PRODUCT REVIEW: JANUARY 5, 2007
Sharp Aquos LC-52D62U LCD HDTV
Sharp’s new Aquos 52-inch HDTV has a cool chassis, but needs a better engine.
The Aquos LC-52D62U turned plenty of heads when it first appeared at Cedia Expo 2006. At 52 inches, it plugged a hole nicely in Sharp’s product line. As one of the new “cuts” from Sharp’s Gen 8 LCD fab, it grabbed plenty of headlines. And with a $4,799 SRP (since cut to $3,999), it became another LCD headache for plasma manufacturers to deal with.
It’s pretty much a given that the war between LCD and plasma technology is over, below 42 inches (LCD is a clear winner) and that LCD has gained significant ground in the 42-inch category. For now, plasma holds the high ground at 50 inches and above, in terms of image quality and price.
But like General George Patton’s legendary Third Army, LCD manufacturers just keep a-rolling, with new HDTVs in 46-inch and 47-inch sizes undercutting 50-inch plasma prices over the past holiday selling season. The LC-52D62U is the first 50/52-inch LCD set to reach market in any quantity, and the jury is still out on what impact it had on 2006 flat-panel HDTV sales.
Figure 1. Sharp’s Aquos LC-52D62U is quite stylish.
OUT OF THE BOX
The LC-52D62U is a classy-looking HDTV, no question about it. It’s finished in a glossy, piano black frame with an equally glossy black support stand. The only hint of silver is seen in the stereo speaker grille, which sits along the bottom of the frame. Interior designers will love it and its Spouse Acceptance Factor score will be sky-high.
The LC-52D62U follows a growing trend by dropping the DCR CableCARD slots that were common on large HDTV sets last year. Instead, it provides an integrated analog/digital tuner that can handle NTSC, ATSC, and unscrambled QAM digital cable signals. Given that less than 250,000 CableCARDS have been activated to date, the decision is not surprising.
Given the rapid movement to digital interfaces on set-top boxes and DVD players, it’s surprising that Sharp still offers three different composite video connections, plus one S-video jack, on a 52-inch HDTV with 1920x1080 resolution!
You’ll also find a pair of analog component (YPbPr) input connections and two HDMI 1.2 jacks — one with an outboard analog stereo audio connection. Each of the connections (except for Input 5) has jacks for stereo audio input.
If you are into gaming or viewing PC HDTV, note that there is no 15-pin VGA jack — you’ll need to get an adapter cable and connect your PC through one of the two HDMI interfaces. I’m surprised that Sharp didn’t at least include a DVI-I connector for PC connections — DVI and/or VGA jacks are still standard features on many HDTVs.
Figure 2a. The analog input jacks are not easily accessed on the rear panel.
Figure 2b. Two HDMI 1.2 connectors are nice — but three would be better.
There’s only one RF input on the LC-52D62U, and you’ll have to set it up for either cable or off-air modes in the menu, depending on where you get your TV signals. Analog and digital channels tune consecutively, with analog channels tuned by physical channel number and digital terrestrial channels by virtual channel. (Exception — digital cable channels will tune by their physical number only.)
REMOTE AND MENUS
Sharp’s remote control designs haven’t changed much in the past few years and are ergonomically friendly, except for a few key buttons that are too small. The keyboard layout is moderately busy — it would be hard to operate behind your back — and doesn’t provide direct input access without menu navigation.
You can save up to four favorite channels into memory, tune channels up or down, or directly enter any analog or digital station from the keypad. The Input button is very small and located just below the keypad next to the Flashback button, so don’t be surprised if you hit the wrong key by mistake from time to time.
Figure 3. The remote could use a few larger buttons.
The menus provide a moderate number of adjustments, but are missing some key settings. In Picture mode, you can tweak the usual parameters and also set the backlight level. There is an additional control (OPC) that adjusts backlight levels based on ambient room lighting.
The Advanced menu gives you access to five different color temperature settings, a black level extension for raising the luminance level of shadow detail, a Fine Motion setting that is supposed to reduce motion blur, a Monochrome mode (perhaps for viewing black and white films?), and a Film mode for activating 3:2 pulldown correction.
What Sharp doesn’t give you is access to RGB contrast (or brightness) controls, nor can you choose from different picture gammas. You’ll need to get into the service menu to make those adjustments, which are not labeled in the same way. The RGB gamma tweaks require setting 18 different color points, something that takes patience and an accurate color analyzer.
