Flatness

The LT-46SL89 is a lot better looking in person than in pictures.

Surprisingly so.

In pictures it has a boxy look that can't hold a candle to the Hitachi 1.5-inch LCD. But while it doesn't have the Hitachi's swoopiness, it has an elegance all its own.

The black gloss bezel is one of the thinnest I've seen on a TV, really allowing the image to hang in space. From the side, the back of the cabinet slopes away from the front. This is the portion that JVC calls 1.5 inches.

The middle of the back of the TV has some junk in its trunk. Namely, an HD tuner, something the Hitachi doesn't have. In reality this seeming "bulk" just means that if you hang it on the wall, it will hang out an inch or so more than the Hitachi would. Given its great profile, I doubt this will be any less impressive.

The setup menus are a departure from the—I'll say it—heinous, menus of old. The new ones are as elegant as the TV itself, with a rather monochromatic design that is easy to navigate. It puts every feature you can adjust all on one page.

Many competitors bury important features pages and pages into the menus. Sure this one-page convenience of the JVC isn't a big deal, but it makes setup a lot faster and easier.

The remote, if you use it, is backlit and has direct input access.

The LT-46SL89's processing is kind of bizarre, in that it performs the opposite of most TVs on the market.

The hard stuff, like de-interlacing 1080i, and picking up the 3:2 sequence with 1080i material (for when you watch movies on cable/satellite), the LT-46SL89 does fairly well over HDMI and component. In fact, JVC is one of the only companies on the market that consistently passes these tests.

There is some slight flicker in high-resolution detail when it's deinterlacing 1080i with 3:2, but with actual movies (instead of test patterns) this is barely noticeable.

But when you feed it a lower quality signal, it doesn't fare too well. The scaling is only okay, and could be outperformed with a decent scaling DVD player.

It's also rather noisy, though the onboard "Digital VNR" set to Low cleans up this noise to a large extent without overly softening the image.

Color accuracy is excellent, which is a big change from previous JVC models. I am happy to sound like a broken record on this front, but it seems like many of the top TV makers are starting to move away from badly oversaturated color points, a good thing for everyone.

Accurate color points mean that everything on screen, from skin tones to the color of grass or the sky, looks more realistic, not cartoony. And this accuracy the LT-46SL89 delivers in spades.

Color temperature, which is best described as the color of white (you don't want it to be too blue or too red), is pretty much perfect for the bright parts of the image, but it gets rather red on the dark parts of the image.

This means that you can have a situation where part of the image looks fine (say, an open window), but another part of the same image (say, a face in shadow) looks very red. This is easily fixable with proper calibration from an ISF certified technician.

The contrast ratio and black level are about average for an LCD. Even at the lowest backlight setting, you're not getting the deep blacks that other flat-panels are capable of, or the pop that displays with a high contrast ratio have. On the other hand, at the highest backlight setting, you do have enough light output to outshine the sun.

Detail for still or slow-moving objects is good, and the TV is capable of reproducing a 1080p pattern with adjacent white and black pixels. Faster moving images tend to blur, as is typical with many LCDs. I mention this as I tend to notice it, but I've talked with others who aren't bothered by motion blur. So your mileage may vary. As this isn't a 120 Hz TV, its inability to accept 1080p/24 isn't an issue.

The LCD technology that JVC uses is different than what other companies use (In-Plane Switching versus Twisted Nematic for the tech savvy) allows for a significantly wider viewing angle than other LCDs.

As you move away from straight on, unlike other LCDs, this one doesn't lose as much color. The black level comes up and the contrast ratio decreases, but it is significantly better than most LCDs in this regard as well. As such, this is one of the few LCDs I can recommend if you have a seating area that is fairly wide.

The overall performance of the LT-46SL89 is very good in most respects. Its color accuracy is spot on, de-interlacing is good, but scaling and contrast ratio/black level are somewhat mid-pack for LCDs. So in pure performance it can be outgunned in some respects, but with a TV like this, performance is only part of the equation.

You have to factor in the looks into the overall value of the TV, and when you do that, the LT-46SL89 becomes a solid contender.

DESCRIPTION: 46” (diagonal) 1080p LCD television with integral speakers; base included.
RESOLUTION: 1,920 by 1,080 pixels
CONNECTIONS: Three HDMI inputs, one RGB-PC, two component, 1 s-video shared with a two composite inputs, one RF/antenna input, RS-232, USB for picture viewer; composite with stereo analog audio and optical audio out.
DIMENSIONS: 39.75 x 30.04 x 11.75 inches (hxwxd) (including stand)

PRICE: $2399.95
CONTACT: 800.252.5722, jvc.com