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What is home equity loan what is home equity investment what is home equity brainly what is home equity what is homecoming what is home care what is home equity line of credit what is my ip what is my ip address what is monkeypox what is api what is my mmr
What Is Home Equity?
Most homeowners now have more equity in their homes than they did two years ago, thanks to surging home values during the pandemic. That means right now is a good time to consider tapping into your home equity if you're looking to borrow money at a lower interest rate than you might get with other types of loans such as personal loans. Home equity is the difference between what you owe on your mortgage and the current market value of your home.
You build equity in your home by consistently making mortgage payments over the years. Equity is valuable because it allows you to borrow money against your home at lower interest rates than other types of financing. Once you have enough equity built up in your home, lenders and banks will allow you to borrow against it. Some of the most common reasons to borrow against your equity are to pay for life expenses such as home improvements, higher education costs such as tuition, or to pay off high-interest credit card debt.
Most lenders want to see that you've built up at least 15% to 20% in equity in order to let you borrow money against your house in the form of refinancing or other kinds of home equity loans. One of the simplest ways to ensure you have a good chunk of equity in your home is to make a large down payment if you are able to.
For a typical homeowner with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, building up 15% to 20% usually takes about 5 to 10 years. Even if you paid less for your home when you bought it years ago, your equity is based on the present-day value of your house. If, for example, your home is currently worth $500,000 and you have $400,000 left to pay on your mortgage, you would have $100,000 of equity in your home.
Here's what you need to know about home equity, what it is, how to calculate it and why it's important to homeowners.
How do you calculate home equity?
To calculate your home equity, simply subtract your remaining mortgage balance from the current market value of your home. So if you owe $400,000 on your mortgage and your house is worth $500,000, you have $100,000, or 20% equity in your home. You may need to work with an appraiser or real estate agent in order to get an accurate evaluation of your home's fair market value, especially since home values have risen by record-breaking amounts since the beginning of the pandemic.
Ways to borrow against home equity
There are various ways to access the equity in your home. Some of the most common equity financing options are home equity loans, home equity lines of credit (or HELOCs) and reverse mortgages. It's important, however, to keep in mind that all of these options require you to put up your home as collateral to secure the loan, so it's critical to understand that there's a risk of losing your home to foreclosure if you miss payments or default on your loan for any reason.
Home equity loan
A home equity loan lets you borrow money against the equity you've built in your home and provides you with a lump sum of cash at a fixed interest rate. Lenders typically want to see that you have at least 15% to 20% in your home to approve you for a home equity loan. A home equity loan doesn't replace your mortgage like a refinance, rather, it's an entirely new loan that you'll repay monthly along with your existing mortgage payment. But just like a mortgage, with a home equity loan, your interest rate never changes and your monthly payments are fixed, too.
HELOCs
A home equity line of credit, or HELOC, is a type of loan that lets you borrow against the equity you've built up in your home and functions like a credit card. It provides you with an open line of credit that you can access for a certain amount of time, typically 10 years, followed by a set repayment period, which is usually 20 years. Lenders also generally want you to have at least 15% to 20% in your home for HELOC approval. With a HELOC, you don't have to take all of your funds out at once, and you can withdraw money repeatedly from your HELOC over the 10-year period, once previously borrowed sums are paid back.
"A HELOC offers more flexibility than a home equity loan -- you can't withdraw money from a home equity loan like you can with a HELOC, and a HELOC allows you to receive replenished funds as you pay your outstanding balance," said Robert Heck, VP of Mortgage at Morty, an online mortgage marketplace.
HELOCs have variable interest rates however, so it's important to make sure you can afford higher monthly payments if your rate goes up once your introductory interest rate expires, especially in the current economic climate.
Reverse mortgage
You must be 62 years or older to access a reverse mortgage and have either paid off your home or have significant equity accumulated, usually at least 50%. With a reverse mortgage, you do not have to make monthly mortgage payments and the bank or lender actually makes payments to you. You must still pay your property taxes and homeowners insurance and continue to live in the house, however. A reverse mortgage allows you to access the equity in your home and not pay back the funds for an extended period of time while using them for other expenses during retirement. It's important to keep in mind that you are building a mortgage balance back up as you borrow against your equity, and your estate will eventually have to pay off your loan. A common way to repay this loan is to sell your house.
The bottom line
Unlocking the equity in your home can be a valuable way to access financing to cover other life expenses. It's important to understand the differences between the kinds of equity loans available to secure the best one for your particular financial situation. When comparing ways to access equity, always take into account the interest rate, additional lender costs and fees, and the size of the loan and how it will be disbursed to you, as well as the amount of time you have to pay it back, before you enter into an agreement to borrow against the equity in your home.
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8K TV Explained, and Why You Definitely Don't Need to Buy One
8K TV Explained, and Why You Definitely Don't Need to Buy One
Believe it or not, 8K TVs are available right now. Yep, 8K, as in four times the resolution of Ultra HD 4K TVs. You can, if you really want to, buy models from Samsung, Sony, LG and TCL in a variety of sizes. As you'd expect from cutting-edge technology with over 30 million pixels, the prices are quite high. In most cases 8K TVs cost more than a high-end, and often higher-quality, 4K TV.
Should you consider an 8K TV? Are they the best TVs out there? In a word: No. In two words: Not yet. You're better off getting a high-quality 4K TV for far less money. It will look better with 99.9% of the content you put on it. That said, 8K is here, and it's not going away, so it's worth taking a closer look. You'll need to look very close, as those pixels are tiny.
