A Call to All TV Manufacturers!

Our investigations into TV panel switching mainly targeted Samsung and Sony, as their LCD TVs are particularly popular at the moment. However, no TV manufacturer is innocent in all this, as each and every one of them switches panels in LCD TVs to varying extents. For us here at DigitalVersus that's just not acceptable!

When will manufacturers realise that changing the panel in a TV changes the product entirely?

Some will argue that the 'electronics' inside a TV are much more important than the screen technology, notably with reference to technology such as Sony's Bravia Engine, etc. We, however, don't agree! The screen has a huge role to play in deciding the overall quality of a TV.

Changing the panel affects:

• responsiveness,
• viewing angles,
• colours,
• depth of black,
• energy consumption,
• input lag,
• gamma (whether the image looks too dark or too light),
• light homogeneity.

So how can one given TV equipped with panels based on different types of technology be supposedly identical? It just doesn't wash.

50% difference between two screens in the same product!

Our sister site already spoke out about this when investigating panel switching in monitors a few years ago, but now we're saying it louder and clearer than ever before, as consumers' expectations of display quality have moved up a level. A test we carried out showed the differences between two versions of the same TV to be huge. In fact, we saw a 50% difference in contrast between models of the same TV equipped with different kinds of panel technology!

So we're appealing to all TV manufacturers out there: LG, Loewe, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba at al. Please make one model of TV with one panel. If for any reason you change the panel, please change the name of the product.

> TV Reviews: Compare 40'', 42'', 46'' and 47'' Full HD TVs

PS: Maybe manufacturers would get the message if they were bombarded with letters and e-mails from disgruntled users (over to you!). Maybe they'd change their ways if other tech news and reviews sites got involved (Engadget, CNET, Tom's Hardware, TechRadar etc. plus specialist TV sites). Maybe they'd really sit up and take notice if if Which? or BBC Watchdog picked up the story ...



> TV Panel Switching: Findings from 2010, Hopes for 2011 : See all news

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