News ASA bans Samsung LED TV ads

i can recommend you to go to your favorite store and ask the clerk to show you a samsung led 6000 or 7000 next to another lcd ccfl or plasma with the same video input

 

[rant]
Steady there nelly! you DO get an unlimited connection with Virgin.
You pay a flat rate and you dont get charged any more regardless of how much you rape it. Not only that, they bung the speed up again after a couple of hours. Do your downloading during off peak times and you wont get throttled! Also if you really dont like it, change ISP. good luck finding an ISP that gives you the same service as Virgin does over POTS and DSL.
[/rant]
excuse me for the rant but i cant stand people going on about how crap virgin is blah blah blah. for the price its good value.

 

"good luck finding an ISP that gives you the same service as Virgin does"

I totally agree, if you're looking for a crappy service, you've chosen the right ISP....

 

Those adverts for teaching should be banned. I don't remember the kids in the school I went to being anything like as enthusiastic and well behaved as the ones in those ads. Very misleading.

 

Haven't even seen the ads, didn't know about the TV's in question, but do now. Guess that Samsung are happy either way

 

The control is too much jelly like.

 

Having seen these in action I can say that I will be holding out till they come down in price as they are the most beautiful image I have seen. I see no problem with them being called LED TV's as that is what makes them different from all the other ccfl lcd's out there. Honestly this suit seems rather pedantic.

But yes broadband advertising is utter crap in all it claims to be. If it says unlimited that should mean unlimited.

 

I'm surprised by some of the reactions on here. This is quite clearly a very positive step by the ASA as Samsung was completely misusing a term.

The simple fact of the matter is LED TVs are very different things to LED backlit ones. Obviously there's the billboard LED screens as mentioned but also OLED TVs are available and being much talked about as the technology of the future. This is quite clearly a case of Samsung trying to leverage this hype and use it to sell conventional LCD TVs.

Then there's the fact that you can also get local dimming LED backlit TVs, though trying to distinguish between the two technolgies (normal and local dimming LED backlighting) is probably beyond the means of a simple ad campaign so one could forgive them blurring the lines.

All that said, Samsung's new edge-lit LED TVs are some of the best LCD TVs I've ever seen. They have great viewing angles, superb colour rendition, incredible sharpness, very even backlighting, and impressive black levels. Not that I'd ever buy one over a plasma screen - LCDs still can't do motion properly.

 

totaly agree with this!! i have had no problems with virgin and probably never will. i have never been throttled by there speed! has always been totaly exceptable for the price!!!!!!

 

This article has been updated with an official comment from Samsung.

 

I know a lot of people that think Samsungs LED TVs have nothing to do with LCD technology. Even when you try to explain how they are technically LCDs, it takes a while for it to sink in.

I agree that the Samsung marketing technique of referring to their screens as 'LED TVs' is very misleading to the general public and it should stop.

It is similar to 'regular' LCDs being branded as 'CCFL TVs'. Nobody calls them that. The main technology is LCD, but it is backlit by Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps.

Back in the day when the superior TFT LCDs came out to replace STN LCD's, companies would advertize the screens as TFT screens instead of TFT LCD screens. So the general public became fooled into thinking that TFT was a completely separate technology from LCD and that LCD was old tech when in fact it was simply a different type of LCD. Even up to this day, I still hear people trying to convince me that a TFT screen is not an LCD.

 

So what the hell are you going to call actual, real LED TVs when you figure out how to make them?

 

remember this?
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/04/brightside_hdr_edr/1

im fairly certain they were the first to produce this tech, and its called IMLED - Individually modulated light emitting diode)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individually-modulated_LED

so i think their idea of calling this back light tech something misleading to presume it is a new type of screen tech is ludicrous. obviously the only difference is the back light. i can not see how they can just start calling these LED televisions when there are no LEDs used in creating the images. pisses me off.

 

edge lit leds still allow local dimming. so if batman walked in from lower left of screen, all the leds on the lower part of the left edge of the screen, and the left of the bottom edge of the screen will turn off. also for dark scenes all the leds will turn down much more than a ccfl would. which is why in all the review magazines real world contrast ratios are around 200,000 which competes with most plasmas. plus have the advantage leds will all turn on when needed making for brighter punchier images than plasma. watch the opening 10 seconds of dark knight on an edge lit led lcd. the sky is bright and punchy while the street and building windows are that beuatiful liquid black that plasmas have. only problem is if something dark in centre of screen in a bright scene, but thats rare. oled solve that one?

 

I work retail for a summer job, and trust me when i say people can be rather... dense when they purchase something. The ASA's point does hold merit...

