Thanks for checking out our 47 LED TV site. We’ll be featuring information on every model and brand of 47 inch LED TV that’s released. The first thing we’d like to do is to clear up some confusion regarding exactly what an LED TV is and isn’t. There’s no doubt that some, if not all, of the manufacturers have contributed to this confusion with their marketing.

Most manufacturers call these televisions ‘LED TVs’, but many experts claim that description is misleading, because while they do contain light emitting diodes or LEDs, they are still basically an LCD set, being that they still use LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, just as LCD TVs have done for the past decade. While true LED displays do exist, they’re really not used for TVs yet. Well, you could probably claim that Sony’s OLED (organic light emitting diode) set qualifies, but at a list price of around $2500 for an eleven inch set, that hardly qualifies as your typical consumer television.

Anyway, if they still use conventional LCD screens, why are these sets called LED TVs? Well, every LCD TV needs a source of light for the screen. In conventional LCD sets, that light’s provided by CCFLs (cold cathode fluorescent lamps). These are rather large and they preclude any fine adjustments in the color levels on the screen.  Replacing the CCFLs with LEDs has a number of advantages, and that’s why the ‘LED TVs’ have been so widely anticipated, even if their name is somewhat misleading.

There are a couple of variations in the manner in which the LED bulbs can be positioned behind the LCD screen. One way is called edge-lighting, which is when the LEDs are placed around the perimeter of the screen. The great advantage of this method is that it allows the TV to be made extremely thin. Some of these TVs are only a barely over an inch deep. Hanging one of these on the wall can present a very striking profile – similar to a hanging a painting.

However, If the LEDs are spread across the back of the screen, while not permitting quite such a thin set, they do allow much more localized control of light levels. This technique is called ‘local dimming’. It’s said to permit the color levels, especially the blacks, to come close to the picture quality inherent in plasma televisions. While in the past LCDs haven’t been able to go any blacker than a dark grey, the local dimming permitted by the small size of the LED bulbs lets certain parts of the screen be made very very dark – although this lighting control doesn’t extend down to the pixel level as with plasma, which is the main reason that plasmas provide such excellent black reproduction.

All HD LED TVs are very energy efficient. You’ve probably read media reports regarding the advantage LED bulbs have over fluorescents when it comes to electricity consumption, and it shows up well in LED televisions. The LED sets do have further environmental advantages, such as the fact that they use less raw materials due to their thinner profile, requiring less fossil fuels to transport, and they contain no mercury (CCFLs do have small amounts of mercury).

The 47″ LED TV is large enough to impress the most finicky viewer while at the same time being not so large that it overwhelms most people’s living quarters. Check out all the info we’ve got on this website and find the 47 LED TV to fit your needs and budget.