Eventually 8K will be far more mainstream. It's possible 4K will go the way of all those lower resolutions, and be relegated to tech history. Does this mean your 4K TV is already obsolete? Should you wait to buy a new TV until 8K prices drop? Do you need an 8K TV for the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X? Read on for the answer to all these questions and more.
Read more: PS5 and Xbox Series X Can Game in 8K Resolution. Should You Care?
This shows the relative number of pixels in each of the major resolution formats. Not actual size of course; this is a chart not a visual representation (though it is to scale if you click on it). From largest to smallest: 8K (tangerine), 4K Cinema in 1.78:1 aspect ratio (black); Ultra HD (white); 2K Cinema in 1.78:1 aspect ratio (green); Full HD 1080p (red); 720p (blue). For more detail, pun intended, check out 4K vs. 8K vs. 1080p: TV resolutions explained.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Is it worth buying an 8K TV?
Here's a quick summary of our current thinking regarding 8K TVs in early 2022.
Unless you have money to burn, don't even consider buying one right now.
From what we've seen, there's little, if any, image quality improvement over 4K TVs.
Any improvement we have seen required sitting very close to a very large screen.
To get the most out of any 8K TV, you need actual 8K content (and there basically isn't any).
Both new consoles promise 8K resolution, but that's potentially misleading.
In the next few years 8K TVs will get cheaper and perhaps actually be worth considering.
To reiterate, one of the biggest reasons 8K TVs are not as amazing as you might expect, besides their price, is that there simply aren't any 8K TV shows or movies to watch on them. And while the latest gaming consoles will eventually do 8K (maybe), 8K games today are basically nonexistent. The best you can get in most cases is 4K, so all those extra pixels of an 8K TV won't be used to their fullest potential.
Now that you've slid your wallet back into your pocket, sit back and soak in everything there is to know about 8K TVs today.
Read more: Remember When TVs Weighed 200 Pounds? A Look Back at TV Trends Over the Years
What is 8K, and is it better than a 4K TV?
A traditional HDTV from a few years ago is 1080p, which means it has 1,920 pixels horizontally and 1,080 vertically. Many digital cinema projectors -- the ones in movie theaters -- have a resolution of 2,048x1,080. Because it's common in Hollywood-speak to only refer to the horizontal resolution, they call that "2K," but it's basically the same as the HDTV 1080p you have at home.
Mathias Appel/HDMI Licensing
The term "4K" comes from the digital cinema side, too, with a horizontal resolution of 4,096, hence "4K." However, on the TV side, manufacturing efficiencies meant we got double the horizontal and vertical resolutions of 1080p HDTV, so 3,840x2,160 pixels. Everyone colloquially calls this "4K," though the technical term is Ultra HD. This has four times as many pixels as 1080p HD.
Which brings us to 8K. You guessed it: twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of 4K, for a whopping 7,680x4,320 and 33,177,600 total pixels. Not only is that four times the resolution of 4K, that's an incredible 16 times more pixels than 1080p. Or to put that differently, you could put 16 full-resolution 1080p videos on an 8K screen at the same time with no loss of quality. I'm not sure why you'd want to do this, but hey, why not?
Read more: 4K vs. 8K vs. 1080p: TV Resolutions Explained
TV and projector resolutions
Resolution name
Horizontal x vertical pixels
Total pixels
Other names
Found on
8K
7,680x4,320
33,177,600
8K Ultra HD, Ultra High Definition (UHD), Super Hi-Vision, UHD-2
High-end TVs
4K
3,840x2,160
8,294,400
Ultra High Definition (UHD)
Most modern TVs, some projectors
1080p
1,920x1,080
2,073,600
High Definition (HD)
Smaller, less expensive and older TVs, most projectors
720p
1,280x720
921,600
High Definition (HD)
Very small and older TVs
The Consumer Technology Association's 8K Ultra HD logo.
CTA
One thing to look for in new 8K TVs: It will feature the official logo and "spec" on new 8K TVs. This goes beyond raw pixel count to help you find TVs that perform to at least a certain standard. This is partly to avoid the mess from the early days of HD and 4K, where some of the first TVs couldn't accept a full HD or later, a 4K signal. The Consumer Technology Association lays out the following minimums a TV is required to have to wear the 8K Ultra HD logo:
At least 7,680 pixels horizontally and 4,320 vertically.
At least one HDMI input capable of accepting that resolution, at 50 or 60 fps (depending on region), with HDR.
The ability to upconvert lower resolution signals to 8K.
The ability to receive and display 10-bit content.
Can the human eye even see 8K?
Technically yes it can, but the difference will be very subtle at best.
As we've explained many times with 4K TVs, there's a point of diminishing returns when it comes to resolution. The human eye can see only so much detail, and extra pixels beyond what you can discern are basically wasted. To get anything out of higher resolutions and their proportionally tinier pixels, you need to sit closer, get a bigger TV, or both.
It's rare that anyone gets a large enough TV -- or sits close enough to one -- to justify the need for even 4K resolutions. 8K is excessive overkill... at least for a TV. If you're talking about massive theater-size screens like Samsung's Wall or Sony's Crystal LED, 8K would be amazing. But since 4K is hard to discern when comparing to a 1080p TV, 4K to 8K from 10 feet away will be pretty much impossible.
That said, because 8K TVs are currently the most expensive offerings from most companies, they often have features which help them produce stunning images that are completely divorced from resolution. So most 8K TVs, with the likely exception of the "cheap" models, will usually look great regardless of their pixel count.
Read more: Best 4K Projectors for 2022
TCL's 65-inch 8K 6-Series TV.
TCL
8K content: Can I actually watch anything in 8K?
