LCD TV Reviews

The Digital Noise Reduction control (oddly, located under the Options menu, not Picture) can work well when you need it without seriously degrading the picture. But apart from checking its operation I left of Off for all my tests.

While there is no overscan control, the View Mode (aspect ratio) option Dot-by-Dot (not available with all inputs and resolutions) provides zero overscan. The other View Mode choices are typical and provide a good range of capabilities. The zoom mode can enlarge letterboxed material to fill the screen from left to right with an undistorted, correctly proportioned picture. This includes standard definition letterbox programming over cable that's upconverted to 1080i by a cable box. Not all HD sets can enlarge such material properly, but rather display it only as a letterbox within a 4:3 area in the center of the screen.

The Sharp's remote is a good one. Its buttons are even backlit, though as usual some of the button functions are on the body of the remote—where they aren't backlit—and not on the buttons themselves. My only complaint is that the channel and volume control are located close together where you can easily hit CH up or down if you're reaching for the volume. If you are watching any of the numbered inputs this will switch you to the TV input. But this won't happen if you are listening through a home theater audio system.

Piece by Piece
Starting from the top, the Sharp has superb video processing. It turned in an excellent result on most of my 480i-to-1080p deinterlacing/scaling tests, and the few that weren't quite excellent were still good. Just as important, it properly deinterlaced 1080i HD to 1080p, including recognition of 3/2 pulldown. I have not yet tested any other video display that produced a better result on these tests.

The Sharp combined this excellent video processing with exceptional resolution to produce a compellingly crisp, detailed image. And provided the Sharpness control is set correctly and the program material is up to par, the image never looked overly sharp or enhanced. Again, I haven't yet tested another one-piece set that can do better in this regard.

The set's color performance couldn't match this elevated level, but was still more than acceptable. My measured results show that the Sharp's color is just a little on the cool side even in the Low color temperature setting, and as noted earlier it cannot be fine-tuned by calibration. Its color space is good, and its deviation from the standard is not severe. It does slightly enhance some colors and shave of a bit of others (see "Measurements"), but, properly adjusted, the set's color was never unnatural or less than satisfactory. Greens displayed less of that phosphorescent glow than on some digital sets. Flesh tones, for the most part, were also quite believable, if sometimes just a bit lightened.

The fly in the soup was the Sharp's performance in the dark grays and blacks. Again, like most sets today it's vastly improved over what was considered state-of-the-art in LCD displays even just two years ago. Set the brightness control correctly and you may never see anything amiss.

But the Brightness control setting alone wasn't always the only answer. I found that when I set it to the technically correct level using test patterns, bright scenes often had a slightly faded, two-dimensional appearance. A step or two darker crushed the blacks a bit, somewhat compromising shadow detail that was not that special to start with. But this often reduced that pale look.

The two-position (On/Off) Active Contrast control did improve the image on some material, and it produced better test bench results (see "Measurements"). But it could also degrade the picture, depending on the programming. The positive benefits, when they occurred, included better image punch and enhanced depth. The negatives, which were just as likely to appear as not, were a slightly garish look and, in a least one scene I viewed, a pasty look, particularly on flesh tones. The effect of this control proved unpredictable, and trial and error was required to find out whether it helped the result or not by. Sometimes its effect was pronounced, at other times very subtle.

The Fine Motion control (On or Off also) did help with motion on some sorts of material, but it could also, unexpectedly, darken the image. This would sometimes be an improvement, either alone or together with Active Contrast. At other times using only one of the two controls (or neither) would be best.

As you can see, getting the best results in the departments of shadow detail, blacks, image "pop," and contrast depended on a bit of juggling with three different controls—and the best setting varied with the program material. Most of the time I preferred leaving both Active Contrast and Fine Motion Off, pulling the Brightness control down a step or two below the technically correct setting, and going with that. That was usually easiest and best—except when it wasn't.

Motion smear has long been an issue with LCDs. New solutions to that problem include 120Hz operation, but the LC-52D64U doesn't offer it. But as briefly mentioned above, this set does have a Fine Motion control, which is designed to help. And it does, on specific types of program material. It also slightly increases the set's resolution on moving images. Resolution degrades with motion on any sort of display and LCDs are particularly susceptible. But I did not find motion lag to be a significant problem with this set on most real program material. And because the Fine Motion control can also darken the image, as mentioned above, I usually left it Off unless I really felt the need for it.

When Shane Buettner reviewed the Sharp LC-52D92U last March he noticed some dark horizontal bands across the screen. I saw them on this set as well. They were quite subtle, and I saw them only on large swaths of gray or solid color—such as test patterns or shots of the sky. They were also much more noticeable when the camera panned vertically across this type of image. I wasn't much bothered by them, and they would not be a deal-breaker for me. But you might have a different reaction. [I saw the same thing, but to a much lesser extent on the Sharp LC-52D62U. In the '62 series set it wasn't distracting with program material, but in the '92 series set it was. -SCB]

Off-axis viewing has also been an ongoing issue with LCDs. While it is true that you can see an image from nearly 90 degrees off center on the Sharp, and that image does not have any odd coloration, it also does not have very much coloration at all. The best viewing position on this set is very critical. The image starts to fade noticeably at an estimated 20-30 degrees off axis, with critical viewers likely to notice the fading at the smaller angle—or even before.

There was also some false contouring, though it was relatively subtle. Most often it was visible in shadows, particularly on skin, where it could turn up as brief flashes of red where it didn't seem to belong.

Putting It All Together
The LC-52D64U does have its weaknesses, particularly in blacks, shadow detail, and off-axis viewing. It can't match the punch of the very best plasmas from Pioneer and Panasonic—particularly the blacks of the new Pioneers, which nothing else can yet match (though it does come at a price). Nor, in the LCD realm, does it equal the contrast ratio, blacks, adjustability, and consistency across a wide range of program material of the latest Sony XBR4s— though the Sharp's video processing and crisp detail are superior.

I watched a lot of high-definition on this set, of course, including HD DVD and Blu-ray, and apart from occasional adventures searching for just the right control settings to optimize contrast, I enjoyed every minute.

In addition to HD discs, I viewed a wide variety of material on my cable box DVR, including Heroes, Stargate Atlantis (repeats on Universal HD), Journeyman, Discovery HD's Alien Planet (look for it in reruns—highly recommended), and, of course, football. All of these selections looked outstanding on the Sharp.

Good standard definition programming, from both DVD and the better cable channels looked good as well. But even the Sharp can't save mediocre analog cable channels—though the set's noise reduction does help considerably.

Conclusion
The problems I've mentioned raised their heads only for a few minutes in the weeks I spent with the set. The Sharp's strengths, on the other hand, were always evident.

But somehow the Sharp's superb video processing, exceptional detail, and good color manage to plow through its shortcomings in other areas. I'm a sucker for great detail, and I haven't seen another one-piece display that can do a better job of providing it than this one.

While there are a few issues here that I would like to see addressed, when properly set up and adjusted the Sharp LC-52D64U provided me with many hours of very satisfying viewing.

Highs
Outstanding resolution and detail
Excellent video processing on both SD and HD material
Good color out of the box, though aftermarket calibration not possible

Lows
Black level and shadow detail only fair
Image degrades significantly when viewed off-axis
Occasional horizontal banding and false contouring