Sharp LC17SH1E

...price), we opted for the Sharp LC-17SH1E, a gorgeous, sexy looking TV at the tremendously good price of £297, from Digital Direct. The price currently seems to range between £330 to £400, so a bargain!

Get on with it 'eldergill'! Oh, OK.

*** Anyway, what's an LCD Television? ***

Oh sorry, didn't you know? It's the latest technology; it's slim and sleek and flat and … er …slim. Well I don't know really, ...
...produce a clean, clear and sharp audio, which the small integrated speakers handle very well, albeit lacking somewhat in bass.

The picture is superb! Utilising Sharp's new Advanced Super View panel (whatever the hell that is!), this unit gives good definition and the quality is just stunning, but then I suppose it would be when compared to my old Matsui "black box". Let's not forget, either, that this can be used as a PC ... more

A few months ago I was fortunate enough to receive a nice bonus from work. With a relatively new baby, an outdated wardrobe and many household repairs needed, you can imagine what a difficult job it was to assign these funds to a specific project or product. The Better Half desperately needed new clothes, the house needed a major decoration and the baby required everything! Obviously there was only one thing for it … er …buy a new TV!

Well, to be fair, we had just bought some lovely new white furniture for the bedroom and then realised that the black portable TV didn't look good on it. The answer - in the interest of aestheticism, of course, was to purchase a new silver 17 inch Widescreen LCD television! Dogs gonads!

Following some extensive research (basically dependent on price), we opted for the Sharp LC-17SH1E, a gorgeous, sexy looking TV at the tremendously good price of £297, from Digital Direct. The price currently seems to range between £330 to £400, so a bargain!

Get on with it 'eldergill'! Oh, OK.

*** Anyway, what's an LCD Television? ***

Oh sorry, didn't you know? It's the latest technology; it's slim and sleek and flat and … er …slim. Well I don't know really, so I'd better just dig up some basics…..

LCD stands for "Liquid Crystal Display" and these televisions use LCD technology, as opposed to the cathode ray or plasma for their visual output. More conventional TV's, even today's modern versions, use a cathode ray tube (CRT), and although CRT technology has greatly advanced, these televisions need to be big and deep to generate large flat pictures. LCD technology on the other hand is normally TFT, which means "Thin Film Transistor". This is a type of flat panel display screen in which each pixel is controlled by one to four transistors.

Neither Plasma or LCD use a CRT, so this allows them to be slim enough to even be hung on the wall! In addition, there are no scanning lines so you get better quality pictures that are flicker free. The TFT technology provides the best resolution of all the flat panel techniques. So, there you have it.

*** Oh very nice, so what's it like then? ***

Our well packaged box arrived with no mishaps. Inside our package was a Remote control with batteries, power cord & adapter, User Manual and, of course, our lovely new television. The TV is silver in colour and has it's own fixed, but adjustable, stand. The stand allows you to adjust the angle of the TV screen up to 5° forward or 10° backward from the vertical angle, but disappointingly, does not swivel. It looks gorgeous and sits beautifully on top of our lovely white Tallboy!

With the depth of the screen being only 70mm, it hardly takes up any room at all. Looking from the front, the actual viewing screen area measures 375 x 256 mm (visible screen size of 43.44cm) and has a silver surround with in built speakers along the bottom, in the middle of which is the remote sensor and Standby indicator.

Controls are unobtrusively arranged along the top of the unit, allowing manual control of Power, Channel selection, Volume and Menu. Neat, I admit, but not entirely practical in our case. The left side of the unit boasts sockets for Headphone, PC Audio, PC and an EXT 3 (Video/Audio), whilst the rear has two scart sockets, an aerial socket and power input. The tilting (but not swivel) stand allows for a variable TV screen angle, which is very good I'm sure, but we don't bother with that.

The whole unit, including stand, weighs in at 7 Kg with total dimensions of 456mm (W) x 430.5mm (H) x 215mm (D). Did I mention how nice it looked?

The grey coloured Remote Control that comes with this baby is a 35 button affair and not the smallest in the world, but still a sturdy and lightweight device capable of carrying out all the actions required.

*** Setting it up ***

Set up is simple. Once you've got the TV where you want it, just plug in the power, aerial and any other external devices, then switch on. The first time you switch on, a menu screen will prompt you for your Language (there are five available), then the Television's Automatic Search System will automatically scan and store all available channels of a suitable strength. It's a relatively quick process and if you want to go back and change anything afterwards, the on screen menus are clear and simple to use.

*** Sound and Picture Quality ***

This television benefits from a Nicam Stereo decoder which supposedly enhances the sound quality to the point where it compares to Hi-Fi audio systems. I'm not quite sure if that's the case exactly, but it does produce a clean, clear and sharp audio, which the small integrated speakers handle very well, albeit lacking somewhat in bass.

The picture is superb! Utilising Sharp's new Advanced Super View panel (whatever the hell that is!), this unit gives good definition and the quality is just stunning, but then I suppose it would be when compared to my old Matsui "black box". Let's not forget, either, that this can be used as a PC monitor where the 1280x768 high resolution should give crisp detail, though I have no intentions of using it in this function.

Both audio and picture settings are easily adjusted using the on screen menu.

*** Key features ***

This Sharp LC-17SH1E incorporates the following features, among others:

Advanced Super View and Black TFT LCD Panel
High Brightness 450cd/M2 - High Contrast 600:1
Wide Viewing Angle H:176°V:176°
NICAM/A2 Stereo
Built-In TELETEXT Circuit
Wall Mounting Possible
Sleep Timer
OPC (Optical Picture Control)
60000 hours Long Life Back light
Pc Connection
Screen Resolution: 1280 x 768 x RGB
Power consumption: 45W

The Teletext functions are easy to operate and navigate, using the Remote Control, and the Widescreen can be manually set to either 4:3, Panoramic, Full or 14:9 or can be left in Auto Mode, which is how we have it. I don't want to bore you with all the different menu functions, but suffice to say that all settings are easy to tailor to your own needs.

*** Final Thoughts ***

Although this has the ability to be used as a PC monitor, with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 768, I haven't used it as such and don't intend to either. My thoughts, therefore, are based solely on its looks and performance as a television.

To the technical purists I must apologise for this op. I don't know all the jargon and what it all means. The long and short of it is that I like this TV. It's a tidy, good looking, unit which is aesthetically pleasing in the bedroom. It's visual performance far outweighs a standard portable and the sound is good too! The features, using the Remote Control, are easy to use so that you can customise sound and vision to your own viewing standards. It's quite light and so slim that it's easy to situate. I'm going to give this 4 out of 5 stars.

For further information on this product, try surfing over to the Sharp website at:

www.sharp.co.uk

Thanks for bearing with me and reading this far. Cheers!  

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