Without 8K content, an 8K TV is just a 4K TV with a few thousand dollars stuck to it with duct tape. Samsung talks up fancy "AI" upscaling technology on its TVs, designed to improve the look of mere 4K and 1080p sources on an 8K screen. And other TV makers like Sony and LG have touted their own 8K special sauces. But to get the most out of all those 33 million-plus pixels, the incoming source needs to be 8K too.
There are three main aspects to getting any new format, like 8K, into your home:
1. Content recorded in the new format
2. Transmission of the new format (broadcast, streaming, etc.)
3. Playback of the new format
An 8K TV represents the last part of the system: playback. That's the easy part. Any TV manufacturer can design and produce a TV with any resolution it wants. It's just up to the company and its resources.
Creating content in the new resolution, meanwhile, is a lot tougher. While the number of 8K-capable cameras has dramatically increased in the last few years, they're still expensive to buy or rent. In most cases, these cameras are used to create 4K content instead. There are lots of reasons it's a great idea to capture in 8K. The end result, however, is 4K, because of the second part of the process (transmission).
Read more: How I Built My Dream 8K-Capable Video Editing PC
The Red Monstro 8K VV "Brain" has a 35.4-megapixel CMOS sensor, can record 8K video at 60 fps, has over 17 stops of dynamic range, and costs -- brace yourself -- $54,500.
Red
Ultra HD 4K transmission takes a lot of data. You need a really fast internet connection to stream it. Streaming 8K is a whole other level, well beyond what many have in their homes. With only a tiny percentage of their audience able to see it, mainstream streaming services are slow to adopt higher resolutions, with the increase in cost of storage, processing and more.
Which is all to say, don't expect 8K versions of your favorite streaming shows anytime soon. And without 8K content, the main benefit of an 8K TV is at least partially wasted.
Do I need 8K to play Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 games?
Both Sony and Microsoft have announced that their next-generation gaming consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, will both be capable of outputting 8K resolution via future updates. Sounds like a great excuse to buy an 8K TV, right? Not so fast.
First, and most important, you will not need an 8K TV to play games on these consoles. They will work just fine on most 1080p and nearly all 4K TVs. If you can connect a PS4 or Xbox One to your current TV, it will work with a PS5 or Xbox Series X.
Read more:Sony PS5 vs. Microsoft Xbox Series X: Game On
Secondly, games will need to be specifically written to take advantage of 8K, something that isn't going to be particularly common. The resolution you see on screen, even if your TV says it's 8K, might not be what resolution the console is rendering the game. It will likely be far more common for the console to build the game's visuals at a lower resolution, 1440p or 4K at best, and convert to 8K to send your TV. This is the same thing your TV does automatically.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET
A Sony spokesperson confirmed that this FAQ, published on the PlayStation blog in November 2020, was still the case: "PS5 is compatible with 8K displays at launch, and after a future system software update will be able to output resolutions up to 8K when content is available, with supported software." We're still waiting for that update.
"Xbox Series X is fully capable of 8K output. However, as there is no media content or games that currently support 8K resolution, we have not enabled the option within the system settings at this time. Xbox Series X was designed with the next 8 to 10 years of advancements in mind, and as we see signals from creators and 8K becomes a more widely adopted format, we will update console software to support it," a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Long story short, few games will look much different on an 8K TV than they will on a 4K TV. There is limited time and money when you develop a game (well, most games), and few developers will want to invest those limited resources on something only a handful of people will be able to enjoy. Far more likely are games rendered in 4K with higher frame rates, something else made possible by the latest version of HDMI and available on the new consoles.
Read more: 120Hz Gaming: Best TVs for PS5 and Xbox Series X
Where can I stream 8K? Do Netflix or YouTube support it?
Getting the 8K onto your new 8K TV is also a bit of a challenge. Ideally, the TV's internal apps for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and the rest will be 8K compatible. You'd think that'd be a given, but it wasn't in the early days of 4K. Further, there's no 8K content from any major streaming service available yet. The exceptions are YouTube, as you see in the video below, Vimeo and a new service called The Explorers exclusive to 8K Roku TVs. Eventually, ATSC 3.0, also known as Next Gen TV, might allow 8K to be broadcast over the air, but we're a long way from that.
How fast does your internet need to be to stream 8K?
8K also presents another issue for the early adopter: The bandwidth required is immense. Most 4K content streaming companies recommend you have an internet connection in the 20Mbps range. 8K, even with everything else the same, has four times as many pixels.
That doesn't equate exactly to a 4x increase in data or bandwidth, but, and this is just a ballpark guess, a connection requirement in the 40 to 50Mbps range wouldn't be unexpected. Maybe you, cutting-edge CNET reader, have that kind of speed, but most people do not.
A visual representation of how much more bandwidth the upcoming Ultra High Speed cables can handle.
HDMI Forum
What kind of HDMI cable do I need for 8K?
One thing we've already got is the physical connection thing sorted in case any 8K media streamers hit the market or they're needed for the PS5 and Xbox Series X. HDMI 2.1 is capable of 8K resolutions and more. But before you rush out and stock up on HDMI 2.1-compatible cables, keep in mind there will almost certainly be a new standard between now and the wide adoption of 8K. So those cables might be obsolete, despite their current forward-looking appearance.
All of the major 8K TV makers say that their sets have HDMI 2.1 inputs capable of handling the 48Mbps bandwidth required for the highest resolution and frame-rate combinations (8K and 60 frames per second and 4K at 120 fps). We also got a look at some new, higher-bandwidth HDMI cables.
To take advantage of higher 4K frame rates on the new consoles, presuming your TV can handle them, you might need new cables.
Read more: When is the Best Time to Buy a TV?
