LED There Be Confusion
2009 August 28
By Paul Gray – Director, European TV Research, DisplaySearch
As we have discussed, Samsung’s claim to LED TV has been somewhat adventurous. In the UK, promotional content like this has been raising eyebrows:
Figure 1: Samsung LED TV Ad
Now the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has judged that the claim breaches UK advertising law. Advertising in the UK has to be “Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful” and the ASA decided that, as the display was not comprised totally of LEDs, they were misleading, which the ASA defines as follows:
- Advertising is likely to be considered misleading if, for example, it contains a false statement, description, illustration or claim about a material fact or characteristic. Material characteristics include price, availability and performance. Any ambiguity which might give a misleading impression must be avoided.
- Even if everything stated is literally true, an advertisement may still mislead if it conceals significant facts or creates a false impression of relevant aspects of the product or service.
Samsung will have to rewrite its UK advertisements and revise its LED TV campaign.
I imagine that setmakers claiming 200 Hz for solutions with scanning backlights will also be reviewing their advertising copy.
So interesting, Customers are being cheated.
It was quite obvious from the onset that they were purposely trying to sabotage the upcoming true LED Tv’s by not including the words ‘Backlit LCD’ in between LED and TV.
The still could have spun the positives:
- reduced power
- reduced form factor
- increased contrast ratios (when non linear)
without coming across as manipulative to those in the know.
To continue, however, it’s not as though I’m not going to buy their product.. If it’s the best out there that I can afford, then I’ll buy it, despite what they do to the less informed. I pledge allegiance to technology, not necessarily integrity..
I was misled myself first time I saw it in the shop, and so were all of my friends. I honestly thought that the tiny pixels were indeed LEDs until I researched on it on the web. The basis for calling plasma and LCD TVs as they are is because their panels “ARE” plasma and LCDs. On the same basis most people thought that LED TVs have LED panels. Anyhow, so they are LCD panels with LED backlight…ok. Samsung may not have intended to mislead consumers but we were indeed misled.
There is a bright side, though. Using LED as backlight for LCD panels do have very good benefits including contrast, power consumption and small footprint. It could probably be the standard in the next generation of LCD TVs. But prices are still a little too steep at the moment. Hope it goes down…soon.
I think that prices will fall fast, probably faster than most expect. If for no other reason, the prices of LED emitter chips is on a rapid decline – at a semiconductor industry innovation rate. Add in the currently hyper-competitive TV market and the cost benefits of innovation will be passed to consumers very rapidly.
Quite probably this is the last battle between a glass-and-metal technology and semiconductors. Semis won against thermionic valves and CRTs. I know where my bets are placed.