Sharp LC-42A65 LCD TV

It's been a while since we've reviewed anything by Sharp, especially an LCD TV. It must be known that the brand Sharp is one of the pioneers of this technology, and last year itself they introduced us to their new factory and consequently this particular new series of LCD TV, the A series. It's not called A series officially though, it's just easy for us to remember. The model is sharp LC 42A65M, and it looks quite promising.

Design and features
This 42-inch model comes with quite a classy looking bezel, though reminiscent of earlier Sharp designs. The finish is glossy throughout all the way down to the rectangular stand. This stand by the way comes pre attached out of the box, but can be removed by unscrewing, for wall mounting purposes. The bottom panel has all the action, with a silver metallic strip accenting the bottom edge, exposing the speaker grille located below. The right end has tiny green LEDs that blink when powered on. The right panel (when viewed from the front) has many connections, at least most of them enough for regular operation. there is one section on the side itself that has two HDMI ports, RS-232C and a VGA (15 pin D-sub) in.

There is another strip that has a Composite, S-video and one more lone HDMI port. Thus in all we have 3 HDMI ports which is nice. There is a headphone output in the latter mentioned area. Besides these 2 side windows, we have one strip at the back panel, facing downwards (insert sad smiley here for lazy people who don't want to bend over). This section has more i/o, the most important being an optical output, beside the usual 2 component and one composite input. Also above this is a column of black tiny round push buttons for manual operation. Overall the design and looks have a very subtle, mature feel to it, no real dazzling aspects or loud contours, which is good in my books. The TV will most definitely fit in to any modern decor, but the general iffy with these gloss finishes is the obvious fingerprint problem. For this one must keep a soft cloth handy.

There are a couple of things here to note. Sharp does not have too many flashy marketing terminology and proprietary stuff associated with their TVs. Their India website is not as flashy as the other stalwarts in the LCD market in India. The only thing that needs mention is RGB Plus, which is a color optimizer circuit they have included in. Another thing included is an automatic brightness/contrast adjuster in the menu, which tries to calibrate the best picture setting according to your room. The TV itself is a Full HD, meaning we have 1920 x 1080 pixels making up the panel.The response time is 4 ms Besides this, the regular specs include a 450 cd/m2 brightness, a 10:000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, while native contrast is at 2000:1.The viewing angle is 176/176 degrees.