Is 8K TV a gimmick?
To put on my cynic hat, increasing resolution is one of the easiest ways to offer the appearance of higher performance. This is likely what TV makers are smoking, coming out with 8K TVs when there's essentially no content and no 8K infrastructure.
Given how easy it was to market 4K as "better looking than 1080p," TV makers are claiming the same thing with 8K. But resolution is just one aspect of overall picture quality, and not one of the most important ones. Improving other aspects, such as contrast ratios, overall brightness for HDR, more lifelike colors and so on, offer better image improvements but they are significantly harder to implement. This is especially true for LCD, which is a technology Samsung is still strongly flogging -- e.g. all of its QLED TVs are simply LCD TVs with quantum dots.
It's relatively easy to create a higher-resolution LCD panel, but improving the other aspects of performance for that tech is a greater challenge. Not "more" pixels but "better" pixels. This is why OLED is a thing, and why many companies are researching new technologies like true direct-view quantum dot displays, MicroLED, and mini-LED. Samsung is even coming out with an OLED-quantum dot hybrid that promises to combine the contrast ratio of OLED and the bright colors of quantum dot-based displays. These technologies, regardless of resolution, should look better than 8K TVs, which are currently only LCD-based.
Well, except for LG's OLED, which costs $20-$30,000 depending on size.
Direct-view quantum dot display.
Nanosys
Bottom line: Don't wait for 8K
If you're thinking about buying a new TV, does this mean you should hold off? If your current TV works, you should probably hold on to it regardless. New 8K TVs shouldn't be a factor, because as we mentioned above, early 8K TVs are expensive. We're also many, many years away from any sort of widespread 8K content. We arguably don't have widespread 4K content, and no one is talking about scrapping 4K to go directly to 8K.
The other aspect is a warning that will be seconded by countless 4K early adopters: There's no guarantee these early 8K TVs will end up being compatible with any future 8K standard. There are tens of thousands of 4K TVs that can't play any current 4K media content.
Lastly, even as prices drop, like they have with the $2,200 TCL 8K 6-series, you're almost certainly better off with a 4K TV for the same money. It offers better picture quality overall and only lacks the bragging rights that you have more pixels than your neighbor. But if that's your thing, go for it.
Update, March 14, 2022: This article was first published in 2018 and is regularly updated with new info.
As well as covering TV and other display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, epic 10,000 mile road trips, and more. Check out Tech Treks for all his tours and adventures.
He wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines, along with a sequel. You can follow his adventures on Instagram and his YouTube channel.
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Mini-LED TV: What it is and how it improves Samsung, TCL and Sony TVs in 2022
Mini-LED TV: What it is and how it improves Samsung, TCL and Sony TVs in 2022
TVs get a bit better every year, and in 2022 the improvement with the biggest impact might be mini-LED. It's an evolution of traditional LCD TV tech that uses thousands of tiny light emitting diodes to improve picture quality, and at CES 2022 more TV makers than ever are using it. TCL, Samsung and LG all introduced new mini-LED TVs and Sony and Hisense will ship their first mini-LED TVs later this year. Samsung calls its version Neo QLED, LG is going with QNED for some reason while the latest version from TCL is called OD Zero.
Let's start with what makes mini-LED special. By using more, smaller LEDs to illuminate the screen, a TV can have finer control over its highlights and shadows, for potentially better contrast and image quality especially with HDR shows, movies and games. Mini-LED's main advantage over OLED, the best TV tech on the market, is that it can be more affordable, particularly in larger screen sizes. Mini-LED is an evolutionary technology, not a revolutionary one, and draws on existing LCD TV technology. In the mini-LED TVs we've tested so far, including the TCL 6-Series and Samsung QN90A, the picture quality improvements are the real deal, although not quite good enough to beat OLED.
Now that just about every TV maker will sell a mini-LED TV of some kind in 2022, you're bound to hear a lot more about the technology. Here's how it works, and why it's so cool.
Mini-LED is not MicroLED
Before we get started, know that mini-LED and MicroLED are not the same thing. MicroLED is a near-future tech that's reserved for huge screens and rich people today -- like a 110-inch Samsung for the cool price of $156,000. Mini-LED is currently available in TVs as small as 55 inches and as affordable as $700.
MicroLED displays from Samsung and LG use millions of LEDs, one for each pixel. Essentially, you're looking directly at the LEDs that are creating the picture. And while each individual MicroLED is tiny, the modular nature of MicroLED means it can get truly gigantic. The biggest example we've seen of Samsung's The Wall hit 292 inches diagonal, although the 2022 version isn't necessarily modular and ranges from a relatively modest 89- to 110-inches.
Read more: Samsung MicroLED TVs get 89-inch size, better audio, bezel-free design at CES 2022
MicroLED is seen here in a massive 219-inch size Samsung calls The Wall.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Mini-LEDs are found inside normal-size TVs but the LEDs themselves are much larger than MicroLEDs. Just like the standard LEDs found in current TVs, they're used to power the backlight of the television. A liquid crystal layer, the LCD itself, modulates that light to create the image. MicroLED isn't LCD at all, it's a whole new TV technology that also happens to use LEDs.
Here's how the two stack up against one another as well as standard LED, QLED and OLED.
