Buying a new TV? Get ready for a barrage of acronyms

A friend recently asked me for advice regards buying a new TV. This happens quite regularly, and I always reply first with two key questions: 'How much do you want to spend?' and 'How big do you want it?'

Unsurprisingly, the answers are often 'a few hundred quid' and 'no bigger than 40in' – it seems we're not all rearranging our living rooms around 65in tellies...

Anyway, I recommended a couple of options. 'Thanks,' came the response, 'I've been getting a bit confused with all this 4K, HDMI, HDR stuff.'

Well quite. Our home cinema world is riddled with techspeak. Sometimes I wonder if it's been deliberately designed to confuse.

Take '4K', for example. This terminology has been around for years, and you'll see it plastered all over retailer and manufacturer websites. But does everyone actually know what it means? Do some people perhaps think '4K' is just an update on '3D'? And why is it better than 1080p?

There are acronyms wherever you look. HDMI, HDCP, HDR, USB, LED, LCD, ALLM, VRR, HFR, DLP, MQA, MP3, DVD, FPS... I remember when Blu-ray first launched and I thought the name was beyond idiotic. Now I appreciate it for actually being a word.

What's in a name?
New this year is Mini LED, which essentially means an LED TV using much smaller LEDs than before. It's a potentially problematic name, as someone reading the phrase 'Mini LED TV' might imagine it refers to just a very small TV. You'll also see it written as MiniLED and Mini-LED and mini LED.

Samsung, as is its want, seems to be avoiding the Mini LED nomenclature altogether, preferring to go with Neo QLED branding for its new 2021 models. Rival Korean TV maker LG, meanwhile, is opting for QNED. This refers to, I think, Quantum NanoCell Emitting Diodes, but it might as well mean Queen's New Elephant Dilemma. Still it sounds like a progression from Samsung's plain, old-fashioned QLED, doesn't it? And that's the idea.

The job of me (and you) therefore becomes a little harder each year. When friends ask us for AV – sorry, audio-visual – advice, we need to have expanded our knowledge base and come up with new plain English explanations of technological developments, because it seems the manufacturers themselves sometimes can't be bothered.

Alternatively, just stick to the two magic questions. Get the answers to 'How much do you want to spend?' and 'How big do you want it?', and you'll often find all other considerations sort themselves out.

Fuzzy logic
In other news, I discovered last month that I've raised a resolution snob. My seven-year-old son has been spending quite a lot of time watching Disney+ and ended up perusing some of the House of Mouse's vintage 'toons. No sooner had I thought he was settled in for a half-hour or so of child-friendly slapstick entertainment came the announcement that he didn't want to watch them.

'Why not?'

'They're weird.'


'I dunno. They're just all really fuzzy.'

And that's probably why small TVs still sell.