Sharp LC-19D1E review

Sharp’s LC-19D1E is a well-built TV with an attractive moulded design that’s surprisingly heavy.

It has a native resolution of 1,366×768 and accepts a 1080p signal, though it indicates that it’s receiving only a 1080i signal. It doesn’t support 24p video, and is the only small TV here not to have a built-in DVD player.

Sharp claims a dynamic contrast ratio of 7,500:1 for the LC-19D1E, and in our Blu-ray movie tests we noticed very high contrast levels. However, the image suffered from a grainy effect that reduced the quality of the picture and made it hard to watch. Moreover, colours were overblown and inaccurate. Setting the TV to Movie mode helped to soften the image, but colours suffered, with greens becoming especially dull. Standard image mode seemed to be the best compromise, but produced an image with neither good contrast nor vibrant colours. Fast action scenes suffered from juddering as well.

The same effects could be seen when we played a DVD through our Samsung Blu-ray player via the composite input. Although there was less ghosting and edges were sharper than comparable images on the other small TVs, the overblown contrast produced distortion in high-contrast areas.

The best picture we managed to get was from our PC using the VGA input. We used the Dot by Dot setting and set the resolution to 1,366×768 on the PC. We were rewarded with crisp text and accurate colours. Contrast was good, and while the preset PC image mode was a little dull, we found that turning up the backlight improved it considerably.

Dynamic mode produced colours that were too saturated in our Freeview tests, as it did in our movie tests. Standard mode was better, and Movie mode was darker while leaving colours quite vibrant. There was a fair amount of fuzziness in the picture. Although the digital noise reduction helped to smooth this out, it also blurred edges of objects.

While it took three-and-a-half minutes to scan for analogue channels, the LC-19D1E took only a minute for digital channels. Confusingly, digital and analogue channels are programmed via two separate menus, accessed via two different buttons on the remote. However, this means that you can skip the analogue channel scan if your Freeview reception is good enough.

The Freeview EPG is more limited than on the other TVs here and displays only four channels at one time, but it has a filter for radio programmes and a preview window for the selected channel. This preview seemed to stretch widescreen programmes, though, and looked clearer with 4:3 aspect ratio programmes. The separate DTV menu lets you edit channel names and set favourites.

While the contrast ratio of the LC-19D1E is better than its rivals here, other image flaws detract from the TV. In particular, it doesn’t handle colour well and the image suffers from graininess. Its features are limited, there’s no DVD player and its best role seems to be as a PC monitor. Matsui’s M19LID618 has better image quality, a lower price and a built-in DVD player, and is a better choice.