Oddly, even though there is only one User setting among the seven picture presets (Dynamic Fixed, Dynamic, Standard, Movie, Game, and PC are the others), you can tweak basic image parameters in all of them. The two Dynamic modes provide the brightest — and harshest-looking – images, while things are more toned-down User, Movie, and Game modes.
There are also several aspect ratio settings, depending on the resolution of the content being viewed. When viewing SDTV (480i) content, you can maintain the normal 4:3 aspect ratio with black sidebars, use a non-linear stretch to fill the width of the screen, zoom the image to fit the width of the screen (useful for letterboxed widescreen programs), or apply an anamorphic stretch for widescreen DVDs.
With 1080i HD signals, you’ll see a slight overscan in Stretch mode. Dot-By-Dot results in a 1:1 pixel map of 1080i content, while Side Stretch takes 4:3 content carried on a 1080i signal and expands it to fit the width of the screen. Zoom crops in horizontally and vertically on 1080i images.
Watching 720p HD programs? The LC-52D62U scales them up in resolution to fit the screen in several ways. Stretch provides a slight overscan while Full Screen gives you 100% of the image. Side Stretch and Zoom work the same way as they do in 1080i mode.
ON THE TEST BENCH
I calibrated the LC-52D62U using a variety of text patterns to get the best grayscale image with user-accessible controls Test patterns from my Accupel generator provided grayscale, color, and resolution benchmarks, while video clips from HD DVD, DVD and live HD from ESPN, Fox, and CBS let me analyze fast motion response.
After calibration, I measured full white screen brightness at 121 nits (35.3 ft-L) in Standard mode — more than adequate for viewing under daytime conditions. That number jumped around quite a bit, ranging from a low of 59 nits in Movie mode to an eye-popping 457 nits (134 ft-L) in Dynamic Fixed mode.
With my calibrations, User mode yielded a measurement of 129 nits, which is quite bright for viewing under low ambient light. The OPC light-sensing circuit will throttle backlight levels under such conditions, dropping almost to the preset levels of Movie mode. You’ll have to experiment to see which setting works best for you, but I have found 80 to 100 nits is a good range to shoot for.
Contrast measurements were outstanding at 272:1 ANSI (average) and 383:1 peak, measured in User mode. You can get higher numbers — switching to Dynamic mode resulted in comparable readings of 508:1 and 702:1, respectively.
How does Sharp do it? With low black levels, averaging .43 nits in user mode and .79 nits in Dynamic mode. The adjustable backlight levels obviously play a part, but Sharp’s Advanced Super View LC alignment technology and new compensating polarizer films are also important. (Those black levels are better than some name-brand plasma HDTVs!)
Figure 4. Gamma curves for Mid-Low and Low CT modes.
Figure 5. Grayscale tracks for Mid-Low and Low CT modes.
But all is not perfect with grayscale images. I plotted a couple of gamma curves for the LC-52D62U (Figure 4) and found that it starts to clip white levels at 118 to 120 nits with a resulting gamma of 2.23. This will result in white “crush” where highlight details can appear to have a flattened-out, pasty look. It’s quite pronounced in the brighter image modes.
Grayscale tracking is also inconsistent. Starting in User mode, I found the only factory color temperature setting that was even in the ballpark was the lowest (“Low”). All others are too high for normal viewing, starting at 8000 degrees and going up dramatically from there.
Figure 5 shows the grayscale tracks for Mid-Low and Low settings. The total color temperature shift from 20 IRE to 100 IRE is excessive at 1696 degrees. Generally, I like to see no more than a 500-degree shift from high to low. It is possible to make adjustments to grayscale performance in the service menu, but requires multiple points of adjustment and won’t improve the grayscale significantly.
Figures 6a – 6b. Full spectral output of the LC-52D62U (left) and the corrected gamut (right), referenced to the REC.709 color space.
How about color saturation? Figure 6a shows the uncorrected, full-spectral output of the LC-52D62U. Note that, although the resulting color gamut is wider than that of the REC.709 HDTV standard, the corrected gamut shown in Figure 6b cannot precisely match REC.709. (By ”corrected”, I mean interpolated to most closely match the desired color coordinates.)
The primary reason the LC-52D62U comes up short is that its green coordinate is shifted more towards blue than towards yellow. Red saturation is good, but blues are under-saturated. The red and yellow coordinates after correction are actually close to the ideal REC.709 targets.
