PLASMA HDTV REVIEW

Many companies have gotten into the LCD HDTV game over the last few years, hoping to capitalize on the high demand tor flat panels. But most are newcomers compared with Sharp, which was one of the first companies to offer LCD TVs in Japan back in 1988. Since then, Sharp has remained ahead of the curve in terms of manufacturing and environmental concerns. It has invested billions of dollars in new plants and processes.

Among the company’s current lines is the E77 series, which comes in several sizes, including the 60-inch LC-60E77UN reviewed here. This series offers basic LCD HDTVs at attractive prices for their sizes.

Features

The most obvious feature of the LC-60E77UN is 120-hertz operation—frames Hash on the screen at a rate of 120 frames per second, which is twice the normal video rate of 60 fps and five times the film frame rate of 24 fps. In conjunction with a setting called Fine Motion Enhanced—Sharp’s frame- interpolation algori th m— this is intended to reduce the motion blur that has plagued LCD TVs since their introduction.

Frame interpolation creates new frames to insert between the actual frames in a video signal, calculating where moving objects should be in those new frames to smooth out the motion and sharpen the image. But this process can introduce artifacts of its own. Most 120-Hz and 240-Hz LCD HDTVs offer several degrees of interpolation, so you can balance the increased sharpness with any artifacts that might intrude. However, the LC-60E77UN’s Fine Motion Enhanced control has only two settings—On and Off.

As I mentioned earlier, Sharp has been making LCD TVs for a long time. That includes the LCD panels themselves, which, in the case of the E77 series, use 10 bits to represent each primary color (red, green, blue). This results in smoother color gradations and less solari/ation (banding in areas of subtle gradations) than the 8-bit panels used in lesser sets can manage.

One upscale feature found in the LC-60E77UN is a color management system (CMS).

Unlike last year’s implementation, this one lets you tweak the hue, saturation, and brightness of each primary (red, green, blue) and secondary (yellow, magenta, cyan) color, moving the color points as needed. (Last year’s models didn’t have a brightness control for each color.) This is a potentially great feature, but you shouldn’t attempt to use it without the requisite tools and training.

I’m at a loss to understand this TV’s Monochrome mode, which disables all color and produces a black-and-white picture. What’s the point? More importantly, why not make this a blue-only mode, which would be a tremendous
help in setting the color and tint controls? Without this mode, you must set these controls by looking at skintones, since blue filters don’t work reliably with LCD HDTVs.

Like many modern HDTVs, the LC-60E77UN includes several dynamic enhancements, such as automatic backlight and contrast adjustments that respond to the picture’s overall brightness (technically called average picture level or APL). These functions are intended to increase the contrast ratio and deepen the perceived black level. I normally find them to be more distracting than helpful, so 1 left them off.

The backlight can also dynamically respond to the amount of light in the room, which can be more beneficial than adjustments based on API.. In particular, the best backlight setting for a brightly lit room is higher than the best setting for a darkened room. Also, if you engage this function, which is called Optical Picture Control (OPC) in Sharp TVs, it can save substantial amounts of energy. Enabling the dynamic APL response can save even more energy, but I don’t like the way it looks, so I’ll take a slight energy hit for the sake of a better picture.

The LC-60E77UN includes four HDMI 1.3 inputs that support Deep Color (increased color bit depth), xvYCC (expanded color gamut, sometimes called x.v.Color), and Consumer Electronics Control (CEC), which is a standard feature of HDMI that Sharp calls AQUOS Link. No commercial video content created using Deep Color or xvYCC, but some HD camcorders use them, so the TV can display your own content from such a camcorder in its full glory.

On the other hand, CEC can be useful. This function sends control codes via HDMI to any compatible devices. It turns them on and off and sets their inputs or outputs automatically as required.

Review & Feature…Page 2 >>

User Interface

The remote is a universal model that can control up to four devices in addition to the TV. It has a backlight that only illuminates a few of the function buttons. This is very odd, since all the buttons look translucent and could easily be illuminated. Not only that, the labels for the backlit buttons are printed on the body of the remote, so you can’t sec them in the dark.

The buttons are well separated but rather small. The layout is mostly good, but the AV Mode button, which selects the picture mode, is hidden under a flip-down cover at the bottom of the remote. As usual with TV remotes, there are no dedicated input-selection buttons, but a Source button brings up a list of inputs on the screen.

I’ve always liked the organization of Sharp’s menu system, and the picture controls are visible as soon as you enter the menu. However, I’ve always hated that the menu remains on the screen as you adjust a picture control, obscuring the image you’re trying to tweak.

