With amazing picture quality and paper thin width, the new Samsung LED TVs are a whole new species of television. But whats the difference between this and the more traditional LCD and is it worth the extra money?

Well, with standard LCD TVs, the picture is generated by a constant fluorescent lamp which illuminates the image onto the screen. The only problem with that method of picture reproduction is that the lamp is usually too bright to display true black images and can include unwanted colours in the picture which are difficult to filter without reducing screen brightness.

With LED or Light Emitting Diodes, each individual LED converts electric energy directly into light producing a dramatic improvement in contrast and colour.

So by using slimmer lamps and a thinner diffuser sheet, Samsung LED TVs are not only more likely to produce the crisp visuals so many movie lovers crave, they are also 70% slimmer than equivalent fluorescent televisions! And given that Samsung have arranged the LEDs around the outside of the screen and pointed them inwards, the size of their first LED model is just 29.9mm thick... which has to be seen to be believed!