Korean and Chinese electronics brands may grab the market share with super-cheap TVs. But only Japanese know how to make quality Televisions.
One weekend my colleague's need for an LCD TV made us walk in and out of many stores until we finally reached one where we decided to buy one. With our budget being around 20, 000 rupees, the brands considered were Toshiba, LG, Funai and Philips. Samsung and Sony were ruled out since their starting prices were higher than 24, 000 online. Sizes considered were 29" and 32" as these two sizes are the best for a mid-sized hall for family viewing. The shopkeeper showed the different TVs and explained their features.
As we started comparing the TVs with each other, we saw 2 or 3 models of SHARP LCD TVs on the shelf. We decided to check them because earlier I came across an ad in newspaper in which SHARP India's Chief had stated that SHARP products are genuinely Japanese and not products made by cheap Chinese companies that come with SHARP logo.
Since LED TVs are the latest trend, we started checking the 29" and 32" LED TVs of SHARP. Both LED TVs played almost all files of different formats from the USB port. The shopkeeper quoted 21, 500 for the 29" model and 23, 000 for the 32" model. Images on the 29" TV looked sharper and crisper than on 32" TV since smaller TVs always have more sharpness than bigger ones. So the obvious choice was LC-29LE440M.
History Of LCD TV:
By now LCD TVs & monitors have replaced CRT TVs and monitors. But there is a long and interesting history behind the development of LCD Technology. Nobody knows who really invented the LCD TV.
As we all know, around 50 years ago, CRT TVs ruled our homes. But they were bulky and heavy and hence carrying them from one place to another was not possible(except 14" of course).
So, mankind needed a display that was smaller, lighter and portable. In 1963, Heilmeier, an engineer who worked in RCA, USA developed a new display technology using the movement of liquid molecules in which characters such as numbers and alphabets were generated on a white background. It was called the Liquid Crystal Display(LCD) Since LCD displays were very tiny in size, he predicted that one day a slimmer and lighter wall hanging Television would be created using the same technique.
Later in 1973, a Japanese company developed the world's first personal-calculator "ELSI Mate EL-805" which could be slipped into a shirt pocket. It was a great success. This calculator employed an LCD display. This development gave great confidence to the company that the same display technique could be developed to make a TV that could be simply carried anywhere and simply hung on a wall.
Since that company was not making CRT TV tubes, it focused on making the world's most futuristic display. Washizuka's team worked for almost 25 years trying to make Heilmeier's dream a reality. Finally in 1988, the company developed the world's first TV using TFT-LCD technique. Heilmeier’s dream of a wall-hanging television in 1964 finally became a reality after a quarter of a century! Heilmeier remarked:I think you need to give the credit to the people who persevered and worked on LCDs for 25 years.
Who were these people? They were not the superstars Sony, Samsung, LG or Panasonic. Not Hitachi, Toshiba or Pioneer. Not JVC or NEC. It was SHARP Corporation, Japan. SHARP invented the LCD TV in 1988 in Japan.
SHARP Brand
Sharp is a great Japanese brand and is reputed to make long lasting products of very high quality. But they never brag about their quality and charge too much for their products the way Sony does. Sony and Panasonic LCD TVs use third party LCD-panels. But all SHARP TVs use only SHARP's own LCD panels.
Sharp has a dedicated LCD plant named * Kameyama * in Japan to make these panels. Sharp AQUOS is Japan's largest selling TV. Today almost everything is made in China but SHARP still uses only quality Japanese parts and assembles everything in its own factories inside and outside Japan. SHARP has introduced many technologies as follows .
All TVs use only Red, Green & Blue sub-pixels to generate colors. But SHARP's *Quattron * technology generates images using Red, Green, Blue+ Yellow sub-pixels. So, all SHARP Quattrons have extra 1 billion sub-pixels.
It invented the world's first personal calculator.
Integrated Cognitive Creation, a pixel density controlled picture-reality enhancing technology to make UHD signals look more real.
- Quattron Plus*, a TV that can be used to watch both Full HD and Ultra-HD(4K) content.
SHARP launched India's largest LED TV yet, measuring 90 inches.
SHARP has sold over 100 million Microwave ovens - it's the world's largest maker of microwave ovens yet.
Just like the other Japanese brands, SHARP has lately been facing tough competition from LG & Samsung. There were even rumors that Sharp brand's filed for bankruptcy and would be sold to Lenovo and is on its last legs because of factors like the rising yen value and post-Tsunami crisis. Despite all these baseless rumors, the Japanese LCD giant has been steady and announced new models of Ultra-HD( Full HD x 4) TVs abroad.
LC-29LE440M - Features and Looks
All SHARP LED TVs come with a 3-year warranty. LC-29LE440M is Made in Thailand. It's a simple Edge-LED LCD TV that has all the necessary features for a home Television. It consumes on 50 Watts of power per hour. It has an 8-bit HD-Ready panel - it has 1366 x 766 pixel resolution. It is lightweight and is very slim. The TV's Remote Control has almost all the necessary buttons required for watching TV everyday.
The cabinet is black in color and has all necessary ports such as HDMI, USB 2.0, Component In, Composite In, RCA-Audio Out and Headphone-Out ports. Since the TV can decode Dolby-Digital Sound and is DivX-certified, its USB port reads videos of almost all formats apart from music and photos. This TV has two speakers.
(Note: LED TVs don't generate pictures using LEDs. All LED TVs are just LCD TVs with LED back-lighting. This helps the TV screen produce pictures with better black levels and higher brightness and the TV also consumes less power)
Picture Quality and Sound
The picture quality of this TV is really good for both cable TV and USB-playback. The TV's USB port reads video files of all formats we tested such as .AVI, MKV, MP4, MP3 & JPG. It even read movies from NTFS-formatted pen drives. It is really a great advantage since in NTFS drives, files of any size can be stored. But in FAT32 pen-drives, the maximum limit is just 4.4 GB. We never tried connecting anything to the HDMI or PC-in ports.
The panel(screen) has high brightness and contrast levels and so the images look bright with healthy contrast. Colors are good and very real without any extra-processing - unlike Sony's or Samsung's pictures with ultra-rich colors.
While watching cable channels on Hathway's cable(connected via Composite Input - AV1 ports), the picture was so clean and clear that we first thought the STB signal is actually High Def(HD). Only in one channel there was slight pixellation and then we realized the signal is SD and not HD. The way it handles SD signals is that good! Just like in most LCD TVs, TV speakers' sound is not very powerful. Connecting to external speakers or a 2.1 channel system can fix this issue.
Drawbacks:
The looks of this TV is just plain without any appeal. A better design would have made this TV a center of attraction.
The USB port can read 1080p files but the panel's resolution is only HD-Ready. So it can show only 1 million pixels on screen.
There is no Coaxial Out or Optical Out for connecting the sound to external Home Theaters.
All in all, I feel this is a great Television and is great value for money.
Conclusion:
'Made In Japan' SHARP TVs are the best.
