TV Tech Terms You Need to Know When Buying a New Television

0:00 If you're researching which TV you should buy,

0:01 you can quickly find that there's a lot of jargon out there,

0:04 and a lot of times its meaning is not readily apparent.

0:08 For instance, what does BT.2020 even mean?

0:10 Today, I'm going to delve into some of the technical terms used to describe TVs,

0:15 especially in some of their advertising,

0:17 and help you get a better idea of what to look for.

0:20 Most of the terms have been in place since the old days of CRTs, like this guy.

0:26 Screens still work in roughly the same way.

0:28 There are missive surfaces which display an image.

0:30 And so the terminology hasn't had to change much.

0:33 To be specific, I'm going to explain three TV concepts:

0:37 color, brightness, and gamma.

0:38 Before I started reviewing TVs, I didn't know about any of these things,

0:42 and I'm hoping I can make them a little easier for other people to grasp.

0:50 There are a bunch of different measures used to describe the brightness of a TV,

0:53 but the most common is Nits.

0:55 This measurement goes all the way back to CR TVs, like my old friend.

1:00 A nit is the amount of light that's being

1:03 emitted by a display and applies to almost any screen,

1:05 even phone screens, but not projectors.

1:07 Typical nit values for TVs are under the 1,000 mark,

1:11 but recent developments have meant that OLED TVs and LED

1:14 TVs can get to values of 3,000 or more.

1:17 At the extreme end, the 2026 TCL QM8L boasts a brightness of up to 6,000 nits.

1:22 And this is getting into the realm of the outdoor LED screens at ball games.

1:29 You might need to wear shades inside your home now, too.

1:36 Put simply, gamma is a measure of a TV's

1:39 brightness at all levels from very dark through to white.

1:42 It's a bunch of numbers, but the usual values you'll find are 2.2 and 2.4.

1:47 Where you'll see the most difference between

1:50 different gamma values is in shadow detail.

1:52 And when done right, it can reveal hidden details in previously dark areas.

1:56 At CNET, I use a value of 2.2,

1:59 which makes shadow detail a little easier to see, especially in a lit room.

2:04 It's also the value that Hollywood commonly uses.

2:06 On the other hand, 2.4 is used by many TV manufacturers in their movie modes,

2:11 but it's also pretty dark.

2:13 Even in a pitch black room, I think the 2.2 looks better.

2:17 You may see values lower than this, such as 2 or 1.8, 8.

2:20 But at those levels,

2:21 you'll start to lose black and the image will look washed out.

2:25 While HDR has its own equivalent in EOTF,

2:28 it's not configurable in the same way as gamma.

2:31 EOTF is designed to help a TV map itself to HDR content in real time.

2:36 While TVs do come with presets like HDR dark or HDR light,

2:40 which change the EOTF response,

2:42 most people don't need to worry about these values too much.

2:49 Ever been at a concert with big screens and seen that the stage

2:53 lights look different on the monitors than they do in real life?

2:56 That's an example of a poor color response or poor color gamut.

2:59 The cameras aren't able to replicate all the colors we can see naturally.

3:03 And yet, that's the ultimate goal for any TV,

3:06 to be indistinguishable from reality.

3:08 The most common terms used to describe color are

3:12 REC 709 for high definition and BT.2020 for 4K.

3:16 These determine how well a TV is able

3:18 to reproduce the colors in the source material,

3:20 and each one is represented by its own color gamut triangle.

3:24 Rex 709 is a hangover from the days of standard definition,

3:28 and it's able to display a total of 16.7 million colors.

3:32 Content made after 1990 will usually conform to Rex 709,

3:36 and most TVs made these days can reproduce all of these colors.

3:41 And that's why we need BT.2020.

3:43 It increases the number of colors from millions to over a billion.

3:46 This year, BT.2020 has come into the limelight as technologies like

3:50 micro RGB have boosted the number of colors a TV can display.

3:54 The manufacturers of these sets even use phrases

3:57 like hits 100% of BT2020 in their marketing.

4:00 With any TV, the number of colors it can reproduce is only half of the story.

4:04 It also needs to be accurate.

4:05 If a content creator wants you to see a specific shade of green,

4:09 then your TV should be able to show it.

4:11 The better a TV is at showing individual colors, the more accurate it is.

4:15 It doesn't help you if the only way your TV can get

4:18 to a bin in colors is if the TV just invents some of them.

4:21 So, that's three of the most common subjects

4:23 you'll find in any one of my CNET reviews.

4:25 I hope this has made it easier for you,

4:27 and I want to thank you so much for watching.

4:29 Check out cnet.com for more information, and I'll see you around like a CRT.

4:35 Dead square.