LCD TV Reviews

The top chart shows the gray scale of the Sharp LCD HD monitor as set by the manufacturer in the low and mid menu settings. We were unable to make any adjustments or corrections to this gray scale. In the low setting, the set measures 8,200 Kelvin with dark images and leans toward 5,200 K with brighter images. In the mid setting, darker images reach a very blue 15,200 K; only 100 percent white images finally drop down to 6,500 K (although not at D6500 K). The bottom chart shows that the red and green primary colors of the display's LCDs are noticeably desaturated (green: 0.28, 0.584; red: 0.598, 0.322) from those colors specified by SMPTE. Blue is reasonably accurate (blue: 0.146, 0.074). In the low setting, the gray scale (shown in the middle of the triangle) goes from blue, past D6500 in the middle of the range, to red as the image gets brighter. In the mid setting, the image is substantially bluer with darker images and gets closer to D6500 as the image gets brighter. The light output was approximately 100 foot-lamberts, which is outstanding. The color decoder is accurate as set by the factory and can be adjusted. The TV displays at least 480 horizontal lines per picture height with NTSC sources and can display HDTV sources up to the panel's native resolution of 1,366:768.—MW