Another thing I don’t like about the picture controls is that they link to the preset picture modes, not the inputs. For example, if you adjust the controls in the Movie mode, the same settings will apply to all inputs to which the Movie mode is assigned. The only exception is the User mode, which you can set independently for each input.

Setup and Testing

The Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpness controls were fairly close to correct in Movie mode. I brought Contrast down a couple of clicks and Brightness up one click. Sharpness was fine at its default setting, but if I increased it by even one click, it induced ringing (white halos around black lines on a gray background).

As I mentioned earlier, using a blue filter to set Color and Tint is unreliable with LCD TVs, and this one has no blue-only mode, so I had to set these controls looking at skintones. I used a pre-release version of the new HQV test disc, which includes a photo of seven people with different skintones—three African-Americans, two Asians, and two Caucasians (including one ginger). Tint was fine at its default value, but the color saturation was too high, so I toned it down a bit

Starting with the Spears & Munsil High Definition Benchmark Blu-ray Edition test disc, the LC-60E77UN’s video processing proved to be excellent all around, including 2:2 and 3:2 as well as edge-adaptive deinterlacing. Even better, turning on the set’s frame interpolation didn’t cause any artifacts in the jaggies test ring that consists of alternating horizontal lines of white and black. Most LCDs with frame interpolation cause all sorts of ugly artifacts in this ring.

I turned to the unpublished FPD Benchmark Blu-ray test disc-to evaluate the Sharp’s frame interpolation, and I saw virtually no difference between setting Pine Motion Enhanced on or off for most of the tests. In only one test, the clarity of scrolling letters was improved slightly by turning it on, but either way, motion blur wasn’t bad at all. Clearly, the Sharp’s frame interpolation is very gentle, and it introduced no visible artifacts, apart from the interpolation effect itself. I generally like frame interpolation, and I used it for most of the viewing discussed in the comments to follow. Some videophiles object to what it does to the look of films, but here the effect was relatively subtle.

Some clips on EPD Benchmark are fairly dark, which gives you a good opportunity to check an LCD TV’s off-axis performance. As with all such TVs, the Sharp’s apparent black level rose and colors shifted as I moved away from the center, but not as much as some I’ve seen. Still, I wouldn’t want to watch this set more than 20 degrees or so off axis.

As usual with LCD HDTVs, the default backlight setting, even in Movie mode, resulted in a peak -white measurement that was way too high for comfortable viewing in a dark room, so I decreased the backlight level until peak white was within the THX guidelines. Then I measured the black level, which was quite respectable and slightly less than half of the result I obtained with the Sharp LC-52085UI reviewed last year.

The Mid-Low color-temperature preset proved to be the closest to correct. It was a bit biased toward blue, but the Low setting was distinctly red. The LC-60E77UN provides two sets of RGB calibration controls in the user menu (last year’s D85 series provided only one set), and the calibration process was quite easy and stable. I calibrated 80 IRE, then 30, then I checked 80 again, and it was right on the money. However, as you can see in the color-tracking charts below, blue wandered over and under where it should be at other brightness levels. It was too high at 20 IRE, too low at 40, too high at 70, and too low at 100.

As you can see in the CIE chart above, most of the color points were fairly close to where they’re supposed to be, though the red-green axis was slightly undersaturated, and the yellow point was way off. I tried to improve things with the set’s color management system (CMS), and I got yellow much closer to its target, but there was nothing I could do about green. After I watched some real-world content with and without my CMS settings, I decided that I preferred the picture with the CMS at its default settings. It looked more W natural.

Just for grins, I checked the gray scale after I tweaked the CMS, and I found that blue wandered around even more than before in the midrange (40 to 70 IRE), but overall, it wasn’t that different from the pre-CMS result.-SW

Review & Feature…Page 3 >>

Real-World Performance

Chapter 8 of Mission: Impossible III on Blu-ray opens with a pan across a long staircase, which is a great test of a TV’s 1080i deinterlacing capabilities. Sending this image to the Sharp at 1080i, the stairs were almost moire-free, which was among the best I’ve seen. The color still seemed a little oversaturated, so I turned it down a bit more, and the shadow detail in the catacombs was OK, but not great.

The detail and color in The Dark Knight were both excellent. The contrast in nighttime cityscapes was quite good, but shadow detail was only mediocre. This was also the case with the overall black level—the letterbox bars were clearly visible, especially in such dark scenes. However, bright scenes looked gorgeous. generally bright and vibrant, including the red Corvette. Skitones also looked natural. As before the black of space wasn’t all that deep, and shadow detail was only so-so.

