See How We Compare Plasma and LCD TVTo compare plasma and LCD TV the best analogy would be as follows: Sharp is to the LCD TV market as Panasonic is to the plasma TV market. Both brands dominated the early flat panel TV scene and both brands are in price wars with their competitors. Generally plasma TVs deliver more bang for your buck but if you have the money and want an LCD TV go with one of the cheaper LCDs reviewed on this site.(Reviewed 8/16/06)) The Sharp LC-32D4U (1,366x768 pixels) can not be recommended if you want to compare plasma and LCD TV. Although this HDTV is one of the better performing LCD TVs available and delivers a better picture than most LCD TVs you’ll have to break the piggy bank to buy it. This 32-inch Sharp has solid video processing with cutting-edge features and independent memory per input. Like most brand name flat panels today it has high tech styling. The Sharp’s downside is its blacks could be deeper. When you compare plasma and LCD TV you'll find that plasma TVs (especially Panasonic) have deeper blacks.
Additionally this Sharp has a little bit of red push (skin tones appear a bit red), it has an edge enhancement issue (described below) and it lacks a PC input. On the plus side this HDTV’s remote is backlit, well laid out and can be programmed to operate other home-theater components. The black, glossy bezel with side-mounted speakers make the Sharp LC-32D4U one of the best-looking LCD TVs on the market and truthfully it looks better than most plasmas. The Sharp's specs are 38.6 (W) by 22.8 (H) by 11.4 (D) inches and weighs 44.1 pounds. It has an attached integrated stand.
Notable Features: The Sharp LC-32D4U’s native resolution (1,366x768) delivers all the detail of 720p HDTV. All sources, including HDTV, DVD, standard TV, and computers, are scaled to fit the pixels. The Sharp LC-32D4U has an ATSC tuner for over the air HDTV. The QAM tuner lets you watch digital and HDTV cable without an external cable box. Unlike most brand name flat panels the LC-32D4U comes without PIP. This HDTV has does have a freeze screen feature handy for jotting down phone #’s. It also has independent input memory and the four aspect ratio options available for standard def TV sources include Side Bar, displays 4:3 material, and Smart Stretch, which stretches sides more than the center so that 4:3 sources fill the screen. Impressively, four modes are also available for HD sources, including Zoom and Dot by Dot, which matches the incoming source pixel by pixel. Other features include horizontal and vertical positioning, picture flip, and input labeling, standard contrast, backlight, brightness, independent memory per input, four adjustable picture presets ,one fixed global picture presets and color temp pre-sets (High, Mid-High, Middle, Mid-Low, and Low). One downside is the flat panel’s edge enhancement feature cannot be turned off completely; this creates a noisier picture with high-quality material. Connections: There’s only one HDMI input, two component-video inputs as well as a third composite/S-Video input, one CableCard slot, three RF inputs for cable and antenna tuners. It’s important to note there’s no PC input. Outputs include one S-Video, one composite, one stereo RCA pair, and one optical digital audio out. Conclusion: If you compare plasma and LCD TV you can see that paying Sharp’s higher premium for its name when the HDTV has red push, an edge enhancement issue which can not be disabled and the LCD lacks a PC input does not make sense. Although there are many LCD TVs that lack a 2nd HDMI input there are some out there that do. When I compare plasma and LCD TV I still feel name brand LCDs can't outperform the best similarly sized plasmas.
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