the listIf LCD TVs are the hot item these days, so-called "thin-bezel" LCDs must be on fire. Several manufacturers are out this season touting new super-thin frames around their screens for a kind of floating-in-space effect. Why we should care is beyond me; I doubt that anyone would knowingly buy a TV with a picture inferior to that of its like-priced competition simply because its bezel is an inch thinner. But since certain kinds of shoppers don't seek out expert advice from Sound & Vision before plunking down their plastic (shame on them!), little things can make the difference between a sale or a walk-by.

That said, Sharp's new 64 Series LCDs do not sport the thinnest bezel on the market, a bragging right that currently falls to another manufacturer's hyper-anorexic panels. But these redesigned models in Sharp's bread-and-butter midprice line do boast notable cosmetic improvements over last year's versions, including both a thinner bezel and a reduction in the TV's depth, which measures just 33/4 inches for the 52-incher reviewed here. More critically, after stumbling a bit with the first TVs coming out of the advanced LCD plant it opened last fall in Kameyama, Japan, Sharp has continued to refine its manufacturing and design to address picture-quality issues that S&V and others reported on. So I was naturally curious about the Aquos LC-52D64U. Would we finally get a Sharp that lives up to the company's heritage as an LCD pioneer?

Setup
Among look-alike LCDs, the 64 Series is about the classiest I've seen. To the extent that you can add a statement to something you're trying to make disappear, these new models manage the task with the aforementioned slim bezel and the subtle, flowing curved lines along the bottom edge that break up the rectangle and add a touch of softness to the high-tech. Hidden speaker grilles are integrated below the curve. This set is nicely equipped on the tech end, too, with three HDMI 1.3 inputs, including one in a convenience jack-pack on the right side of the screen that also has component and composite inputs. Additional inputs of all three types are on the back as well, along with an RBG computer input and an RS-232C terminal for custom controllers.

The LC-52D64U's contoured remote was nice to hold, though I'd have preferred bigger and more widely separated volume and channel rockers, and the critical navigation keys are a little too low for me to comfortably get my thumb on. And while the remote is backlit, the legends aren't, so this feature becomes useful only when you learn the keys.

The remote's input button calls up an onscreen menu to navigate to your sources or cycle through them. Not only can input labels be renamed, but the TV even recognized one of our HD DVD players when it was plugged in via HDMI, and the TV automatically renamed that input to reflect both the product type and the model number. Sweet!

Meanwhile, the View Mode button, though awkwardly placed up top, toggles through the aspect-ratio modes. These include a Dot-by-Dot mode for viewing HDTV signals without overscan, along with a couple of stretch and zoom modes.

There was plenty of stuff to play with in this Sharp's setup menu. Any of five preset video modes can be modified and assigned to any source input, with your adjustments carried over. The set's User mode, which can also be selected for any input, allows full customization for each source, so I opted to use that.

The Short Form
Price $3,000 ($3,800 list) / sharpusa.com / 800-237-4277
Snapshot
Sharp gets it mostly right in this excellent and fashionable big-screen LCD TV.
Plus
•Excellent black levels and shadow details
•Good color rendition
•Attractive, stand-out styling
Minus
•Standard-def content a little soft-looking
•Digital NR ineffective for HD signals
Key Features
•1080p resolution
•3 HDMI 1.3 inputs
•Color Management System
•Ultra-thin design and bezel
•483/4 x 33 x 127/8 in; 75 lb (TV with stand)
Test Bench
With the Sharp's User and Low color-temperature presets, grayscale tracked close to the 6,500-K standard in the brightest windows but got pro-gressively bluer as it got darker. Switching on the set's Active Contrast mode brought the darker windows more in line without affecting the higher IRE windows, so that the set measured no more than an acceptable +270 K from 30 to 100 IRE. After adjustments in the CMS, color-decoder error measured —10% green, and 0% for red and blue on the HDMI inputs. All three primary-color points showed oversaturation against the SMPTE spec, though more so for blue and green than for red.

Overscan measured 0% in Dot-by-Dot mode with HDTV signals, and 3% in Stretch mode. The set cleanly resolved 1080i/p and 720p test patterns via HDMI, but it displayed noise in the highest frequencies of a burst pattern via component-video inputs. Gray full-field patterns showed none of the severe banding seen in some previous Sharp LCDs, though some modest darkening in the center of the screen (in line with other LCDs) was evident below 40 IRE. Viewing angle was unusually wide for an LCD, with the image displaying no drop-off of brightness even when viewed from far off center.

After adjustments that included turning down the LCD's backlight, setting color temp to Low, and turning on the Active Contrast, the grayscale tracked reasonably close to the industry-standard 6,500-K benchmark (see "Test Bench"). Good thing, since this Sharp, like last year's models, doesn't lend itself easily to ISF-type grayscale calibration. On the other hand, the user menu does include Sharp's Color Management System (CMS), which lets you adjust saturation and hue of all six of the primary and secondary colors, a great feature for achieving overall color balance.

Performance
I started critical viewing by cruising the HD channels on our cable box — and was stopped cold by the U.S. Open tennis tournament. The first thing that struck me was the nearly inky quality of the black skin-tight tennis shirt and skirt worn by Venus Williams in her match against Alona Bondarenko. It popped solidly against the green-and-blue court markings, but on close-ups, every detail and ripple in the shiny fabric was evident. Meanwhile, Bondarenko's tennis whites were crisp and natural, with even the white stitching laid bare by the Sharp's 1080p display. Colorful banks of red, yellow, and green flowers at the back of the court vibrantly leaped off the screen.

Moving on to a Discovery HD episode of The Desert Speaks, I found scenes from the Galapagos Islands mostly looking natural. But some long shots of the rugged brown terrain took on the somewhat busy quality that I sometimes see in LCDs when the processing can't handle a noisy or heavily compressed signal. Interestingly, the set's digital noise reduction (in its low setting) did a decent job of cleaning up noisy 480i content on DVDs and standard-def broadcasts, though these looked a little softer than I've seen on some other HDTVs. But the NR had no discernible effect on artifacts in poor HD broadcasts.

That wasn't an issue at all when I spun the Blu-ray Disc of the movie Layer Cake, a tense gangster thriller about a cocaine dealer (played by Daniel Craig) whose retirement plans go astray when he gets an offer he (literally) can't refuse. The special-effects opening sequence under Craig's narration looked spectacular as the camera transitioned from one varied scene to another, showing at times the bright red-and-blue sign-age of a tattoo parlor in Amsterdam and the hot-red dress worn by a rival dealer's girlfriend, or the white-backlit shelves behind Craig as he strolls through a stylized faux pharmacy. In a dark scene at Craig's safe house, I could easily make out details in the shadows behind him and his technician as they worked cutting drugs. Later, the TV clearly revealed subtle differences in the flesh tones of his assembled gang, even making evident the stubble on the face and bald head of his dark-skinned enforcer Morty.

Bottom Line
With this new LCD, Sharp has gussied up the outside while retaining the best elements from last year's LC-52D62U, including superb blacks and shadow rendition. Notably, our sample exhibited none of the serious picture-uniformity issues we encountered with that model, nor did it suffer the egregious and unfixable grayscale of the more upscale LC-52D92U (both reviews are at soundandvisionmag.com). I'll warn you that at least one recent report suggests this new model was still showing the banding issues of the 52D62U, but our unit was excellent among LCDs in that regard. Then there's the question of cost: Its $3,800 list is awfully high, and you'll have to shop around to find a deal near $3,000 or less. But it's worth the bother. The sleek and sexy Aquos LC-52D64U deserves a good, long look.

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