Sharp's 1,000,000:1 Mega-Contrast Premium LCD vs regular LCD

Don't get us wrong, we love our high contrast HDTVs -- especially those among us lucky enough to have a 10,000:1 Sharp set and the like -- but if you've never experienced a 1,000,000:1 picture, you've never seen truly black black-levels. At CES 2007 Sharp was showing off their reference grade 37-inch Mega-Contrast Premium LCD, which had even deeper blacks than most SED sets we've seen to date (but not Sony's OLED set). Granted, this side by side comparison was with a mere 1,200:1 set that didn't exactly put up much of a fight -- we might have liked to have seen it alongside one of their 10,000:1 or 12,000:1 sets, but still, you can see for yourself in our gallery.

[Christopher @ Jan 15th 2007 3:02PM]

Good thing my monitor is a Mega-Contrast one.. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to see that the good monitor was ultra black...

LOL..

[WedgeTalon @ Jan 15th 2007 3:08PM]

That's stunning.

[Nando @ Jan 15th 2007 3:13PM]

Wow. Nice!

[ki11a-k @ Jan 15th 2007 3:20PM]

now i've got to wait longer and save more money to buy a hdtv with 1000,000:1 picture, that picture is SO much better than most hdtv's

[Wonderboy @ Jan 15th 2007 3:22PM]

The other night I was watching a movie and it really hit me how poor my contrast was... it made me sad.

This freakin' makes me cry, knowing contrast like this is out there... albeit far out of my price range.

[Kimleng @ Jan 15th 2007 3:35PM]

Seems like the regular LCD got the backlight or brightness really jacked up high...cuz I have a crappy contrast LCD and it sure as hell isn't that bright for blacks! But, if you wanna show off the blacks, you may as well make it an extreme comparison :)

[Fescen9 @ Jan 15th 2007 3:35PM]

I agree that the black levels are great on the 1m:1 model, but at the same time it's painfully obvious that you're losing a heck of a lot of detail. Look at the monitor on the left. There's a lot of ambient sparks outside of the main burst that just aren't visible in the monitor on the right...

[FrankTheCrank @ Jan 15th 2007 3:37PM]

Can you guys talk more about that SONY OLED technology??

I saw pictures and that thing was sick...about half an inch thick...and beautiful color and black reproduction.

[Rick Lyon @ Jan 15th 2007 4:02PM]

Hmm, so for deep blacks we sacrifice shadow detail? Where are the stars in the ultra black pic? No thanks.

[Bigboomer @ Jan 16th 2007 12:04AM]

I dunno maybe your monitor is lacking... I can see plenty in that pic (a bit harder to see on the thumbnail size) when it is enlarged. They also look more realstic for some reason ?

[walk2k @ Jan 15th 2007 3:55PM]

There aren't any LCD sets with 10,000 or 12,000:1 contrast.

Some LCDs list their "dynamic contrast" in that range, but that includes manually adjusting the backlight, not available contrast for normal viewing (unless you like adjusting the backlight on the fly while you watch movies...) Most LCD's "usable" contrast is in the 1200 to 2000:1 area.

10k:1 contrast is plasma territory.

[Joe @ Jan 19th 2007 6:09PM]

10000:1 contrast on a plasma is measured using only 1% of the screen being lit. Full screen contrast on a plasma is typically in the region of 300-400:1. The contrast measurement (when measured in the same conditions) on most modern LCDs will easily match that of a plasma, it's just that an LCD contrast will be in a brighter range. Plasma (in the past) has been capable of better blacks but LCD has been beating it for some time on real-world contrast.

[Rick Lyon @ Jan 15th 2007 4:02PM]

Also, looks like the one on the left is set in torch mode because it's displaying some white crush those blacks are too bright to be calibrated.

[Carbonize @ Jan 15th 2007 3:59PM]

I own a Samsung 5000:1 HD TV and the darks are really dark but this is actually a bad thing at times as it makes parts of some shows really hard to see. Also, as stated above, you do seem to lose some of the light detail. Possibly this is because things are made with old technology in mind and as high contrast ratios become more common the editor/director etc will think about it.

[Jeff @ Jan 15th 2007 3:58PM]

"There's a lot of ambient sparks outside of the main burst that just aren't visible in the monitor on the right..."

On the other hand, it's quite clear that the monitor on the left is losing a lot of highlight detail - look at the planetary views in some of the shots.

