TEST

38

LED-LCD TV

Goodness gracious, what a whopper! Easily the biggest TV we’ve ever reviewed, this 70-inch screen verges on being able to challenge

front projectors when it comes to delivering a large picture in the home.

EquipmEnTTo be precise, the diagonal size of this full high-definition display is 176.6cm, or just over 69.5 inches. A picture this size can dominate just about any room.

As a TV’s screen size gets to these extreme levels, clearly it’s necessary for it to be a bit thicker, simply for structural integrity. As you’ll see in the specifications box, the panel of the TV is shown as 89mm thick, which was more the norm three or four years ago. Still, that includes a protrusion at the bottom rear for the stand attachment. What we might call the visual thickness of the screen — the part you can see near the edges — is only 52mm.

The bezel at the top and sides of the screen is moderately narrow (35mm), but not ground-

What a Whopper!Sharp’s 70-inch LED-LCD television pushes two of its dimensions to new height and width, while ignoring the third.

Sharp Quattron LC-70LE735X LCD/LED TVPrice: $4799

breaking. However, by contrast with the size of the screen itself, it looks extremely slim.

The panel uses Sharp’s Quattron technology. That means that each pixel is formed of four colours rather than the usual three. In addition to red, green and blue, you get yellow. In reviewing previous incarnations of this I’ve remarked that this seems simply to be a way to use up the additional pixel density which modern technology now permits.

The panel is backed by an LED array, which can illuminate various parts of the screen separately. That allows a dark screen to be maintained in one part while another part is blasting away.

There are four HDMI inputs, along with support for component and composite video. Three USB sockets allow for multimedia playback, timeshifting of TV content and the addition of an optional Wi-Fi dongle. But there is also, of course, an Ethernet connection if you don’t wish to use Wi-Fi.

pErformanCESetting up this TV was pretty much as easy as you’d expect in 2012: very easy indeed. Except for one thing, of course — putting it in place! This is a big TV, and it needed to have its stand assembled and attached before being put into position. But things are getting better all the

time. Despite the size, the TV actually weighs only 42.5kg. No featherweight, to be sure, but easy enough to manage with two people.

The TV scanned the digital airwaves automatically. A notice came up saying that the TV was pre-tuned to the normal analogue stations, though it seemed to be pretuned to the Sydney ones, which didn’t help much in Canberra. If you want to experience analogue in its few remaining months, well, you can use the menus to scan for those as well. But remember: the bigger the screen, the worse analogue TV looks.

Digital TV, however, was okay. The more heavily compressed channels suffered a little when revealed on the large screen, which clearly exposed all compression artefacts, and made soft focus seem even softer. Those used to front projectors will be familiar with this. But with modern and studio shows from the higher bit-rate stations, the picture was excellent. HDTV was even better of course.

The performance on HDTV movies was especially good, suggesting that Sharp has employed good quality progressive-scan conversion within the TV.

However with both TV and with external inputs, by default the TV had its ‘Fine motion advanced’ processor set to ‘High’. This is at least in part a motion interpolation system

39

TESTLED-LCD TV

Screen Size: 176.6cmreSolution: 1920 by 1080 pixelsASpect rAtio: 16:9contrASt rAtio: Not statedBrightneSS: Not statedinput: 4 x HDMI, 1 x component video, 0 x S-Video, 2 x composite video, 1 x D-SUB15, 4 x stereo audiooutput: 1 x 3.5mm stereo audio/headphone, 1 x optical digital audioother: 3 x USB, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x RS-232CAudio: 2 x 10W, 2 x 34mm by 150mm speakersdimenSionS without/with StAnd (whd): 1613 x 975 x 89mm/1613 x 1008 x 333mmweight without/with StAnd): 40/42.5kgwArrAnty: Three years

contAct: Sharp Australiatel: 1300 13 55 30weB: www.sharp.net.au

• A truly massive picture• Very economical to run• Very snappy DLNA performance

• No 3D

VErDiCT

Sharp Quattron LC-70LE735X LCD/LED TVPrice: $4799

to eliminate picture judder. This it did, but processor artefacts (a heat-haze in particular) appeared far too often to make it useful. In any case, judder wasn’t too bad with the TV, in the sense of discrete jumps in the picture. Instead camera movement tended more towards a slight smearing of content.

