What is the best technolgy for an HDTV? I have no idea what all the numbers mean.?

Question

Additionally, are there any brands better than others?

Answer 1

The 3 main technologies (Plasma, DLP, LED) are all mature and give a great picture and have great reliability. You cannot make a purchase decision based on this.

PLASMA: thin, on-the-wall screens. A bit more expensive than the others and you need to add $200 for a wall-bracket and perhaps professional installation if you want to hide the wires. Pioneer seems to be the leading brand here.

DLP & LCD: You can get LED's that hang on the wall, but most of the TV's are thinner, rear-projectors that are free-standing. This makes them cheaper and (in my opinion) more flexable. You can also get 50, 60 and 65 inch versions of these while Plasma tends to hover about 50" or the price skyrockets. Sony, Samsung, Sharp are all great names.

THE NUMBERS:

You want a unit that is 1080p internal if you want to future-proof your TV.

To save some money, you can go to 1080i (interlaced) and if money is really tight, there are lots of last years models that are 720 internally. (I have a 720 Samsung if you must know).

Answer 2

HDTV is about higher picture resolution. That means higher pixel and thus higher data-rate (note: it has to keep 27 picture persecond in order to keep smoothness of the video, in fact, HDTV run in a rate higher than 27 picture per second, it seems 34 pictures per second)

It was using digital format for transmission and receipt, that means less noise.

For U.S. Olive is the most popular, then MAG.
For Japanses brand, JVC seems good in a reasonable price (cheaper than other)
For Korean, Samsung and LG are good.

Neveretheless, most HDTV was developed based on TI DSP chip-set. Just a slight modification on software for imaging processing.