Flat TV's multimedia ability

Flat TV's multimedia ability

We have been watching movies on VCDs with our TV sets or PCs. Now we can even use a flat TV as a screen for our PC. We call it "multimedia flat TV". The flat TV's digital technology and compatibility with other digital devices helps make this possible. We can also surf the Internet, play computer games, or even edit pictures taken on digital camcorders or digital cameras.

A flat TV has some advantages when compared to the PC monitor. First, a flat TV has a perfectly flat screen with virtually no glare. Unlike the concave or convex screen found in most conventional TVs, the flat picture tube displays a picture with no distortion. A flat screen is truly flat.

The flat TVs most important feature is its 100 Hz digital scan. This allows a flat TV to offer far more than a conventional TV can. The secret lies in its onboard digital scan field doubler. Unlike conventional sets which display pictures at 50 fields per seconds, flat TV doubles that rate to 100. What is the result? We can watch a steadier and smoother picture that is easy on the eyes. It allows us to have the visual experience at its best.

Another advantage a flat TV has is its progressive scan mode feature. This feature produces high quality graphic images, making it perfect as a PC monitor. The progressive scan mode is a major advantage when displaying text information. When we connect a multimedia flat TV to a PC, the progressive scan mode adapts automatically.

This progressive scan mode has a better picture resolution compared to interlaced scanning. While interlace scanning scans the odd lines first and then the even lines, 25 times a second, the progressive scanning scans all the lines in order, 50 times a second. Like the 100 Hz digital scan, the result is an incredibly stable and smooth picture. Progressive scan is also why computer monitor images are completely stable.

Another feature is the flat TV's color tone control. Here we can adjust the white balance tones by using the OSG menu. Some flat TVs, like the Planos series from Samsung, offer five levels of white balance tones, namely cool 2, cool 1, normal, warm 1, warm 2. Cool 1 and 2 are warm and bluish tones, while warm 1 and 2 are reddish tones. Samsung introduced this series (29A6 model for example) in Indonesia in March 2001.

Flat TVs also have digital comb filter and digital noise reduction (DNR) features. These features provide superb digital processing. The digital comb filter analyzes the incoming video signals and "comb' the chrominance (separate color parts) and luminance (black and white parts), which sometimes get mixed together causing a lose in color accuracy. Through this filtering process, the picture quality on the screen is very close to its original quality. In addition, DNR minimizes dot crawl distortion and color noise.

This is what TV manufacturers can do on the visual side. But what about the sound quality? As a multimedia unit, the flat TV delivers great sounds with its Dolby Pro Logic Sound or DTS (Digital Theater Sound). It also has a powerful speaker system to boot. So now, we can insert a VCD into a PC and watch it on a flat TV.

Isn't that great! (Gatot)