Light-emitting diode TV technologies compared
Standard LED
QLED
OLED
Mini-LED
MicroLED
Size range
15-inch and up
32-inch and up
42-inch and up
55-inch and up
89-inch and up
Typical 65-inch price
$800
$900
$2,000
$1,000
N/A
US TV brands
All
Samsung, TCL
LG, Sony, Vizio
Hisense, LG, Samsung, Sony, TCL
LG, Samsung
Based on LCD tech
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Bright lights, big TV, better local dimming
To understand mini-LED, you need to understand standard LED, at least as far as your TV is concerned. Inside all modern LCD TVs (i.e. every TV that's not an OLED), there's anywhere between a few, to a few hundred light emitting diodes. These tiny devices emit light when you give them electricity and are being used everywhere in the modern world, from the flashlight on your phone to the taillights on your car. They range in size -- commonly they're around 1 millimeter, but can be smaller than 0.2 millimeter. In your TV these LEDs are collectively referred to as the "backlight."
In some TVs the LEDs are on the edges, pointing inward. On others, the LEDs are behind the screen, pointing toward you. For improved image quality, particularly to appreciate high dynamic range (HDR), you need local dimming. This is where the TV dims the LEDs behind dark sections of the image to create a better contrast ratio between the bright parts of the image and the dark. For more on this, check out LED local dimming explained.
Ideally, you'd be able to dim each pixel enough to create a visually impressive contrast ratio. This is, for example, how OLED and MicroLED work. With LCD, though, it's much harder to do. The liquid crystal panel that creates the image only blocks the light created by the backlight. Not all the light can be blocked, so the image is grayer and has less "punch" than with OLED.
Local dimming improves this issue, but it's not 1:1. There isn't one LED for each of the 8 million-plus pixels in a 4K TV. Instead there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pixels for every LED (or more accurately, groups of LEDs called "zones"). There's a limit to how many LEDs you can squeeze onto the back panel of a TV before energy drain, heat production and cost become severely limiting factors. Enter mini-LED.
On the left, the image as you'd see it on a TV with full-array local dimming. On the right, an exaggerated illustration of the backlight array as you'd see it if you could remove the LCD layer. Arranged across the back of the TV, each LED covers a large-ish section of the screen (i.e. creating the light for many thousands of pixels). Pinpoint, or per-pixel lighting is impossible.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Here's the same image (left) illuminated by another exaggerated illustration, this time of a mini LED TV array backlight (right). Note how much more you can make out compared to the standard-size LEDs in the first image above. With far more LEDs, the backlight has a greater "resolution," so there can be finer distinctions between light and dark. The ideal, like OLED and micro LED, would be per-pixel illumination, but mini LED is a step closer to that without the cost of the other two technologies.
Geoffrey Morrison/CNET
Going big with little LEDs
Although there's no accepted threshold, LEDs smaller than 0.2-millimeter tend to be called mini-LEDs. They're often 0.1-millimeter or less. Not too small though: At around 0.01-millimeter, they're called MicroLEDs.
Generally speaking, when you make an LED smaller, it becomes dimmer. There's less material to create the light. You can offset this a bit by giving them more electricity ("driving" them harder), but there's a limit here, too, constrained by energy consumption, heat, longevity and practicality. No one is going to hook their TV up to a high-amp, home appliance-style outlet.
As LED technology improves, they get more efficient. New tech, new manufacturing methods and other factors mean that the same amount of light is created using less energy, or more light using the same energy. New tech also allows for smaller LEDs.
TCL's comparison of LED backlight types using the 8-Series with mini-LED as the "Best" example.
TCL
One of the first mini-LED TVs available was TCL's 8-Series. It had over 25,000 mini-LEDs arrayed across the back of the TV. These were grouped into around 1,000 zones. Both of these numbers are significantly higher than what you'd find in a traditional LED TV. The 65-inch Hisense U8G, for example, has 485 local dimming zones while the 85-inch Vizio P85X has 792. No TV maker aside from TCL officially lists the number of LEDs in its TVs, but it's safe to assume none have as many as 25,000 (yet).
Don't expect every mini-LED TV to have that many LEDs, of course. Lower-end models will have far fewer, but likely still more than regular LED TVs. For instance TCL's 65-inch 6-Series has 1,000 mini-LEDs and 240 zones -- more than many models at its price but clearly not at the same level as the 8-Series.
If you were to take the LCD layer of the TV off, the mini-LEDs would create an image that would look like a low-resolution black-and-white internet video version of the show you were watching (see the pairs of image comparisons above). By being able to dim parts of the screen far more precisely, the overall apparent contrast ratio goes up. It's still not quite as good as being able to dim each pixel individually (like OLED and MicroLED), but it's far closer to that ideal than even the most elaborate full-array LED LCDs now.
LG
Having more zones is a big factor here, as it means improving two other aspects of the image. The most obvious is reducing the "blooming" typical of many local-dimming LCDs. Blooming is created because the local-dimming backlight is too coarse, creating light behind a part of the image that should be dark.
Imagine a streetlight on an otherwise dark road. A local-dimming TV doesn't have the resolution in its backlight to only light up the pixels creating the street light, so it has to light up some of the surrounding night as well. Many LCDs TVs have gotten pretty good at this, but not as good as something that can dim each pixel like OLED. With mini-LED, you might not be able to light up individual stars in a night scene, but the moon probably won't have a halo.
Because there's less of a chance of blooming, the LEDs can be driven harder without fear of artifacts. So there can be a greater on-screen contrast ratio in a wider variety of scenes. The bright parts of the image can be truly bright, the dark parts of the image can be at or near totally dark.
Samsung Neo QLED, LG QNED and TCL OD Zero: What's in a name?
The overall name for the technology is mini-LED. That's what TCL, Sony and Hisense call it while LG and Samsung, true to form, prefer to use their own names.
Samsung's is Neo QLED, building on the company's years of marketing QLED with quantum dots. LG's QNED, based on its Neo-LED technology, is a brand-new addition to the bewildering world of TV acronyms.
