Sharp AQUOS LC-37HV4U 37'' LCD TV

Reviewed by: tepper

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Great clarity, contrast, color and ease of use

Weaknesses: Poor performance with standard (non-HDTV) singnal inputs. Image smearing with moderate-fast movement on screen.

Overall Evaluation: We've had our LC37 for about 2 months now. We are driving it with an HDTV cable box and a Sony progressive scan DVD -player. We looked at nearly every available plasma and LCD HDTV before settling on the Sharp which looked much better in the showroom than any of the plasma sets, even those that cost twice as much. However, after getting the set home and playing with it for a couple of months, while there is no doubt that the LC37 knocks the socks off of every conventional (non-HD) TV that I have every seen, it doesn't seem nearly as perfect as all the other reviews that I have seen. It does have exceptional brightness, clarity, contrast and color. The on-screen menu set-up user interface is obvious and works well. The set is well-made and easy to use. I have two major complaints, though. The first is that while still or slowly moving scenes of HDTV are spectacular, there is something not-quite-right about scenes involving motion, especially fast motion. I have heard rumors that this is due to the relatively slow refresh rates of LCD displays, but I am not sure if this is in fact the cause of the problem. All I know is that it is annoying, sometimes a lot, sometimes and little. The second thing that bugs me is that non-HD TV, and some DVDs (even the best DVDs do not come close to HDTV programming in terms of picture quality) do not look so great, no matter how you adjust the monitor. Sometimes there is a display artifact that resembles what happens on a computer LCD monitor when you set the screen resolution to less than the value that the monitor was designed for. Text and some lines get sort of chalky looking as the display logic tries to interpolate down to the reduced resolution. I see something that looks a lot like this on my LC37 on some (but not all) regular low-def channels, especially in the background of scenes shot with a lot of depth of field. It is possible that some or all of these artifacts are caused by the fact that neither my HDTV cable box nor my DVD player connect to the Sharp through the DVI port. Both are using component video inputs, because that is all that is available. This means that the originallly digital program source is digital to analog converted by each source, then sent to the TV which re-digitizes it. I am curious to know if there is anyone who has this TV and has compared the DVI and component inputs, and if this is the source of the problem.