Sharp Aquos LCD TV

The largest LCD TV in the new range is Sharp Aquos LC-52X20E LCD TVs that include 42-inch and 46-inch variants, and it’s an impressively attractive beast replete with a host of advanced features.

Not least of these is the TV’s black screen and matching piano black lacquered finish to the slim line and modern design. The matching metal stand comes in the box and bolts quickly and easily into place on the base or you can wall mount the TV; all the ports on the reverse are recessed with manual controls (as opposed to the remote’s controls, more on which later) are also discreetly tidied away on the right edge of the set (from the front).

The set is quick and easy to set up with auto tuning for the digital TV side of things and, despite the size, the 33.5kg weight (with stand attached) is actually quite manageable – had it not been for the sheer size of the screen. Talking of which you get 6,220,800 pixels from its 1920x1080-pixel resolution making this a Full HD 1080p TV so it provides the best output from your Blu ray or HD DVD of HD TV sources.

The fact that this and the other TVs in the range feature that all important native 1080p “Full HD” r
eady screens means any HD signal is presented as broadcast (there’s no down sampling as with lower resolution screens) and means the picture quality is stunning and razor sharp.

The set’s gorgeous “Pure Black Panel” means it can successfully deal with a perceived problem of LCD TVs when compared to plasma sets; they can’t produce a true black, well, not so here and when you add a boosted Dynamic Contrast Enhancement ratio of 10000:1, pictures lack nothing in terms of punch. An LCD refresh of 4-milliseconds (in the TV’s action mode) means there’s no judder or blur problems during fast action from HD sources. However, I did notice some odd flickering on high contrast scenes when upscalling from DVDs (played on my PS3) or when using the internal or an external DVB digital tuner.

When it occurred, grey or white vertical parts of small areas of the picture would flicker and pixels would “crawl” for a few seconds presumably until the TV’s processing had caught up with itself and properly adjust the errant pixels.

When playing HD sources there are no problems however, and using the Blu ray version of the latest Spiderman movie (Spiderman 3) connected through one of the three dedicated HDMI ports, it left me in no doubt what this TV is capable of when it behaved.

The stand out scene within that film that and that really pushes the TV is where the character Sandman first reforms after being zapped at a physics research lab. Each grain of sand that represents the character slowly reforms into a man with each crawling creeping grain clearly defined on the screen. Subtleties of shade, colour and highlight are all there and it’s a scene that really shows off the dynamic contrast and sheer level of detail to best effect.

To help optimise the picture presented you get pre-optimised AV modes for Dynamic, Dynamic (Fixed), Standard, Game (contrast, brightness and the Action mode are automatically set to help get the most from any game played on the set), Movie and there’s a User mode that allows you to tailor the set’s settings to whatever you wish. Those automated features notwithstanding, each of the system’s presets can be further tweaked in menus with powerful advanced settings available to further enhance or change the way the screen behaves.

The menu’s run across the top of the panel and scrolling via the supplied IR remote control is straightforward and quickly allows you make adjustments and see what effect the adjustment has on the image still displayed on screen.

A neat Power Control system allows you to customize the LCD TVs power consumption performance and an Optical Picture Control (OPC) uses a small light sensor on the front of the TV to monitor ambient lighting. When activated, it adjusts the TV’s brightness and contrast to suit the ambient light, the brighter the ambient conditions, the brighter the TV becomes and vis versa.

As OPC adjusts, small green leaf icons appear on the screen, the more little bunches of leaves that appear the less power is being used and the dimmer the screen, but because it simply keeps pace with the surrounding ambient light, you don’t really notice as it slowly adjusts – apart from the little green leaf icons changing of course.

Colour balance is excellent and can be adjusted via a set of predefined colour temperature settings. “Normal” and digital broadcast pictures are very good too thanks to excellent noise processing while finely controlled sharpening means you can tune your picture quality to get stunning results from any source.

But what if like me, you have other kit to connect to the set? Well you’ll be pleased to read apart from three HDMI sockets other connections include all the following: A UHF/VHF antenna port, an RS-232C PC connection, two scarts and an S-Video port, there’s a 15-pin mini D-sub 3.5mm jack and a component “in” as well. Add to these an optical digital audio out, a headphone port and an RCA audio out and you can connect just about any multimedia device to the TV including external surround speaker systems, games consoles, DVD, even an old steam driven VHS player and of course Blu ray or HD DVD players and all at the same time.

The large IR remote control is slightly confusing to use because there seems to be lag between pressing a button and getting anything to happen on screen: press a button and wait, press another button and wait… eventually the cursor moves on the screen. Whether this is a facet of the TV or the remote is hard to say but it is a little frustrating until you get used to it. On the up side the IR controller includes controls for any AQOUS Link kit – other Sharp HDMI devices can be controlled from the one remote – so that’s cool too.

Another slight gripe is with the set’s built-in speaker system. The dual 15-watt speakers provide plenty of volume but the sound lacks richness, even with the bass at full, the audio lacks punch from large explosions, there’s just no oomph! However, there’s no distortion even at full volume and of course, brighter sounds are crystal; the NICAM surround system does do its job well too.

Other features include the truD anti judder picture processing and Sharp’s RGB Plus (“Sharps Fourth Colour Dimension”, according to the company) that uses normal red, green and blue colours plus the additional of crimson red, which helps smoother reproduction of natural shades with more natural reds and finally the set is 24Hz compatible too.