Another odd image artifact was evident with a full white screen. Horizontal bands were seen across the width of the screen, showing up as slightly lighter or darker areas. They were noticeable when watching video or movies, but were seen when looking at static images, such as IRE windows.
VIDEO IMAGE QUALITY
Here’s where the LC-52D62U had big problems. It’s simply not up to the task of cleanly scaling lower-resolution 480i/480p SD and 720p HD content without introducing noticeable and objectionable artifacts. What’s more, it doesn’t do the best job de-interlacing and correcting 1080i HD content, either.
Using both the SD and HD versions of the Realta HQV test DVDs showed that the LC-52D62U doesn’t always pick up 3:2 sequencing correctly and in fact occasionally drops the cadence. It also failed the other cadence tests, like 2:2:2:4 and VariSpeed. Bandwidth tests weren’t too encouraging either, with the upper limit of frequency response around 18- 20 MHz, as seen with 720p and 1080i multiburst charts.
If you plan to watch a lot of analog cable TV or standard definition digital cable, don’t bother purchasing this set. You will not be pleased with the results, particularly with analog video. It is soft, smeared in some cases, and there are plenty of pixel-scaling artifacts on the screen. Figure 7a shows a clip from Rachel Ray in digital SDTV, while Figure 7b shows an enlargement of the macroblocking and scaling artifacts.
Figures 7a — 7b. Wide and close-up views of SDTV picture artifacts.
Figures 8a — 8b. 480p test chart (top) scaled from 480p to 1080p by the LC-52D62U,
and the same chart (bottom) scaled to 1080p by Oppo’s 981HD DVD player.
Things weren’t a lot better with 480p content from an Oppo 981HD DVD player, which did a better job scaling than the Sharp. Figure 8a shows a 400-line test pattern from Video Essentials scaled from 480p to 1080p by the LC-52D62U, while Figure 8b shows the same pattern scaled by the Oppo 981HD to 1080p and connected at native resolution. Notice the “jaggies” in the diagonal lines in the first figure that are essentially gone in the second.
The fact that 720p content didn’t fare so well was a big surprise. Using off-air and cable HD 720p feeds from ABC and Fox, I watched several New Year’s Day and BCS football bowl games in 720p, notably the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl. There were plenty of distracting “jaggie” artifacts seen around moving football players and sideline personnel (Figures 9a and 9b). Disabling the digital noise reduction circuit didn’t make any difference.
The best picture quality came from a straight HDMI connection to a Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player running 1080i/30 output, but I spotted peaking and interlaced artifacts throughout King Kong and Superman Returns. Although the scaled 1080p/60 version of each DVD from the Oppo 981HD wasn’t as sharp, these image artifacts were greatly reduced.
Figures 9a — 9b. Wide view of ESPN 720p promo (top) and close-up view (bottom),
showing HD pixel scaling and aliasing artifacts.
The second-best image quality came from off-air or cable HD news, talk, and game shows with little motion, such as SportsCenter, my local ABC and Fox HD news, and Jeopardy. HD movies and filmed content from Discovery HD and Starz HD also looked smoother and cleaner than live HD. But once fast motion re-entered the picture, the artifacts were easy to spot.
Speaking of which — yes, Sharp has incorporated a motion-enhancing circuit in the LC-52D62U. And yes, it does make a difference with fine detail on fast moving objects, particularly with HD content. In some cases, motion quality approached that of a Panasonic 50-inch 1080p plasma in my studio. Unfortunately, the other image scaling problems detailed above are more distracting than any motion blur.
CONCLUSIONS
No question about it, Sharp’s Aquos LC-52D62U is a market disrupter, particularly if its street prices (currently in the low $3K range) continue to drop. And it has a few things going for it in terms of style and features. The absence of a CableCARD slot isn’t a major drawback, particularly if you already have an HDMI-equipped cable or satellite receiver.
But you’ll need to feed it clean progressive-scan content and avoid too much standard definition TV. If there was a HDTV that would greatly benefit from outboard deinterlacing, motion adaptive correction, and clean scaling — or a premium inboard video processor/scaler ASIC, such as those made by Silicon Optix and Gennum — the LC-52D62U is it!
Power consumption notes: In an eight-hour power consumption test while displaying widescreen SDTV programs, the LC-52D62U averaged 210.9 watts operating in User mode. A total of 1694.9 KWH of power was consumed during the test.
