Sharp had a press event today (at the Pioneer booth) regarding their new Elite line of LCD panels and we were able to see the new panels in action. The Pro-60X5FD ($6000) and the Pro-70X5FD ($8500) are shipping now through the dealers that are certified to carry the Elite brand. Magnolia Hi-Fi, part of Best Buy, is one the dealers that is nationwide.
I want to provide some context around what I saw today. At CES 2008, Pioneer had one of the best product demo's I had seen in my years of attending CES with their prototype Kuro Elite Plasma. We all walked into a room that had black curtains over the wall. The Pioneer folks turned the lights off so it was pitch black in the room and said they were pulling the curtains back on the wall. What we saw, at least we thought, was a set of TV Panels with a 0 IRE signal (i.e. no video signal). As we are all used to with flat panels, particularly at that time, was an afteglow of the panel. We were told that the panel we were looking at was the current Kuro Elite.
They then said that we were going to see a demo of a next generation Kuro Elite. A video started with a gold ring spininng in space. When the video started, we all of a sudden realized that there were four displays, not two. The next generation Kuro Elite had absolutely no light output with a entirely black sceen and while the gold ring was spinning, there was no increase in the black level and you never could really discern the edge of the screen. It was simply amazing!
Today at the Pioneer booth, a Sharp representative was demonstrating the new Elite LCD displays. There were two displays, one was, we thought, turned off. Needless to say, while the lights were on for this and it wasn't as dramatic as the demo at CES and 2008, it was stil pretty impressive to see the Sharp representative start the presentation from what appeared to be a turned off display!
Some of the key points about this panel vs the last shipping Kuro panel is:
1) Pitch black (i.e. no light) on true black scenes
2) Higher contrast ratio, not just in the fact that black is literally no light output, but that the highlights can even be brighter than what was on the Kuro. There are menu options that allow for this contrast ratio to be even increased more for room environments where there is alot of ambient light and a need to have the picture be brighter.
Of course, the Elite LCD panel is also 3D enabled, though we didn't have glasses to view the monitor in 3D mode. One of the unique features about the Elite 3D glasses is the ability for users to switch the glasses from 2D mode to 3D mode. I have never seen this feature before and what it allows is some viewers of the panel to be in 2D mode while other viewers are seeing the image in 3D at the same time! An example of why this is important is for a small percentage of the population that has stereoblindness or people that get fatigued with a 3D image.
One might ask how this is possible with a LCD panel. It is partially done with a full array LED backlinght with local dimming.
When LED lighting for LCD panels first came out, a couple manufacturers starting incorporating a feature called local dimming. Local dimming allowed certain LED's behind the LCD panel to be dimmed or turned completely off. Toshiba was one company that introduced a LCD panel with this technology. A totally black scene on that Toshiba produced absolutely no light output, but once parts of the image had light, the zones were coarse enough that the black around the part of the image that had light wasn't totally black and there was a "halo affect". A full review was done on this set back in April 2010. Toshiba demonstrated a 2nd generation set at CES in 2009, but never shipped the unit.
One might ask, why didn't other LCD manufacturers continue with local dimming technology? Part of the reason around this was consumer infatuation for slim units, which to get to the ultrathin level of LCD panels shipping today, requires the use of edge lit LED's, which add uniformity artificats along with the inability to have the granularity of dimming control that a full array LED backlighting unit can have. The Elite LCD is not an ultra thin LCD panel, but if you want this type of picture quality, then being ultra thin isn't one of the criteria options. However, even with full array LED backlighting, the unit is only 3 1/32" deep!
The other key technology that allows the Elite LCD to get around some of the artifacts reported with the Toshiba is what Sharp refers to as Intelligent Variable Contrast. Intelligent Variable Contrast, coupled with RGB+Y enhances color gamut range and automatically controls brightness and backlight to create depth of color, brilliance, detail and black levels.
Key information regarding the Elite LCD is already online.
Watch the press release and demonstration of the Elite LCD.