Image-wise, the new Star Trek told much the same story. Detail in the Enterprise construction zone as Kirk arrives to enlist was exquisite, and colors were I thought the “Deserts” episode of Planet Earth on Blu-ray might be revealing, since there are many shades of brown and orange. These colors looked surprisingly good considering that the TVs measured yellow point was so tar off (see HT Labs Measures). There was no banding as the sun emerges from behind the planet in the opening sequence, probably due in part to the 10-bit panel. Again, detail in things like animal hair and scrub brush was superb, and mountains in the distance were razor sharp. The black of space was deeper than I’ve seen in previous clips, but this was likely due to the fact that the bright Earth occupied a large portion of the image, making space look blacker than it otherwise would.

On The Fifth Element Supcrbit DVD (sent to the TV at 480i), detail was as good as standard def can be. It was certainly not BD quality, but the complex cityscape seen before Leeloo jumps into Korben’s cab was fairly sharp. The color of things like skintones and Korben’s orange T-shirt was fine. I believe the black of space in the movie’s opening shot is higher than normal on the disc, so I can’t fault the TV for this. In fact, the black bars looked blacker than space in those shots.

Before I wrapped up my evaluation, I watched a bit ofHDand SD television from DISH Network. I happened to see some night scenes from 10,000 BC on HBO HD, which looked rather flat. On another HBO HD channel, I caught the end of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, when the aliens bring back David’s mother for a day. Shadow detail in the dark scenes wasn’t great, but brighter daytime scenes were very detailed, with great colors.
When I looked at some SD channels, I discovered that the LC-60E77UN doesn’t have a 4:3 aspect ratio setting, at least via HDMI. Fortunately, the DISH Network receiver has such a setting, so I could see SD channels in their intended aspect ratio. I compared the SD and I ID versions of several channels, and the SD version looked significantly softer than HD—a much greater difference than between Blu-ray and DVD, which I attributed to the satellite receiver’s upeonversion.

Conclusion

There’s much to like about the Sharp LC-60E77UN, and there’s nolhing glaringly wrong. Its color and detail are excellent, as is its video processing. The controls have been improved over the last Sharp LCD HDTV I reviewed, although I really wish the menu would disappear when adjusting a picture control. Also, the black-level is half the value I saw in that previous model. It showed in the improved contrast in scenes with very dark and very bright areas. Still, blacks didn’t appear that deep in normal viewing, and shadow detail was mediocre.
A 60-inch flat panel is quite good, and I’ve seen this model for less online. If money is tight—a seemingly foregone conclusion these days—but you still want a big flat panel, the LC-60E77UN is a worthy contender.

Specification

Basic Specifications
Screen Size Class	60″ Class (60-1/32″ Diagonal)
Panel Type	ASV Superlucent LCD Panel
Pixel Resolution	Full 1920 x 1080 HD Resolution
Backlight System	CCFL
Viewing Angles	176º H / 176º V
Lamp Life (hours)¹	60,000
Audio System	10W + 10W
120HzFrameRate	Yes plus Dejudder Technology
Tuning System	ATSC / QAM / NTSC
Spectral Contrast Engine Level	XD
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Response Time	4ms

Features
AQUOS® Series	Yes
AQUOS Advantage^SM Support	Yes
Game-Optimized	Yes

Terminals
Inputs
HDMI™	4
HD Component	2 (1080p compatible)
Composite Video	RCA (A/V) x 2
S-Video	4-pin DIN x 1
Audio Inputs (L/R)	4 RCA
RS-232C	9-pin x 1
PC	1 (15-pin D-sub)

Power
Power Consumption AC (watts)	390W
Power Source	120V

Weight & Dimensions
Dimensions
Dimensions (wxhxd) (inches)	56-5/8″ x 35-11/64″ x 4-45/64″
Dimensions with Speakers (wxhxd) (inches)	56-5/8″ x 37-29/64″ x 17-9/16″
Weight
Product Weight (lbs.)	81.6
Weight with Stand & Speakers (lbs.)	92.6

Additional Specifications
Cabinet Color	Black with campagne gold accent
Limited Warranty	1 year parts and labor from date of purchase

Included Accessories
Remote Control	Yes
Table Stand	Yes

Product specifications and design are subject to change without notice.

¹ The typical period of time after which the lamp’s power output will have decreased by about half, given that the LCD TV is used continuously in a 77 degree F room under standard lighting and brightness conditions.