LCD HDTV Televisions and Aliasing

One of the problems with LCD HDTV televisions is that most of the time cheap sets do not deliver the image quality that your would expect from an HDTV television. When it comes to LCD, quality is most of the time proportional to the price and the brand of the unit. Most sets that have a very low price tag compared to other television sets of the same size and the same resolution tend to produce a rather grainy picture especially in units from unrecognized brands. A grainy picture tends to look rough on the edges of objects on the screen or inside the objects themselves. While in some quality sets images may tend to look grainy for short periods of time, on low quality LCD HDTVs the image can look grainy most of the time leading to a poor overall experience. This effect is what is called aliasing and is can be very noticeable in most low quality sets and even in models from top name brands.

However, your set may not be responsible for the aliasing problem.  Usually, this effect appears  in scenes that are moving too fast for the television set, when the set itself is of questionable quality or when broadcasts do not meet the bandwidth criteria needed to create a good signal that displays properly on HDTVs. Of these three possibilities, two are directly related to the set itself . The other one can easily be avoided by changing the channel or perhaps changing the signal source from antenna to another source such as a paid service. Of course, if the problem resides on the channel’s broadcast system then it is up to the channel’s technicians and camera operators to fix the problem.  Aliasing can be easily noticed when watching live sports, this is due to poor broadcasting by the channel and not  your set.

Some sets feature anti-aliasing mechanisms to help the unit smooth out the effect making it less noticeable. But usually this feature is available with quality sets and not with cheap HDTV televisions or very low end units.

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