My guess is they jacked up the brightness of the monitor on the left. Honestly, even in fairly low-contrast LCD's, I've *never* seen contrast this bad. Look at it this way: not even CRT's, with their deep blacks, approach anything like "1,000,000:1" contrast ratios. Contrast ratio really has nothing to do with black level. It's like knowing a car's top speed and trying to infer its 0-60 time from that. You're missing several key pieces of info. Speed and quickness are not the same thing, and neither are contrast and black level.

The screen on the right clearly has very good black levels. But I'm not convinced from these pics, which are obviously set up to favor the more expensive model, that it's really any better than any other LCD screen. It may have a higher *white level* threshold, but that's absolutely useless beyond a certain level - nobody wants to feel like they're staring at the sun while watching TV or movies. White level is a lot easier for an LCD to do than black level, so it's one way a lot of these companies manipulate their contrast ratio numbers.

[WamBam @ Jan 15th 2007 4:10PM]

Just when you think there isn't another measurement for some electronical device, here comes yet another thing to take into account when considering how puny your set really is...

We need to go back to B&W and read more books!

[TeddyN @ Jan 15th 2007 4:45PM]

LOL, you're right, books have AMAZING contrast ratios.

[TeddyN @ Jan 15th 2007 4:38PM]

Look closely, and you can see that the stars etc. are still there. Most likely, they were lost by taking the photograph of the television screen. I think seeing it in person would reveal that the stars and lower light sources are still perfectly visible... and perhaps more distinguishable as stars with the deeper, darker background.

[TIMMAH! @ Jan 15th 2007 5:02PM]

So what's the actual technology involved in shutting out more of the backlight?

[Irfan @ Jan 15th 2007 5:54PM]

Deeper blacks do not mean you lose darker detail. Your set shows some black crush which will make most deep blacks all look the same, losing the detail.

a really good display , calibrated properly, will have very deep blacks, and you will still be able to see the details in the shadows.

[Stephen @ Jan 15th 2007 7:11PM]

Man, I want contrast like that! My LCD monitor's contrast is terrible. I mean really, really terrible. I should've guessed that before I bought it though, knowing that it was both a Samsung and on sale..... Stupid me.

[Jeremiah Hoffman @ Jan 15th 2007 8:29PM]

what movie is that?

[maximum360 @ Jan 16th 2007 8:39AM]

I'm a big fan of black levels and contrast ratio. I had a Toshiba RPTV that had so very bad black crush when viewing "Lost" so I sold it and now have an XBR2 (LCOS). While PQ is oustanding black levels are still "good". I hope to be able to upgrade to one of these high contrasty displays in the next five years or so.

[fraggle_rocker @ Jan 16th 2007 8:48AM]

black levels and contrast ratio aint the same thing, black level is how black the black can be, on old lcds it was more of a dark gray than a black, but its improved and lcds do a pretty good black nowadays.

contrast ratio, is to do with the difference between dark and bright colours. With high contrast ratio shadows and detail should be better. Ideally you want to be able to see all of the background detail like the stars in the first image, but have the black level the same as the one in the second one.

Like for sonys oled tvs, they showed off high contrast high quality digital photo type shots on the screen. You could see, that the red in one flower was ever so slightly lighter than the other, you could see the shadows, you could see the texture for want of better word. I dont see that contrast level in this tv.

[Lucas @ Jan 16th 2007 5:57PM]

It would help if some of you understood how a digital camera works (the CCD). At the same exposure (probably a fairly long one .. about half a second) an LCD panel that produced far less (light) from blacks would be by comparison far darker than that producing far MORE (light) from blacks at the same exposure.

It helps to understand that lower contrast rations produce black pixels that STILL "emit" light.

[Robert Johnston @ Jan 16th 2007 7:30PM]

This looks a lot like some of the results that Brightside achieved with their LED-Backlit LCD system:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/04/brightside_hdr_edr/1.html

[Dan @ Jan 17th 2007 12:57PM]

That's freaking awesome.
But a good HD CRT projector will get the job done as well.

[kurtis @ Jan 18th 2007 7:25PM]

well well it sure looks like they keep busting themselves in half, to improve LCD so that SED tvs never come out, but they would be real stupid if they thought people were after SED for contrast and CONSTRAST ONLY when theyre actually trying to avoid the dead pixel plague LCD's generously come with.

[JohnnyC @ Jan 22nd 2007 12:03PM]

How is anyone supposed to ACTUALLY see the difference in these photos? Can the camera that took them capture 1M:1 contrast? Do we have 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio on our monitors (calibrated to the colour profile of the photos that were taken)?

I'm know that my Macbook doesn't have that contrast ratio, so yeah. I wish I could see one of these sets for myself though.