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Many versions of things have historically proven to be pretty popular.

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The iPod mini, mini muffins, mini me.

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But a new one called mini LED could have a big time effect

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on the way we watch TV or use our computers. But before we go any further,

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you guys gotta know that mini LED is not the same thing as micro LED.

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They are completely separate. Micro is also cool,

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and you can learn more about it right up here. But mini is the one that you might actually be able

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to get your hands on for an affordable price in the near future.

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As for why it matters, well it first helps to understand how it relates

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to other kinds of TV technology. If you've ever been to a big box store

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and seen how striking OLED TVs are next to non OLED models,

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the difference is due to the fact that OLEDs have a very high contrast ratio

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because individual pixels can be turned completely off,

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producing deep blacks without light bleed from nearby bright objects.

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Non OLED TVs, on the other hand, rely on backlighting that is always turned on.

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To create images then, an LCD layer in front of the backlight

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selectively blocks the light in different areas of the screen.

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But it can't block the light completely, meaning that blacks can end up looking closer to gray.

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To improve this, LCDs use a trick to improve their contrast

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called local dimming. The idea is that the backlight can selectively dim

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or even switch off in certain areas of a screen

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where the image is dark or black. And local dimming can definitely help,

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but it is far from a perfect solution. You see TVs that have this feature

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typically have their backlight split into zones

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that dim or turn off as a group. But for the effect to work well,

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you need lots and lots of zones, which means lots of LEDs adding cost, heat,

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and power consumption. That's where many LEDs come in.

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Thanks to some recent technological advances, LEDs have not only become more efficient,

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but also smaller, which is exactly the idea behind a mini LED display.

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Mini LEDs are often less than a 10th of a millimeter across,

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meaning that you can fit many more of them in the backlight layer of a TV,

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allowing much smaller zones of lighting control. To put this in context,

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a traditional local dimming TV from the last couple of years

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might have dozens or maybe a few hundreds of zones.

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While these recently released mini LED displays from ASUS and TCL have about 1,000 individual zones.

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This should help them do a much better job of preventing that blooming effect

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that you sometimes see with local dimming where bright objects in a dark scene

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have this aura or halo glowing around them because the zone that's lighting the bright object

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is simply too large to be confined to the area where it's supposed to be.

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Of course, mini LED is a newer technology right now

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so you can expect to pay more for it, but it's well positioned to be more affordable than OLED,

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especially after the early adopter tax wears off.

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And with micro LED being quite a ways off from hitting the mass consumer market

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due to high costs and manufacturing complexity, mini LED looks to be an appealing option

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to tide us over until then. Now if you'll excuse me,

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I've got to go to Tim Hortons because I've got a sudden hankering for some mini donuts.

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So thanks for watching guys. Like, dislike, check out our other videos

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and leave a comment if you have suggestion for a future fast as possible.

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I might even do the whole thing instead of leaving out a word like I did a second ago.

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Bet you didn't even notice. Don't forget to subscribe by the way.