The Quattron four-colour technology exhibited its usual characteristics of producing very strong greens and giving a subtle yellow shift to skin tones. Not unpleasant, but it added nothing in the accuracy stakes. For some reason the TV seemed to produce particularly nice and luscious reds, which is something that the extra yellow sub-pixels shouldn’t add in any case. Still — pleasant, acceptably accurate, and with a screen size this large, the 33% increase in the number of subpixels may have helped reduce any appearance of pixelisation.

Black levels were very good, but not perfect. Certainly the LED backlight array allowed good localisation of light to the areas of the screen where it was needed, allowing the rest to remain nicely black. But in full black screens, with the room lights turned out (at which point the TV was consuming not much more than 30W!), there was a very low level of mottling on the surface. To be fair, I didn’t find it objectionable; it was far lower than most edgelit-LED screens.

As is common in premium TVs, you get to do some internetty things with this TV, if you so choose. On the front page when you go into the ‘Home’ screen is access to YouTube, and to the Sharp Aquos portal. This last invokes a web page which offers whatever Sharp has on offer. As I write, this is Picasa web photos, Twitter and Facebook.

The last of these looked decent enough, but as usual there is the major problem of text entry. A virtual keyboard pops up when you are in a text field and you enter text by gliding an arrow (i.e. it moves pixel by pixel, rather than key by key) across this. It took 66 seconds just to enter a not-very-complicated password. I was unable to find an iPad app to control Sharp TVs, nor could text be entered SMS-style

using the remote’s numeric keypad. So think of this as useful for monitoring Facebook or Twitter, not for interacting with them.

The other network stuff, though, was among the most usable of any TV, primarily due to speed. The TV acts as a DLNA client so you can draw content from your network. Not just music, but photos and movies. Most importantly, the quality was excellent, and the performance was snappy. When I brought up a folder of photos, for example, I was able to skip from one to the next with a mere one-second pause. These were 6-megapixel photos, so the TV had to reformat them, suggesting it packs a decent processor. The video playback employed a proper cadence detecting deinterlacer, so picture quality was just about as good as it could be.

For reasons I was quite unable to work out, music would not work via DLNA with this TV in my system. Everything else I use has no problem with my system (Windows XP SP3 with Windows Media Player 11 as the server). If this is vitally important to you, get yourself a promise that you can return the TV if it doesn’t work in your system.

USB content was even faster, and looked just as good. The TV supported my MPEG2 (including HD) and AVI test clips, but not my DivX file, which it insisted had to be authorised, even though it was a freebie which plays on many other devices. The music support was for MP3 only.

I tried a 16GB USB flash drive for the included time-shifting function. With the time-shift running, subtitles were disabled, but there was a good range of skipping and fast forwarding and reversing. Unfortunately, though, it put up a notification panel on the bottom left of the screen that could not be removed while time shift was in operation. Normally I’d say ‘small notification panel’, but this screen is so big that it did seem excessive.

ConCLuSionSo this is a good quality TV at a reasonable price offering an absolutely massive picture

Power useThe official figures must necessarily overstate power consumption on the Sharp, because the proper measuring protocol requires turning off its optical sensor, which analyses ambient room light and adjusts things accordingly. In its default state with its optical sensor switched on, the TV would have scored an incredible 10 stars under bright fluorescent lighting. Following the proper, misleading, protocol, it scores a still impressive eight stars, for a notional energy consumption of 494 kilowatt hours per year (the figures on its energy rating sticker are 531kWh/annum and eight stars). That’s just a little more energy than a current-model 50-inch plasma.

