Televisions

LED, QLED, Mini LED and OLED panels in a living-room TV:

what separates them is how each one makes black. An ordinary LED set lights an LCD panel from behind or along its edges; it is the cheapest and fine in a bright room. QLED, and LG’s QNED, add a colour layer to the same design, so colours look richer while blacks stay greyish in the dark. Mini LED splits the backlight into many small zones that dim separately, so night scenes finally look dark. OLED has no backlight: each pixel lights and switches off on its own, giving true black. Samsung runs Tizen, LG webOS, and Sony, TCL and many Hisense sets Google TV; when an older set loses an app, a streaming stick brings it back.

Screen size and the ports on the back of a TV:

come next. A 55-inch suits most living rooms where the sofa sits two to three metres away; a 43-inch is the sensible size for a bedroom. For a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, look for a 120 Hz panel and an HDMI 2.1 port. Many budget and mid-range sets run at 60 Hz, fine for football and series but a cap on games; the consoles are in video games and consoles. Thin TVs sound thin, and a soundbar from speakers does more for dialogue than paying for the next model up.

ISDB-Tb, the tuner a TV needs in Guatemala:

decides whether the set picks up the open national channels with just an antenna. Guatemala broadcasts digital TV in the Japanese-Brazilian ISDB-Tb standard, while the United States and Mexico use ATSC, so a set flown back from the US or brought across at Tecún Umán finds nothing on the antenna scan. Look for ISDB-T on the spec sheet or the back label; if only ATSC is listed, take the cost of an ISDB-Tb converter box off your offer. A cable decoder or streaming stick on HDMI works either way.

A 55-inch 4K television and what it is worth used:

is the yardstick, since most homes buy that size. New, a mainstream Samsung, LG, TCL or Hisense at 55 inches runs about Q3,000 to Q4,500, and an OLED the same size costs well over twice that. Prices slide with every new range, so a used TV is measured against what the same size costs new today, not what its owner paid, and a well-kept OLED or Mini LED holds its price better than a plain LED because no cheap new set matches its picture.

Backlight, burn-in and cracked panels on a used TV:

only show with the screen on. On a plain white image, darker patches or bands mean failing backlight LEDs; they are wired in a chain, so one dead LED can black out the whole picture. If the screen goes dark while the sound plays on, hold a phone torch to the panel: faint shapes mean the backlight has died, a repair rather than a write-off, but worth a lower price. On an OLED, a grey screen reveals burn-in, often a news logo or a sports scoreboard. Try each HDMI port with your own cable, and carry the set upright, because laid flat a panel can crack under its own weight.

The back label and the screen in a TV listing:

answer most of a buyer’s questions. Photograph the screen on, then the back label with the model code and manufacturing date, which reveal the panel type and tuner. Put the size in inches in the title, mention any dark spot, line or burn-in, and say whether the remote, stand feet or a wall bracket are included. An old player that sat under it can go in Blu-ray and DVD players. Buyers driving in from Villa Nueva or Coatepeque will want it running before they load it, and a 55-inch set will not lie flat in a sedan, so tell them to bring a pickup and a blanket.