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What Does 32 Inch TV Really Mean?

If you’ve been confused by the sheer number of TVs all claiming to be a particular size but all having many different shapes and sizes in real life, then maybe this will help shed some light on your problem.

For years, the major TV manufacturers have agreed on a single way to measure their screen sizes. That method was to measure the diagonal of the screen in inches and use that as the main figure quoted for the television size.

Now, that sounds easy, but what was happening in reality was that they were measuring the diagonal of the maximum size of the front of those big old cathode ray tubes that used to be in the telly. What that did was give them a lot of leeway in the actual size that you, the customer, could actually see because the tube itself was wrapped in a frame (to hold it in) that often ate into the size you could really see. So, televisions with a small surround often delivered more of a 32 inch screen than others.

All this gets even more complicated now we have 32 inch widescreen tvs. The old diagonal measure is still being used but the frames have got a bit smaller since LCD screens are easier to hold. The new problem comes from the fact that we have all gone widescreen.

Imagine the old style screen having a 32 inch diagonal….now rotate that diagonal a bit so that it goes across a new widescreen tv. Doing that has made the screen fit the new 16:9 (that is 16 across and 9 down) kind of shape but has flattened the diagonal a bit. So in fact what you have now is a TV with a slightly smaller height, a slightly larger width and the same 32 inch diagonal as before.

That is why folk moving to a widescreen TV from a traditional 4:3 screen often buy the next bigger model up, as they are used to the picture having a certian height from where they are viewing.

Buying a New 32 Inch TV? What Does It All Mean?

I realise that I have thrown a load of terms around in my summaries that might confuse some people. Even if that’s not the case, I feel like i need to make it clear just why some of these things are important anyway.

So here, for your viewing delight (maybe!) is a list of features commonly called out by manufacturers of modern TV’s.

• HD – High Definition. Bigger, faster, better than old-style telly, right?

• HD Ready  – An indicator that the tv is capable of the lowest high resolution standard. This is also commonly referred to as 720p, see below for what this means in itself.

• Full HD  -  A higher resolution standard than 720p, supported by many of the newer 32 inch widescreen tvs. This can be either 1080i or 1080p, again see below for these definitions.

• HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) – A connection standard. This is one of the ways to get a signal into your tv from other sources, like DVD’s, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players. This connection standard defines what cables you will need and provides a better quality, digital connection than earlier cable types like SCART. Some TV manufacturers are using this connectivity to all home devices to be controlled by one handset.

• Dynamic Contrast – An LCD TV can show a range of brightnesses from light to dark, but the maximum available in most devices is a range of 1:1000 (the brightest is 1000 times brighter than the darkest). Unfortunately, the human eye can cope with a much bigger range (something like 1:20,000) and so TV images don’t look as rich as the real thing. Manufacturers try to get round this by working out if the picture is mainly light (or mainly dark) and moving their 1:1000 “window” of brightnesses up or down that bigger scale. This helps to give better results for the human eye.

• High Refresh Rate – An LCD screen needs to have the picture sent to it many times a second to get the appearance of a moving image. The problem comes when teh “pixels” that make up the picture fade away very slowly compared to how the image is changing. This produces a kind of blurring. Screens with high refresh rates have pixels that turn on and off very quickly, helping to eliminate that problem.

• High Frame Rate – Related to the previous point. An image is usually only updated 50 times a second (or 50Hz) on your screen. For fast-moving action, this might mean that a Ball (for example) has moved many pixels in the time in between – giving a jerky feel to the flow. TV’s offering a high frame rate try to cheat this limitation of the signal. They slide extra frames in between the normal 50 a second and cleverly calculate where the ball will have gone half-way between the normal frames.

• Freeview – Free to air broadcast of channels. This will replace the normal aerial-based channels – but still provides all the channels most people are used to, while expanding the choice.

• FreeSat – Similar to Freeview. FreeSat delivers its signal through a satellite dish and this is an extra cost in setting up this kind of TV. True High Definition channels are already being sent through this method.

• Optical Audio Output – A way to get the audio signal from yout TV to a larger home-entertainment system. Audio purists will use this method to get a very clean signal.

• 720p – The lowest HD standard. Provides a screen picture which is 1280×720 pixels (that is, the height of the image is 720 pixels). The “P” stands for “Progressive”. This means that the image is built in one continuous flow of pixels from top to bottom one line at a time with no gaps between

• 1080p – Regarded as Full HD. In this case, the image is 1920×1080 pixels. The “P” version is the same as that for 720p. If you see 1080i, this means “interlaced”. This works the same way as an old style TV, where every other line is sent to the screen then the others are sent, interleaving with the first ones. Your eyes see this as a solid picture, but many regard it as an inferior picture standard to 1080p

• LED TV – These newer models are actually still LCD televisions but they use white LED light to shine through the LCD to provide the brightness. They bring significant power savings and better localised contrast to the screens. They are also thinner than normal 32 inch widescreen tvs.

• OLED TV – Very rare so far. These are true  LED based televisions, where every pixel is actually an LED that can turn on or off for itself. They provide extrememly high contrast levels and even more power savings.

Choose a Manufacturer

Panasonic	Philips	LG
Samsung	Sony	Toshiba

32 Inch Widescreen TV

Welcome to 32 Inch Widescreen TV. If you, like me, have been looking around at different 32 inch tv’s trying to compare all their features, then I think you will find this site useful. I needed a new telly for Christmas, not too small (for my benefit) and not too large (to avoid marital strife!) and this is what I found as I looked around.

I have gathered together all the information I can find on most of the 32 inch lcd tvs in the UK so that you can compare their features. I have also collected as many comments as I could find from people on their opinions of the tv’s on each page. This is not meant to provide a final recommendation to you, as everyone has different tastes but hopefully you will get all the details you need. I have provided a link to the models on Amazon to get you started if you want to buy.

To get started , just click on a manufacturer and model on the right, or use the search panel if you want to search for particular things.