the screen and another disadvantage of narrow viewing angles is that they do not allow much audience to watch the TV.
Viewing angle is another important spec that marks the performance a display device. Viewing angle of a LCD tells us how far we can sit away from its off-axis and still can have acceptable picture quality. Beyond the viewing angle on either side, the image becomes distorted and lacks colour saturation and contrast. This is because the TV sets which have narrow viewing angles tend to reflect more light towards the viewer but less light on either side. As a result, the viewer gets poor picture quality from the sides. Sometimes, the viewing angles of LCD TVs are measured in correlation with contrast ratio. That is, the viewing angle is the angle at which the contrast ratio LCD TV becomes 10:1 or less.
The viewing angle of flat screen is measured across the screen from one direction to another. The maximum viewing angle can be 180 degrees in the case of flat panel displays. Nowadays, the response time is quoted, considering both the horizontal and vertical axis of the view although viewing angle on the basis of horizontal axis carries much importance.
Modern LCDs have come with a few solutions for narrow viewing angles. One of them is to use Optically Compensated Bend (OCB) liquid crystals to eliminate of problem of narrow viewing angles. OCB enables the LCDs to have viewings angles more than 170 degrees. Nowadays, some manufacturers boast that their LCD TVs have viewing angles up to 178 degrees.
Related posts:
- Study reveals that viewing angles of LCDs are narrower than Plasmas
- Viewing Angle And Its Relevance On Good Video Output Quality
- Popular misconceptions about LCD TV
- Recent developments in LCD technology
- What is a LCD TV?