Few days ago a customer came in to ask where we sold the '50" LG TV that supports only 720p'. if said average joe used his brain to figure out that every TV bigger than 42" was 1080p, we wouldnt have spent 15 mins trying to convince him it didnt exist, nor was it in our inventory.

Another lovely example was from today, when someone returned a bike with a tire that constantly lost pressure to the rear wheel (mind you this bike went out of stock weeks ago). Again, if said average joe used their brain, they would have realized that ANY tire on the market (including car tires) will lose pressure over a couple of weeks... I check tire pressure before I ride as one of my standard checks before leaving... my father checks the car tires on a weekly basis, and fills them back up as required as well.

 

Samsung were clearly attempting to use the fact their TV contains LEDs to mislead people into thinking that it was somehow better and different to an LCD screen, which is wrong.

 

Obviously nobody else in this thread has seen one of these TVs set up and displayed properly at a reputable high-end home theater electronics retailer. The image quality is far and away better than a traditional CCFL-backlit LCD TV. So much for the "no difference in image quality" argument.

As for trying to mislead the average consumer into thinking the TV is fundamentally different in operation, I've got news for all of you: the average consumer doesn't have the slightest clue as to how and LCD or Plasma TV differs in operation from a CRT TV. All they know is that they're thinner and newer and therefore "better".

You're right that the term "LED TV" implies that the panel is different, but WHO CARES! People who know that that's not the case understand the benefits, and the people who don't know couldn't care less.

Lastly, again, if the consumer is so uninformed and so lazy as to not make an effort to understand what they're buying, they deserve to be parted from their money.

 

I never knew this was the case with teh Samsung TVs. I thought they were proper LED TVs, instead of using an LCD they used LEDs. One of the reasons why I though they were so expensive.

Very misleading advertising.

 

The only difference that is readily apparent is the fact that the screen is still insanely bright, and that there's more bleeding in black screens.

 

All said and done, the term LED TV is a misnomer and the average consumer is easily misled into thinking that it is some new technology that promises quantum leaps in clarity, contrast, vividness of colors, great viewing angles etc. Color TV is a mature industry in a marketplace that is becoming ever more crowded - with new upstarts jostling for standing place with old timers and not-so-old timers. Profits for TV manufacturers have become razor-thin and, even negative for some. Hence the sheer desperation to find something to attract consumer interest -- even deploying the occasional hoodwinking via misleading information. After all who cares if the consumer finds out that his newly acquired "cutting-edge tech" LED TV is indeed the old LCD TV with a backlight that is lit by a bar of white LEDs instead of the usual CCFL ? The important thing is : the manufacturer has succeeded in persuading the consumer to part with his money - mission accomplished.

In reality, an "LED" TV may not always be superior to a conventional CCFL backlit LCD TV. Unknown to most people outside of the industry, it is extremely difficult to make consistent LEDs in white. There is a huge range of fluctuation in terms of brightness and color tinge in any production batch of white LEDs. Though there is a standard sorting procedure used by LED mfrs to grade brightness and color tinge (called variation in color coordinates), in reality every LED in the backlight array is different. Out of 100,000 TVs made, perhaps there is only one or two that would have the perfect LED backlight. From one end of the TV screen to the other, there will be bound to be variations in brightness and color tinge. And the brightness variation problem will get worse as time goes on, because as lower grade LEDs in the array are driven harder to compensate for their inherent lower brightness, their lives get shorter than the higher grade ones. Even this leads to uneven brightness across the screen.

In any batch of production of white LEDs, the range of so-called acceptable grades is really small, no more than 50% at best. This often leads to a supply crunch, as the other TFT LCD applications such as mobile phones and increasingly, monitor screens and notebook pcs, compete for white LED supplies. When push comes to shove, inevitably, TV manufacturers will have to compromise and start widening their "acceptable range" of grades. This eventually appears as less-than-satisfactory displays in the TVs.

It is claimed that "LED TVs" have higher NTSC color gamut, but this is again doubtful unless the display screen under test has that perfect backlight. Also, the color filters on the TFT LCD that makes up the screen are still the predominant factor in rendering color vividness. So dont be taken in so fast yet.

Apparently the main advantage with LED backlighting appears to be that it is more "green" and thus more environmental-friendly than the CCFL type. There are hazardous materials used inside the CFFL coatings and the mercury vapor that fills CCFL is also poisonous. Plus CCFL needs special electronic circuits called invertors to get them to light up. However, for the whole equation to be considered valid, one needs to evaluate the production of white LEDs in detail. They still need a special fluorescent coating that converts the original blue light from the LED dice into white, plus special white LED driver ICs are needed to drive the finished LEDs. Time will tell all if it is all that green.

Talking about mobile phones, everyone of them has an LED backlight, strangely nobody calls them LED displays or LED phones !