From humble beginnings in a small laboratory in London belonging to John Logie Baird television has come a long way from the early Cathode Ray days to now the latest in Liquid Crystal Display /Flat Screen TV sets. It is perhaps difficult to believe but when questioned about essential personal items worth keeping, quite a few people listed their TV sets as an essential item.

So having established where and when television arrived in our daily lives, just what exactly is TV and how does it achieve the things that it does do if that is not too technical a description (joke)? Since its inception as an electromechanical system of receiving and broadcasting information the term television has become broadly synonymous with both the unit required to receive and play the information and also the technique and medium for broadcasting the data in the first place.

Understandably if you were to ask the average man in the street his biggest issue with television today most would reply that the one problem they have is an increasing dependency on technological terms and an increasing ignorance of what these terms actually mean.

Perhaps it would be best now to move on to the latest developments within the industry and concentrate our coverage upon digital television, what it actually means; formats, bandwidth and an explanation of the technical jargon and terminology used.

So an accurate definition of Digital TV is what? Whereas traditional analogue technology and television was reliant upon transmission of its pictures and sound files via analogue channels newer digital television handles all of its broadcasting and transmission via digital signals which are much smaller, use up less bandwidth and are more accurate.

So in basic terms, how does a Digital TV differ from a more conventional one? Let us look at this whilst analysing one of the newer LCD TV�s available.

The LCD TV that we shall use for our illustrative purposes here is the Goodmans LD4260HDFT LCD Flat Screen TV.

When considering a new Digital TV it would help if you were familiar with the following items of information.

The Screen resolution of the TV is possibly the most obvious place to start. Here we refer to the exact number of pixels that can be displayed in each dimension.

Whether the TV is Hi-Definition Ready would be the next thing to look at. Hi Definition TV essentially makes a TV picture in a quality format that is at least four times better than conventionally available at present.

The next item that we would need to look at is what types of connectors are used between the peripherals used alongside the main Digital TV?

In this case we mean SCART Plugs and sockets and their usage. Here the definition of SCART refers to �Syndicat francais des Constructeurs d�Appareils Radio et Television (SCART).

The final item we would look at would be what is the nature and number of the High-Definition Multimedia Interfaces (HDMI) being used. The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a licensable audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams between digital audio/video sources such as set-top box, HD DVD Player etc.

The LD4260HDFT is a 42in LCD TV and the prices for these would be in the region of 900 pounds sterling or 1800 US dollars. The resolution of the screen is 1366 X 768 and with regards to being HD Ready the answer is yes. The Goodmans has 2 (1 RGB) scarts and the type and number of Multimedia interfaces the LD4260HDFT uses is HDMI and 1. The type of Tuner for this TV is Analogue and Digital and the Goodmans is available from limited outlets only.

So given this information, what would be our view of the Goodmans LD4260HDFT?

First up, we would look at the picture quality and our score here would be 6, and for the sound quality we would rate it at 6. Taking a look at the number of relevant connections and their availability, our score would be 6. With regards to the overall level of features, our view would be 6 if we then take a look at the ease of use and overall value for money then our scores would be, 10 and 8 respectively.

The overall verdict would be Given the relatively cheap price tag (everything is relative) surrounding this TV, the quality is quite good - at least for the price.

Remember that all the prices we use in these reviews are very much designed for illustration purposes only and in some cases you may well find the actual price cheaper but also in some cases, more expensive.