In the past few decades, society as a whole has become so much more conscious of the waste being produced everyday by human beings. Just walk into a grocery store in almost any town nowadays and you are bound to have a clerk ask you if you have brought a bag along to pack your groceries in. This practice was unthinkable just five years ago and is a sign of how much thinking about recycling and the environment has changed.

While things like plastic bags and recycling bottles fall into the category of items being confronted on a daily basis, the public is much more in the dark about electronic devices. In the past, it was fairly common for people to simply toss an old cell phone in the trash or leave an old TV set lying by the curb for the trash collectors to remove. However, it should be known at this point in time that this decision is far from advisable. There are a number of hazardous materials inside electronic devices, chemicals like lead which can damage the environment and threaten the health of the local population.

The bottom line is these products must be properly disposed of, which means recycling them through a certified agency or handler. While only about half of the electronics people no longer use get recycled these days, the number continues to grow. Whether it is an old VCR or computer keyboard about to go out of the trash, contact a local agency to find out if it contains any hazardous materials. Chances are, if it has been plugged in or used as part of an electronic device, it will.

Fortunately, there are enough valuable materials within these old electronic devices that agencies which recycle them for consumers have an interest in helping the public. As with most truly successful recycling efforts, there is something in it for everyone involved. Consumer can be assured that there will be no damage done to the environment, while agencies that recycle them will be able to use some of the parts for their own profit.

An even better way to recycle an old TV or other electronic device is to donate it to charity. Giving these devices to a charity offers them the chance to make a profit on the parts, while you can be assured that the ethical end of the transaction is guaranteed. Organizations which benefit the poor continue to need donations, and an old TV set is the perfect device to pass along.

Government websites will have a list of organizations authorized to handle old TVs and their parts, so check on these resources before making a move. Whatever you decide, it is better to act as quickly as possible, because it is unclear at what point the hazardous materials begin to seep out of these electronics. Lead materials found in old TV sets are quite harmful to humans and the environment, so it is a good idea to take advantage of the resources available and recycle them as soon as they lose their purpose around the house.

If you’re replacing your old TV with a new one, take a look at our range of TV stands.

When it comes to understanding what in the world the differences are between the many different kinds of consumer electronics products on the market, some people have a harder time than they would pinning jelly to the wall. The consumer electronics industry hasn’t exactly helped out in this regard, but rather has hidden itself behind a web of many confusing terms, some of which are redundant, others of which are misleading, and even more of which are perfectly legitimate but totally confusing! For example, when it comes to understanding what is so special about HD TV and what all the different varieties are all about, there are too many acronyms and technical terms for the average person to really have the faintest notion of what distinguishes such sets from the two-decade-old tube they’ve got at home already.

Unfortunately, asking the salesman at your local electronics store is not going to help you out in this regard: you will either be fed a bunch of misleading information (so that the salesman can make some commission this month) or you will simply get nothing, as many people working in these stores don’t have an inkling of what they are selling, and may even be less informed than you are, the person in search of answers. The internet has done a much better job than the industry itself or its salesmen in elucidating the distinctions and properties of HD TV, and what it is that makes this technology different than traditional TV.

The biggest and most notable difference between traditional sets and HD TVs is, quite obviously, the superior image resolution of the latter. But why is this so? This difference is in fact the result of multiple differences all neatly rolled up into one. Though many early HD TV products were designed to use analog signals for broadcasting, virtually all HD TVs now operate strictly with digital signal. That is an important difference, and one that doesn’t necessarily have to do with picture quality per se. Remember, however, that even traditional televisions can read and project a digital signal, so it is not exactly something unique to HD TV—rather, the fact that it uses practically exclusively digital signal is unique.

What HD TV does that is different than traditional TV is that it

1) raises the amount of scan lines being interpreted and projected onto your screen, and

2) widens the aspect ratio being projected onto your screen from the common 4:3 that we all have been using for the last 50 years to 16:9.

This significantly wider aspect of HD TV is very notable and doesn’t have to do with image resolution but rather with the presentation of the image, in this case reminding viewers of a more cinematic, theatrical appearance (hence the association of widescreen with the movies). Let’s study these two basic differences of HD TV in a little more depth, so that people can understand where the differences really lie, and what they mean.

The evolution of television in its early years was largely a story of the improvement and increase in the number of scan lines that devices were using. Basically, more scan lines mean a richer, more defined image. If an image is displayed using fewer scan lines, the detail will be negatively affected, and vice versa. Image scanning is the basic technology that makes television possible, and is known technically as rasterization. When a television set receives an electric signal, the signal is captured by a device (usually a rotating mirror-drum scanner or vibrating scanner) and then the scanned image is projected onto a screen. Traditional TVs use a cathode ray tube to then project the image, whereas HD TVs use a video line system.

In old, traditional TVs, the number of lines was set at 480, with the lines being “interlaced,” meaning the odd lines were projected at one moment and the even lines immediately afterwards—a process that takes so little time it is imperceptible to the naked eye. HD TV has taken things to entirely new levels, with 1080 being the current pinnacle and 720 also being available. Truly excellent image quality can be had by eliminating the “interlacing” of the scan lines, showing them on the screen in one fell swoop. When this is the case, instead of an “i” (for “interlaced”) after the number of scan lines—for example, 480i—a “p” (for “progressive”) is put afterwards, such as 720p. The visual effect of the horizontal lines on the screen, which is exacerbated by interlacing the scan lines, is significantly reduced if not altogether eliminated by using progressive scan lines. Hence, when shopping for a television, look for 480p or 720p, or better yet, 1080p.

The “progressive” scan line innovation has added a third category of TV sets, known as Enhanced Definition TV (EDTV), obviously in addition to traditional (or tube) TVs and HD TVs. EDTVs are incredibly crisp and are frequently confused for high definition televisions, even though they have absolutely no high definition technology built into them.

As far as the widening of the image is concerned, this is one of the more highlighted properties of HD TVs that many consumers have found incredibly attractive. The wider viewing really gives a sense of being in the cinema, and in fact helps contribute to the higher definition of the images. HD TVs usually have a wider possible viewing angle than traditional TVs, and are more versatile when it comes to room lighting (aka you can see well in a wider variety of lighting conditions). Furthermore, given their higher resolution, HD TVs reduce the amount and severity of image blur, a truly unpleasant phenomenon that is particularly prevalent when watching sports games and other programs with lots of movement. So, to recap, it is important to understand that there are a variety of technical properties to HD TVs that make them able to provide a higher quality image—not to mention the fact that most HD TVs allow you to connect a wider variety of media, including digital files.

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