LCD TV Reviews

On- or off-axis, the LC-30HV2U has good colorimetry (see the measurements box). The set's color decoder is reasonably accurate, providing bright, vibrant red and green images. Set to the low color-temperature setting, the image also has a neutral tone. Of course, you can drive the picture into an exaggerated mess with any one of the picture-mode settings, which might be handy for average, everyday use. Then again, the picture's so bright, I'm not sure why you'd need them. You could practically watch this TV outside by the pool.

The composite input's comb filter is also excellent. The filter removes dot crawl and hanging dots, which in turn creates clean vertical and horizontal color borders. The filter also removes cross-color artifacts that might otherwise introduce rainbow moiré into fine details.

In addition to all of its other features, the LC-30HV2U has an excellent internal deinterlacer and scaler. This is the same CV-IC technology that Sharp uses in the XV-Z9000U DLP projector (see Kevin Miller's review in the January 2002 issue). The deinterlacer recombines the odd and even interlaced fields of regular NTSC (480i) video sources using 3:2-pulldown detection, which compensates for the artifacts that can occur when 24-frame film sources are converted to 30-frame video. The result is a smooth, artifact-free image. The processor then sends the progressive signal to the set's internal scaler, which upconverts the 480-vertical-line signal to match the display's 720-vertical-line resolution. While other displays can recognize and compensate for film-based sources' 3:2 frame sequence, they often introduce additional artifacts during the scaling stage. The image from the Sharp display was solid and artifact-free throughout the entire process.

The only detriment to the LC-30HV2U's picture quality is a slight solarization of the image. The picture has a somewhat stepped image as it fades from bright images to darker shadows. There's not a smooth transition from one level to the next. This isn't terribly noticeable if you're sitting far away—say, from the edge of your bed—but might be distracting if you're at the A/V enthusiast's three-picture-height distance.

All in all, though, this is a fun little TV. I wouldn't say that it's reference-quality, and anyone with a critical eye looking for a primary viewing display has plenty of other options for their $8,000. That said, the LC-30HV2U has a lot of things going for it. It's bright and colorful, has good video processing, and has the high-tech 16:9 shape of the future. As a bedroom television or secondary display in a small environment, this would be a better choice than a number of other flat-panel displays.

Highlights

• Bright as hell
• Cool aesthetic