• HDTV technology continues to evolve and bring consumers better picture quality.tv control and tv 3 image by chrisharvey from Fotolia.com
  
  HDTV stands for high-definition television. Whether you prefer to watch sports, movies or just sitcoms, HDTVs come in a variety of different types to suit your needs. Choose among the older CRT models, high-contrast plasma, limited-glare LCD or large-screen rear-projection and front-projection, ideal for home theaters. While each type offers offers better resolution and detail than standard-definition TVs, each technology has its own advantages and disadvantages.
  
  

CRT

• The cathode ray tube (CRT) or picture-tube television uses scan lines and electronic beam spot sizes instead of pixels to display a picture. They give good picture quality, detail and color and have a long life span. Their disadvantages include: weight, size and limited screen size. Tube televisions are disappearing from the marketplace and few offer high-definition compatibility, says the website Cnet.
  
  

Plasma

• Plasma HDTVs offer a thin, sleek design and sharp picture quality, bright colors, deep blacks and wide viewing angles. They also provide excellent motion resolution, meaning that moving images don't blur. This is especially important to sports fans or action movie enthusiasts. Since plasma TVs employ a glass screen, they reflect light, making watching TV difficult on a sunny day or in brightly lit room. These televisions work best in pitch-black rooms.
  
  

LCD

• LCD TVs utilize cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) to light up the screen. This method of illumination results in light seeping through the pixels. The leaking light creates poor contrast and color when compared to a plasma TV. However, LED (light-emitting diode) backlit LCDs fix this problem and create better contrasts between dark and light. LED-backlit LCDs also use less power and produce less heat than CCFL-backlit LCDs, making them energy-efficient. Though LCDs no longer blur motion, they do produce a gliding effect which makes motion look almost too smooth. Depending on personal preference this can be a positive or a negative when considering a LCD television.
  
  

Rear-Projection

• Rear-projection HDTVs project pictures onto the screen from behind. While they come with large screens and low costs, they offer less-than-stellar picture quality. However, digital light projection (DLP) TVs, a type of rear-projection, give clear pictures with good contrast. Another form of rear-projection, liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) sets only have limited availability but offer sharp natural pictures on large screens.
  
  

Front-Projection

• Front-projection sets may offer moderate picture quality at a practical cost, but they require you to build the room around their large, adjustable screens. In essence, you must build your own mini-home theater.
  
  

Other Terms to Know

• Single video dots make up the entire picture on your television set (other than with a CRT sets) and are called pixels. The more pixels, the better the picture quality. Flat-panel TVs generally use plasma or LCD screens that are 2 or 3 inches thick. Bits per second, better known as bps, measures bit rate -- the rate at which information is transferred. Higher bit rates equal higher picture resolution. Bandwidth refers to how much data can be transmitted in a predetermined time range -- usually a second. Short for coder-decoder, the codec translates analog video and audio signals into a digital configuration so it can be transmitted. It can also convert digital signals into analog configurations,