37 Lcd Tv

Five years ago, Sharp set some bold and ambitious goals: to become the world leader in LCD televisions and to make them the dominant technology for home entertainment. Having won about half the market share in the exploding LCD TV market, Sharp has succeeded in at least part of this quest. Its top-of-the-line display is the impressive Sharp 37" Aquos LCD TV, which carries a top-of-the-line price of $6,499.95, making it the most expensive LCD we reviewed.

The Aquos has the highest resolution of the group, at 1,366-by-768, though it has only 10 percent more columns than the other LCDs—not a huge difference. It comes with a separate controller box, where you can hook up all of the cables to your component stack. The box also has a convenient set of connectors on the front for temporary hookups to camcorders. The multifunction remote control has a handy slider to make it easy to select the device you wish to control.

The on-screen menu's attractive, Windows-style interface is easy to use. The panel doesn't have a lot of features, but some of them do come in handy. For example, when viewing 4:3 content, you can zoom to fill the screen and scroll the image up or down to choose which part gets cut off. So when watching sports, you can scroll to view the top score line. Or if you're watching a cable news station, you can scroll down to include the text crawl at the bottom.

The Aquos was the only LCD to pass the 3:2 pull-down test. And it had less smear on moving images than any of the rival LCDs, though none were as good as the plasma screens. Skin tones were natural, and we saw plenty of detail in both shadows and highlights. Even extreme viewing angles had little impact on brightness or shades of color.

Our minor criticisms: The factory setting for yellow was a little too light, red was a bit dark, and switching HD modes was a tad slow. And although the Aquos didn't wow our jury, even a below-average score is plenty good. Finally, you can't program different picture settings for each input. If you're intent on eking the best quality out of several different picture sources, and you plan to program the ideal settings for each, you'll find this an annoying limitation.

Sharp's head start in the market is clearly visible in the Aquos. It's a mature product with well-designed features and excellent image quality. This Editors' Choice winner should go to the top of your short list.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.

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