With a Full HD screen, a built-in digital tuner and a 100 Hz motion fluidity system, the Sharp Aquos LC-46DH77E promises a lot and is well-positioned to face up to some stiff competition.

Build Quality and Design
This television has just about everything you need for everyday use.  The extras include a USB input allowing you to play MP3 files and look at JPEG photos from an external source using an easy-to-use graphical interface.


That said, the interface hasn't changed for a long time and looks a little dated when compared with some of Sharp's competitors who have since tweaked their menus. Capping the number of HDMI ports at three also seems a little stingy, when most other manufacturers now offer four.  Our real gripe, though, is the lack of an Ethernet port, meaning the LC-46DH77E is not compatible with the DLNA standard. 

Image Quality
Our very first measurements showed the DH77E's main failing: black is much too bright, letting 0.18 cd/m² of light through even when the screen is 100%.  That would have been an excellent outcome just a year ago, but today it is relatively average.  Sharp still manages to drag its contrast ratio up to 1118:1, and the ability to configure the backlighting means you can adjust the brightness of the frame without altering what's shown.  Colours are handled much better, with an almost perfect DeltaE score of 2.7.  It's very rare indeed that we see such a good result.

Showing an entirely white test card leaves something to be desired as we found an average difference of 21 cd/m² from one area of the screen to another, but it's only fair to point out that the majority of lamp-lit LCD screens are the same.  The only way to improve the situation is to switch to LED backlighting.

Trying the same test but with an entirely black screen normally allows us to detect the presence of clouding.  In this case, though, there wasn't any: we measure the light level at 28 individual points and found it to be exactly 0.18 cd/m² evenly across the whole screen.

We found equally impressive results for the viewing angles.  Measuring DeltaE at 45°, it rose to only 7.65, while the difference in light levels on a 98% black screen were just 0.63 cd/m² from the same angle.

Sitting down to watch HD films is an enjoyably fluid experience.  Sharp's system, like Sony's Motionflow and Samsung's Movie Plus, interpolates extra frames and it works reasonably well, usually going unnoticed.  It's easily overlooked, though, hidden in the Advanced section of the Film Mode settings, but turning it on genuinely improves results.

Standard definition is less impressive, because the DH77E is less effective at upscaling.  It's about as good as other comparable TVs, but it's still a long way behind what a dedicated player can do, or even Sony's PlayStation 3.


Finally, let's finish by taking a look at how it performs when plugged into a PC using the HDMI interface.  Fortunately, the signal isn't cropped or resized, but an input lag of 4 fps isn't good news for gamers.

Sound Quality

Energy Consumption
When in standby, the Sharp Aquos LC-46DH77E consumes virtually no power and we recorded a consumption of 0-0.1 W.  Once we had set it up using our standard test configuration, it required 169 W, or around 3.7 W per inch, which is less impressive and leaves this TV in the middle of the table.