At its simplest definition, an LED display can be considered as a video display which uses light-emitting diodes to show or display a picture. This may sound very simplistic, but it is an accurate definition. Up until now LED displays have been predominantly used outdoors as signs and billboards as well as for lights on commercial vehicles such as busses and lorries. LED panels or displays can also be used as a form of light and some torches offer magnificently bright illumination using LEDs as their primary light source.

Now, LED displays essentially come in two flavours - conventional and surface-mounted device panels. Conventional LED displays basically amount to a set of discreet or individually mounted LED clusters of red, green and blue to form one pixel, often square in shape. These are evenely spaced over the whole display panel. SMD or surface-mounted device panels make use of red, blue and green diodes being mounted onto a chip which is then mounted onto a PC board. These diodes are incredibly small - in fact, smaller than a pinhead. With conventional LED displays, you will find that if you get too close to the panel or display, you will lose definition of the picture. These things are somewhat like a renneicense painting - better from far away so that our eyes can sort of blur out the distinction between the pixels and form a coherent image for us. SMD technology allows us to move in closer to the screen or panel and still maintain a sharp picture outline which obviously offers advantages.

Using LEDs in televisions
LEDs are in a sense the ultimate technology to use in televisions. The offer efficient performance as well as the ability to make thinner and lighter televisions, the advantages of which are obvious. The first use of LEDs in a flat panel TV screen was, believe it or not back in 1977 by one JP Mitchell. He created a prototype display panel that was a quarter inch thin - practically unheard of in those days. The prototype screen was monochrome because of the fact that there were no blue LEDs that were efficient enough to use in his television display and it is still working! Mitchell produced a scientific paper off the back of his research where he also mention that liquid crystal display or LCD televisions would be an excellent alternative to CRT televisions. It took over 30 years to get the point where Sony started using LEDs in their TVs despite this early and impressive use of the technology.

The advantages of using LEDs instead of CRTs in televisions is obvious - the technology allows for ultra-thin televisions to be manufactured which appeals to today's minimalist tech lifestyle. The LED based televisions also give better picture quality and allow for High Definition viewing that is just not possible on conventional television sets. Unfortunately, many of today's so called LED televisions are in fact LCD TVs which simply have some backlighting provided by LEDs. This is a common problem which can only confuse the consumer, brought about by the continual one-upmanship needed by audio-visual companies in their marketing campaigns.