There are bound to be differences between how these companies implement mini-LED, most notably how many LEDs are on each size of TV. On top of that, how well these LEDs are addressed and other factors will determine how good they look compared to each other and to other TV technologies.
Meanwhile TCL introduced its third-gen mini-LED televisions this year as well, called OD Zero. TCL says OD Zero TVs will be much thinner, just 10mm in the first example, thanks to a reduction in the distance between the backlight layer and the LCD display layer. That TV also happens to be an 85-inch 8K model that costs $10,000.
As of early 2022 the only major TV maker that hasn't introduced mini-LED is Vizio, but that could change once the company announced their official 2022 lineup in spring.
The dark night returns
Deep blacks and bright whites are the Holy Grail (Grails?) of TV image quality. Add in the color possible with quantum dots and you've got the makings of a fantastic-looking television. With LG Display still the only company able to make OLED work affordably in TV sizes -- at least until Sony and Samsung QD-OLED models from Samsung Display appear later this year -- other manufacturers need ways to create competing technology. LCD is still the only cost-effective alternative, and while it has come a long way, it's an aging technology. Mini-LED is the latest band-aid keeping it in the game.
As far as band-aids go, however, this is a pretty good one. We'll continue comparing the best mini-LED-based TVs against OLED in the near-term and, eventually, micro LED and future technologies like direct view QD.
As well as covering TV and other display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, airplane graveyards and more.
You can follow his exploits on Instagram and YouTube, and on his travel blog, BaldNomad. He also wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-sized submarines, along with a sequel.
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Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use
Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use
If your choice of encrypted messaging app is a toss-up between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, do not waste your time with anything but Signal. This isn't about which one has cuter features, more bells and whistles or is the most convenient to use: It's purely about privacy. And if privacy's what you're after, nothing beats Signal.
You probably already know what happened. In a tweet heard 'round the world last January, tech mogul Elon Musk continued his feud with Facebook by advocating people drop its WhatsApp messenger and use Signal instead. Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted Musk's call. Around the same time, right-wing social network Parler went dark following the Capitol attacks, while political boycotters fled Facebook and Twitter. It was the perfect storm -- the number of new users flocking to Signal and Telegram surged by tens of millions.
Read more: Everything to know about Signal
The jolt also reignited security and privacy scrutiny over messaging apps more widely. Among the top players currently dominating download numbers, there are some commonalities. All are mobile apps available in the Google Play store and App Store that support cross-platform messaging, have group chat features, offer multifactor authentication and can be used to share files and multimedia. They all also provide encryption for texting, voice and video calls.
Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption in some portion of their app, meaning that if an outside party intercepts your texts, they should be scrambled and unreadable. It also means that the exact content of your messages supposedly can't be viewed by employees of those companies when you are communicating with another private user. This prevents law enforcement, your mobile carrier and other snooping entities from being able to read your messages even when they intercept them (which happens more often than you might think).
The privacy and security differences between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp couldn't be bigger, though. Here's what you need to know about each of them.
Getty/SOPA Images
Does not collect data, only your phone number
Free, no ads, funded by nonprofit Signal Foundation
Fully open-source
Encryption: Signal Protocol
Signal is a typical one-tap install app that can be found in your normal marketplaces like Google Play and Apple's App Store and works just like the usual text-messaging app. It's an open-source development provided free of charge by the nonprofit Signal Foundation and has been famously used for years by high-profile privacy icons like Edward Snowden.
Signal's main function is that it can send -- to either an individual or a group -- fully encrypted text, video, audio and picture messages, after verifying your phone number and letting you independently verify other Signal users' identity. For a deeper dive into the potential pitfalls and limitations of encrypted messaging apps, CNET's Laura Hautala's explainer is a life-saver.
When it comes to privacy, it's hard to beat Signal's offer. It doesn't store your user data. And beyond its encryption prowess, it gives you extended, onscreen privacy options, including app-specific locks, blank notification pop-ups, face-blurring antisurveillance tools and disappearing messages.
Occasional bugs have proven that the tech is far from bulletproof, of course, but the overall arc of Signal's reputation and results have kept it at the top of every privacy-savvy person's list of identity protection tools. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times (which also recommends WhatsApp) and The Wall Street Journal all recommend using Signal to contact their reporters safely.
For years, the core privacy challenge for Signal lay not in its technology but in its wider adoption. Sending an encrypted Signal message is great, but if your recipient isn't using Signal, then your privacy may be nil. Think of it like the herd immunity created by vaccines, but for your messaging privacy.
Now that Musk's and Dorsey's endorsements have sent a surge of users to get a privacy booster shot, however, that challenge may be a thing of the past.
Getty/NurPhoto
Data linked to you: Name, phone number, contacts, user ID
Free, forthcoming Ad Platform and premium features, funded mainly by founder
Only partially open-source
Encryption: MTProto
Telegram falls somewhere in the middle of the privacy scale, and it stands apart from other messenger apps because of its efforts to create a social network-style environment. While it doesn't collect as much data as WhatsApp, it also doesn't offer encrypted group calls like WhatsApp, nor as much user data privacy and company transparency as Signal. Data collected by Telegram that could be linked to you includes your name, phone number, contact list and user ID.
Telegram also collects your IP address, something else Signal doesn't do. And unlike Signal and WhatsApp, Telegram's one-to-one messages aren't encrypted by default. Rather, you have to turn them on in the app's settings. Telegram group messages also aren't encrypted. Researchers found that while some of Telegram's MTProto encryption scheme was open-source, some portions were not, so it's not completely clear what happens to your texts once they're in Telegram's servers.
