Sharp LC-68LE920UN

Display Size & Technology

The panel in the LC-68LE920UN is a Full HD one, which means it has a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels and can display every pixel of a 1080p image. The panel uses an array of LED lights around the edge of the display as a backlight, which helps the display keep its svelte profile. This lighting setup does preclude the TV from localized dimming, however. Local dimming is a feature that allows the TV to dim the backlight in selected areas, allowing dark portions of the screen to appear darker.  Localized dimming can often lead to lost detail, however, as bright details in those dark areas are often dimmed as well, leading to decreased detail.

The panel that shows the images is a Full HD model.

Sharp has introduced a few new technologies on this display, including an extra color. Most displays use three color elements for each pixel to create the colors on screen; red, green and blue. The LC-68LE920UN (and all of the displays in the LE920 series) add a fourth color: yellow. The theory is that adding yellow elements to the pixels that form the image allows the display to show a wider range of colors, and can provide more accurate and subtle colors. Sharp refers to this technolgy as QuadPixel. Without our full suite of color tests, , it is hard to tell if it does what Sharp claims, but it certainly looks promising in the demos.

A close up of the pixels: you can see the red, yellow, blue and green elements.

Formats & Resolution

The LC-68LE920UN is a 1080p display, so it can cope with every HDTV format currently in use, including 1080i, 720p and standard definition. It cannot display 3D images, though; Sharp has not yet announced any support for 3D HDTV.

Brightness, Blacks and Contrast Ratio

Sharp has not released any figures for the contrast ratio of this display, but the demo unit on display had very dark blacks and and bright whites, indicating a good contrast ratio between the two. We'll have to wait until we can get one of these displays into our labs before we can draw any real conclusions.

Color

The demo unit we looked at had very attractive color, and the extra yellow on the pixels seemed to make a difference to the color range displayed. However, it's hard to get a sense of actual performance on the show floor. We'll reserve any real conclusions for when the display is in our testing labs, after it's been run through of our torturous testing process.

Motion & Refresh Rate

The LC-68LE920UN includes Sharp's own AquoMotion 240Hz motion processing, which the company claims has been upgraded from previous models to produce smoother movement. Again, we were not able to test this feature, but the demos that Sharp were showing looked good.

Viewing Angle

The demo version of the LC-68LE920UN that we looked at had a good viewing angle: the contrast between blacks and whites looked good out to a wide angle.