Many people feel that Plasma TVs offer superior picture quality to LCD TVs.  While many companies are getting out of the production of plasma display panels LCD manufacturers are looking to fill this gap while continue to evolve their product.  One such way LCD HDTVs are improving is the use of local dimming.

According to Hometheatermag.com:

Using LEDs, you can dim specific areas of the backlight to go along with what is happening with the video. In other words, you can dim certain areas of the screen, while keeping other areas bright. In the simplest form, picture a split screen with black on one side and white on the other. Local dimming would allow the LEDs on the black side to be off and the LEDs on the white side to be lit. The result is a fantastic, legitimate contrast ratio, along with possible energy savings and a host of other potential benefits.

And according to Consumer Reports:

Local dimming divides the screen into 128 segments that can be lighted or dimmed independently, minimizing light leaking into dark parts of an image.

Below is an example of how using local dimming can improve picture quality.

LED HDTVs aren’t to the point of affordability for millions of people to start buying them but LCD televisions with local dimming sounds like a great second best.  As the use of this technology becomes more widespread expect more and more people to miss older plasma televisions less and less.

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