Telegram has seen several breaches. Some 42 million Telegram user IDs and phone numbers were exposed in March of 2020, thought to be the work of Iranian government officials. It would be the second massive breach linked to Iran, after 15 million Iranian users were exposed in 2016. A Telegram bug was exploited by Chinese authorities in 2019 during the Hong Kong protests. Then there was the deep-fake bot on Telegram that has been allowed to create forged nudes of women from regular pictures. Most recently, its GPS-enabled feature allowing you to find others near you has created obvious problems for privacy.
I reached out to Telegram to find out whether there were any major security plans in the works for the app, and what its security priorities were after this latest user surge. I'll update this story when I hear back.
Angela Lang/CNET
Data linked to you: Too much to list (see below)
Free; business versions available for free, funded by Facebook
Not open-source, except for encryption
Encryption: Signal Protocol
Let's be clear: There's a difference between security and privacy. Security is about safeguarding your data against unauthorized access, and privacy is about safeguarding your identity regardless of who has access to that data.
On the security front, WhatsApp's encryption is the same as Signal's, and that encryption is secure. But that encryption protocol is one of the few open-source parts of WhatsApp, so we're being asked to trust WhatsApp more than we are Signal. WhatsApp's actual app and other infrastructure have also faced hacks, just as Telegram has.
Jeff Bezos' phone was famously hacked in January of 2020 through a WhatsApp video message. In December of the same year, Texas' attorney general alleged -- though has not proven -- that Facebook and Google struck a back-room deal to reveal WhatsApp message content. A spyware vendor targeted a WhatsApp vulnerability with its software to hack 1,400 devices, resulting in a lawsuit from Facebook. WhatsApp's unencrypted cloud-based backup feature has long been considered a security risk by privacy experts and was one way the FBI got evidence on notorious political fixer Paul Manafort. To top it off, WhatsApp has also become known as a haven for scam artists and malware purveyors over the years (just as Telegram has attracted its own share of platform abuse, detailed above).
Despite the hacks, it's not the security aspect that concerns me about WhatsApp as much as the privacy. I'm not eager for Facebook to have yet another piece of software installed on my phone from which it can cull still more behavioral data via an easy-to-use app with a pretty interface and more security than your regular messenger.
When WhatsApp says it can't view the content of the encrypted messages you send to another WhatsApp user, what is doesn't say is that there's a laundry list of other data that it collects that could be linked to your identity: Your unique device ID, usage and advertising data, purchase history and financial information, physical location, phone number, your contact information and that of your list of contacts, what products you've interacted with, how often you use the app, and how it performs when you do. The list goes on. This is way more than Signal or Telegram.
When I asked the company why users should settle for less data privacy, a WhatsApp spokesperson pointed out that it limits what it does with this user data, and that the data collection only applies to some users. For instance, financial transaction data collection would be relevant only to those WhatsApp users in Brazil, where the service is available.
"We do not share your contacts with Facebook, and we cannot see your shared location," the WhatsApp spokesperson told CNET.
"While most people use WhatsApp just to chat with friends and family, we've also begun to offer the ability for people to chat with businesses to get help or make a purchase, with health authorities to get information about COVID, with domestic violence support agencies, and with fact checkers to provide people with the ability to get accurate information," the spokesperson said. "As we've expanded our services, we continue to protect people's messages and limit the information we collect."
Is WhatsApp more convenient than Signal and Telegram? Yes. Is it prettier? Sure. Is it just as secure? We won't know unless we see more of its source code. But is it more private? Not when it comes to how much data it collects comparatively. For real privacy, I'm sticking with Signal and I recommend you do the same.
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Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use
Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram: Here's which secure messaging app you should use
If your choice of encrypted messaging app is a toss-up between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, do not waste your time with anything but Signal. This isn't about which one has cuter features, more bells and whistles or is the most convenient to use: It's purely about privacy. And if privacy's what you're after, nothing beats Signal.
You probably already know what happened. In a tweet heard 'round the world last January, tech mogul Elon Musk continued his feud with Facebook by advocating people drop its WhatsApp messenger and use Signal instead. Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted Musk's call. Around the same time, right-wing social network Parler went dark following the Capitol attacks, while political boycotters fled Facebook and Twitter. It was the perfect storm -- the number of new users flocking to Signal and Telegram surged by tens of millions.
Read more: Everything to know about Signal
The jolt also reignited security and privacy scrutiny over messaging apps more widely. Among the top players currently dominating download numbers, there are some commonalities. All are mobile apps available in the Google Play store and App Store that support cross-platform messaging, have group chat features, offer multifactor authentication and can be used to share files and multimedia. They all also provide encryption for texting, voice and video calls.
Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption in some portion of their app, meaning that if an outside party intercepts your texts, they should be scrambled and unreadable. It also means that the exact content of your messages supposedly can't be viewed by employees of those companies when you are communicating with another private user. This prevents law enforcement, your mobile carrier and other snooping entities from being able to read your messages even when they intercept them (which happens more often than you might think).
The privacy and security differences between Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp couldn't be bigger, though. Here's what you need to know about each of them.
Getty/SOPA Images
Does not collect data, only your phone number
Free, no ads, funded by nonprofit Signal Foundation
Fully open-source
Encryption: Signal Protocol
Signal is a typical one-tap install app that can be found in your normal marketplaces like Google Play and Apple's App Store and works just like the usual text-messaging app. It's an open-source development provided free of charge by the nonprofit Signal Foundation and has been famously used for years by high-profile privacy icons like Edward Snowden.
Signal's main function is that it can send -- to either an individual or a group -- fully encrypted text, video, audio and picture messages, after verifying your phone number and letting you independently verify other Signal users' identity. For a deeper dive into the potential pitfalls and limitations of encrypted messaging apps, CNET's Laura Hautala's explainer is a life-saver.
