Strengths and Weaknesses:
When operating the Sharp it becomes apparent that there are many good points, but equally a few poorer ones. The slender remote control appears to be of a high quality and recognizes the control codes for several hundred set-top boxes and DVD players. But unfortunately, it is rather too long, and with 53 buttons, it is excessively overloaded. In addition, its designers decided to hide important functions for the screen mode, screen format or light sensor control and keep them "safe" under a flap, which unnecessarily complicates its operation.

The screen menu is laid out in two columns. Although they are beautifully prepared, they are difficult to read from the usual couch position. They are also deeply nested with some of the options being far from self explanatory.

There again, the remote control scores highly for its useful extras, including a button to bring up a list of channel presets or another to switch channels back to the last one being viewed. Patience is obligatory as more than two seconds are required when changing channels until the next program appears on the screen. Menu navigation is also rather lethargic.

All interfaces are accessible on the right-hand user panel, which, on one hand, is a very useful feature, but on the other it means that the interfaces are not as easy to get to as one could wish for. The individual connectors are just too packed-in and crowded.

Right away, directly after switching on the set, the LC-46 XL 1 E selects the "Soft" preset and displays a very natural picture. The 100 Hz mode ensures that stock market tickers of news channels, for example, are clean and easily legible on the screen. Similarly, facial close-up shots and the grass of a football pitch are finely structured and do not show any signs of smearing, even if the camera pans quickly across the scene. Analog television reception has minimal noise, and the fine details of broadcasting station logos or overdubbed names are clean and free of edging artifacts.

The Sharp displays a very convincing, finely grained picture from DVD playback, and although it is highly detailed and crisp, MPEG artifacts from DVDs rarely show themselves. Dark scenes, such as those in abundance in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy are, by LCD standards, astonishingly well mastered by the Sharp. Combined with its dynamic backlight control i.e. reacting to the current picture content, this Sharp, as it emerges, is an LCD flat-panel television with one of the broadest contrast ranges Televisions.com has had the pleasure of testing to date.

The "TruD(R)" video processing algorithms are responsible for eliminating picture judder and for making motion flow smoothly. The effects are immediately apparent as witnessed in the "Space Cowboys" movie, where the roller-coaster ride appears incredibly three dimensional. This electronic wizardry is, however, not completely free of side-effects. Fine structures in motion scenes show signs of slight flicker - the purists would therefore disable it.

Color rendering is also not 100% exact, which is particularly apparent with black and white scenes. The darker portions of the picture have an accompanying bluish/purple color cast while the paler areas have a light green color cast. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about this since manual color adjustment is missing. Both contrast and color-authenticity suffer when viewing the screen somewhat off perpendicular. In this respect the Sharp scores just average.

The greenish color cast becomes more apparent when playing back material through either Blu-ray or HD DVD equipment. Despite this, the Sharp still makes a good impression with HD playback. Compared with smaller TVs, the picture quality on the 46" screen of the Sharp is far superior.

The higher resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels of the current HD disk formats shows its true value as the qualitative advantages compared to conventional DVDs make themselves clearly apparent. Rarely does the bear's fur, seen at the beginning of the animated "Open Season" adventure movie, appear as lifelike and accurate as on this Sharp. However, this is no comparison with very well mastered DVD editions. Even the HD versions of the "King Kong" or "Casino Royale" movies release numerous "wow" moments.

Pictures formatted for 1080p playback are rendered pixel-perfect on the screen if the viewer selects "Underscan" from the menu. The picture remains incredibly sharp and crisp even if the camera pans across a scene particularly quickly. However, the picture does show signs of judder stemming from the 3:2 pulldown conversion. Original cinematic material in the 24p format is not accepted by the Sharp LC-46 XL 1 E.

The powerful sounding bass tones from the LC-46 XL 1 E are far superior to many other flat-panel TVs, and certainly do enhance the viewing pleasure of movies. Voices and speech during discussions and those of newscasters are clear and easy to understand. The distorted mid-tones and muffled high tones, however, are not suited to music playback. Connecting the set to an external AV receiver or good hi-fi set is, in any case, worthwhile but regrettably, they can only be interfaced through the set's analog outputs.

AV Mode: Soft

Backlight: 8

Contrast: +28

Brightness: 1

Color: -13

Tint: 0

Sharpness: -7

Color Temperature: Low

Black: Off

100 Hz: On

DNR (Digital Noise Reduction): Off

I/P Setting: Progressive

Film Mode: On

Wide Mode: Underscan

* applied to realistic playback from HD DVD/Blu-ray material through the HDMI interface in a darkened environment. Manufacturing and HDMI playback device deviations may necessitate slight adjustment.

Full Contrast: At the time of testing, the LC-46 XL 1 E dictated the standard for LCD equipment.

Rather crowded: The individual connectors on the interface panel are tightly packed. An adapter for YUV playback is included with the set.

Button fever: The remote control is excessively overloaded with 53 individual buttons. In addition, those buttons for important functions are foolishly stuffed under a flap.