In addition there’s an ‘Eco’ key on the remote which you can use if you want to be even more frugal in energy usage. This seems to bring down the backlight level: by one-sixth in terms of power consumption for the first ‘Standard’ setting, and by one-third for the second ‘Advanced’ setting. This last seemed way too dull for my taste, and given the TV is so economical anyway, I left this setting completely off.

(although the company announced at CES that an 80-inch will arrive for next year’s range!). It’s a bit disappointing, perhaps, that it doesn’t support 3D. Still, if 3D isn’t your thing, and big screens are (especially economical ones) then check out the Sharp Quattron LC-70LE735X TV. Stephen Dawson

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE : CANON EOS 700D PANASONIC G6 NIKON COOLPIX A SE

PT/O

CT 2

013

$8.5

0 N

Z $1

0.99

PANASONIC’S RETRO-STYLED GX7

NIKON D7100 FIRST LOOK!READY TO RELEASE YOUR INNER PRO

TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

MAKE EVERY SHOT A WINNER

D-SLR VIDEO MAKER – EVERYTHING YOU’LL EVER NEED TO KNOW100% AUSTRALIAN

Cam Sep13_001 CoverStage2.indd 1 8/21/2013 4:48:08 PM

WONDROUS WAGON WHEELSWOOFER WORLD IN SSV WAGON

$8.50 /// NZ $10.99

T H E L AT E S T M O B I L E E L E C T RO N I C S T R E N D S & T E C H N I Q U E S 5#2013

LOCATION REPORT – MOTOREX 2013

ALPINE❱FUSION❱MASSIVE❱MTX AUDIO❱NAKAMICHI❱PIONEERREVIEWED

WHEELS SHOOTINGSTAR

SHOOTINGSTAR

VW IN ORION CONSTELLATION

THE HIGH-END ALPINE’S DDLINEAR & PIONEER’S AVIC

AIE513_001 Cover.indd 1 19/08/13 2:19 PM

Head On FestivalA L L T H E B E S T F R O M T H I S Y E A R ’ S

Getting To Grips With Nikon’s AF 800mm Supertelephoto

$7.95 NZ$9.90 Volume 69 Number 6

Studio Flash Power Packs

WHAT’S AVAILABLE IN

PP Aug13_001 Cover.indd 1 8/9/2013 1:35:58 PM

ALSO REVIEWED

NAD C356BEEBest budget amplifi er?

Usher AudioDiamond tweeter

Sony SS-NA2ESAmazing

achievement!

MSB Sig. DAC IV PlusHand-made heaven

sings…

Studio 590 bi-radial

horn is JBL’s best yet…

Horn Power! Jul/Aug 2013

A$8.95 NZ$10.99 AVHUB.COM.AU

HF May13_001 Cover.indd 1 17/06/2013 2:04:48 PM

CHOOSE YOUR NEW TV!FULL REVIEWS OF THE BIGSCREEN BRANDS

LGPanasonicSamsung

Sony PlasmaLED-LCD4K UHD65-inch55-inch

YAMAHA’S ULTIMATE AVENTAGEEXCLUSIVE TEST OF THE A5000 PRE-POWER CANE TOA

DS

IN 3D!

AUSTRALIA’S No.1 AV GUIDE Aug/Sept 2013

ISSUE #26/5 $8.95 NZ$10.99

S&I Aug13_001 Cover.indd 1 16/08/13 2:48 PM

DUAL VALVES!300B or KT88? Full review and test of AudioSpace’s innovative amplifi er...

September/October 2013

AVHUB.COM.AU

SHOW REPORT High End Munich

ALSO

RE

VIEW

EDRE

VIEW

ED KrixPhoenix V2 Loudspeakers

PSBHD8Subwoofer

Bricasti Design M1Digital-To-Analogue Converter

A$8.

95 NZ$10.99

HF Sep13_001 Cover.indd 1 8/26/2013 2:46:54 PM