When it comes to privacy, it's hard to beat Signal's offer. It doesn't store your user data. And beyond its encryption prowess, it gives you extended, onscreen privacy options, including app-specific locks, blank notification pop-ups, face-blurring antisurveillance tools and disappearing messages.
Occasional bugs have proven that the tech is far from bulletproof, of course, but the overall arc of Signal's reputation and results have kept it at the top of every privacy-savvy person's list of identity protection tools. The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times (which also recommends WhatsApp) and The Wall Street Journal all recommend using Signal to contact their reporters safely.
For years, the core privacy challenge for Signal lay not in its technology but in its wider adoption. Sending an encrypted Signal message is great, but if your recipient isn't using Signal, then your privacy may be nil. Think of it like the herd immunity created by vaccines, but for your messaging privacy.
Now that Musk's and Dorsey's endorsements have sent a surge of users to get a privacy booster shot, however, that challenge may be a thing of the past.
Getty/NurPhoto
Data linked to you: Name, phone number, contacts, user ID
Free, forthcoming Ad Platform and premium features, funded mainly by founder
Only partially open-source
Encryption: MTProto
Telegram falls somewhere in the middle of the privacy scale, and it stands apart from other messenger apps because of its efforts to create a social network-style environment. While it doesn't collect as much data as WhatsApp, it also doesn't offer encrypted group calls like WhatsApp, nor as much user data privacy and company transparency as Signal. Data collected by Telegram that could be linked to you includes your name, phone number, contact list and user ID.
Telegram also collects your IP address, something else Signal doesn't do. And unlike Signal and WhatsApp, Telegram's one-to-one messages aren't encrypted by default. Rather, you have to turn them on in the app's settings. Telegram group messages also aren't encrypted. Researchers found that while some of Telegram's MTProto encryption scheme was open-source, some portions were not, so it's not completely clear what happens to your texts once they're in Telegram's servers.
Telegram has seen several breaches. Some 42 million Telegram user IDs and phone numbers were exposed in March of 2020, thought to be the work of Iranian government officials. It would be the second massive breach linked to Iran, after 15 million Iranian users were exposed in 2016. A Telegram bug was exploited by Chinese authorities in 2019 during the Hong Kong protests. Then there was the deep-fake bot on Telegram that has been allowed to create forged nudes of women from regular pictures. Most recently, its GPS-enabled feature allowing you to find others near you has created obvious problems for privacy.
I reached out to Telegram to find out whether there were any major security plans in the works for the app, and what its security priorities were after this latest user surge. I'll update this story when I hear back.
Angela Lang/CNET
Data linked to you: Too much to list (see below)
Free; business versions available for free, funded by Facebook
Not open-source, except for encryption
Encryption: Signal Protocol
Let's be clear: There's a difference between security and privacy. Security is about safeguarding your data against unauthorized access, and privacy is about safeguarding your identity regardless of who has access to that data.
On the security front, WhatsApp's encryption is the same as Signal's, and that encryption is secure. But that encryption protocol is one of the few open-source parts of WhatsApp, so we're being asked to trust WhatsApp more than we are Signal. WhatsApp's actual app and other infrastructure have also faced hacks, just as Telegram has.
Jeff Bezos' phone was famously hacked in January of 2020 through a WhatsApp video message. In December of the same year, Texas' attorney general alleged -- though has not proven -- that Facebook and Google struck a back-room deal to reveal WhatsApp message content. A spyware vendor targeted a WhatsApp vulnerability with its software to hack 1,400 devices, resulting in a lawsuit from Facebook. WhatsApp's unencrypted cloud-based backup feature has long been considered a security risk by privacy experts and was one way the FBI got evidence on notorious political fixer Paul Manafort. To top it off, WhatsApp has also become known as a haven for scam artists and malware purveyors over the years (just as Telegram has attracted its own share of platform abuse, detailed above).
Despite the hacks, it's not the security aspect that concerns me about WhatsApp as much as the privacy. I'm not eager for Facebook to have yet another piece of software installed on my phone from which it can cull still more behavioral data via an easy-to-use app with a pretty interface and more security than your regular messenger.
When WhatsApp says it can't view the content of the encrypted messages you send to another WhatsApp user, what is doesn't say is that there's a laundry list of other data that it collects that could be linked to your identity: Your unique device ID, usage and advertising data, purchase history and financial information, physical location, phone number, your contact information and that of your list of contacts, what products you've interacted with, how often you use the app, and how it performs when you do. The list goes on. This is way more than Signal or Telegram.
When I asked the company why users should settle for less data privacy, a WhatsApp spokesperson pointed out that it limits what it does with this user data, and that the data collection only applies to some users. For instance, financial transaction data collection would be relevant only to those WhatsApp users in Brazil, where the service is available.
"We do not share your contacts with Facebook, and we cannot see your shared location," the WhatsApp spokesperson told CNET.
"While most people use WhatsApp just to chat with friends and family, we've also begun to offer the ability for people to chat with businesses to get help or make a purchase, with health authorities to get information about COVID, with domestic violence support agencies, and with fact checkers to provide people with the ability to get accurate information," the spokesperson said. "As we've expanded our services, we continue to protect people's messages and limit the information we collect."
Is WhatsApp more convenient than Signal and Telegram? Yes. Is it prettier? Sure. Is it just as secure? We won't know unless we see more of its source code. But is it more private? Not when it comes to how much data it collects comparatively. For real privacy, I'm sticking with Signal and I recommend you do the same.
