VI, you might find this interesting my brother....
I'm glad you asked as this has been coming up a lot lately. Frankly, Samsung's so-called "LED TV" is an LCD TV. The only difference is the backlighting technology - the actual LCD panels are exactly the same as other LCD televisions. Traditional LCD TVs use CCFL backlights (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) - think thin fluorescent tubes with a diffusing panel inside to spread the light evenly around the screen. Meanwhile, Samsung's "LED TVs" (or to be more precise, LED-lit LCD TVs) use LED elements for the lighting source (think "Lite Brite" pegs, but all of them white). Samsung is trying to promote this LED backlighting technology as an entirely new category of TV, which is a little misleading.
There are some advantages to using LED elements instead of CCFL backlights as the light source for an LCD TV, but not all of the benefits are present in all LED-lit TVs. The biggest potential advantage of LED backlighting over CCFL backlights is if the TV has what's called "local dimming." In this case, the TV has an array of LED elements behind the LCD panel which lights up the panel. You can think about this like a massive "Lite Brite" toy placed behind the LCD panel with all the holes filled with bright white lights. Having a light source like this allows you to do two things: a.) you can get a nice uniform light source throughout the panel (picture uniformity is a problem for many LCD TVs) and b.) the local dimming feature allows the TV to turn off portions of the backlight array when the picture needs this. This last bit is a big deal and is something you just can't do with the CCFL-lit LCD TVs.
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