TV Reviews

Editor's Note: It's with great pleasure that Home Theater brings you this exclusive first review of Sharp's new ground-breaking LC-90LE745U HDTV. With this 90-inch set, the first at its size truly intended for mass production, Sharp begins the era of projection-size flat panels suitable for any light environment. While the $10,000 (street) ticket price still exceeds the cost of a high quality 2D/3D projector and screen, as a sign of what's to come, it is a significant introduction. And, as you'll read in Tom Norton's detailed review, not a bad TV. - Rob Sabin

Ninety inches diagonal is not all that big as projection screens go. But Sharp’s new LC-90LE745U, at that same 90 inches, is immense by flat panel standards. With more than twice the screen area of a 65inch set, it has little flat panel competition for its size, and none at all for its combination of size and cost. Panasonic has an 85inch plasma, for example, that will set you back nearly twice as much. LG showed a 4K 80-inch LCD set at last January’s CES, but exact pricing and availability is still undetermined. Mitsubishi offers a 92-inch rear-projection set at some remarkable street prices (around $3,000), but its massive 194 pounds and 25-inch depth (225 pounds and 32 inches in its shipping carton) might be just a little intimidating.

I love big screens. Really big screens. 60 inches? Pshhh. 65? Ha! 70? In a pinch. 80? Okay, wow, now that’s a seriously big TV. A monolith of a height and breadth that brings to mind projection screens of yore. Wait, forget “yore.” It’s closing in on projection screens now.

3D Performance
2D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

Panasonic has improved its plasma sets each year, and while that march forward has generated torturous verbiage to describe its continually improving plasma HDTV black levels (Infinite Black, Infinite Black Pro, Infinite Black Ultra, and, perhaps next year, Infinite Black Pro Ultra), the company has kept pushing the design envelope. And it has done so even as flat panel prices continue to drop. A 65-inch plasma for $3,700 would have been considered an impossible dream just a few years ago when the goal was to get prices down to $100 per diagonal inch.

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

HDTV manufacturers’ fortunes have been in a perpetual state of flux for years. With prices continually dropping, profit margins are slim. While the TV makers haven’t quite yet adopted a business plan that calls for losing money on each sale, there isn’t much further they can go without them paying you to take the set home. Just kidding, of course. But apart from the dicey economy (or perhaps because of it?), this is a golden age for the consumer to buy a great HDTV for not a lot of cash.

One argument made by naysayers when 3D TV first arrived was that the feature would jack up prices for flat-panel sets. That did prove sort of true at first, but 3D was quickly folded into the general feature package for most TVs, leaving set prices to continue their downward trajectory. Case in point: Panasonic’s new TC-P55ST50. The first Panasonic 3D TV I reviewed 2 years back had a 50-inch screen and cost $2,600. But the company’s new P55ST50 3D plasma has a larger, 55-inch screen and costs around $1,600. Depending on how the rest of this review plays out, that could mean we have a serious bargain on our hands.

Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

In my quest to find good-performing flat panels under $1000, I was eager to try the Samsung UN40EH6000. The company's entry-level EH-series LED-LCD TVs are available in several lines, of which the EH6000 is top of the heap, and each line includes several sizes, ranging from 26 to 65 inches. (Not all sizes are available in all lines.) At 40 inches, the model reviewed here is the smallest of the EH6000 line.

The last three flat-panel HDTVs reviewed in these pages averaged over $4,000 each—a figure inflated, to be sure, by one of them costing $6,000. Statement products tell us what’s possible and where the technology is going. Most Home Theater readers want to know these things.