What is Banding when used in LCD HDTV productss review?

Question

I am shopping for a LCD HDTV and am finding that the Sharp Aquos model -LC52D62U or LC60C52U are quite good.
When I am reading products review in Yahoo Tech, one of the recent owners said that Banding is bad or poor.
What does Banding mean?
Thank you, Lenny

Answer 1

Banding is seen when the Whole picture looks like it's "a set of stripes that make up the picture"

In other words your picture looks like there are subtle lines drawn on the LCD separating large section of the whole picture into bands.....

It can be quite distracting.....

Answer 2

LCDs have only 8 bits of color resolution so they can display about 16 million of color (Plasma can display 1 billion or more).
In addition, a panel may have additional constrains on what colors it can display (called color gamut).

This is a lot of colors, but in some scenes, it may not be enough.
Say you have a blue sky background which varies from light blue to dark blue. In a perfect world, you should see a very smooth transition between all the color variations of blue.

If you have banding, it will be like a "rainbow" or discreet bands of color, except all the colors of this rainbow will be minor variations of blue.