Sharp LL-191A-B: 16ms Response Time for 19'' LCDs

LG Philips LCD LM190E03

To no surprise to us, the Sharp LL-191A uses an LG Philips LCD panel. We say "no surprise" because thusfar, they have dominated the low response time LCD market with the LM201U04 panel found in every 16ms 20" LCD to date. This newest LG Philips LCD panel is not shown to be in mass production yet (at least according to their website), so it is probably safe to say that the LL-191A is the first production unit available.

We have mentioned some other display modes in the past. AUO's modified TN mode powered the Hitachi CML174 LCD with a 16ms TrTf response time. This LCD had very similar polarization and viewing angles. Both the Hiatchi CML174 and the Sharp LL-191A use 6-bit LCD panels. This essentially means that each sub pixel can "twist" to 64 varying degrees, allowing 64 slightly different hues of that sub-pixel through. When you consider three subpixels capable of producing 64 hues each, we consider each pixel capable of producing 262,000 colors. Other displays, such as Samsung's 193P use 8-bit panels; they can produce 254 varying hues per subpixel (or 16.7M per pixel). We have more information about how an LCD substrate works here. The LM190E03 panel uses a dithering technique to simulate 16M colors, but it is not true 8-bit rendition.

Unusually, even though the LG Philips LCD website claims 250 cd/m² luminesence, Sharp labels the monitor as only 220. As we show later in this review, this seems to be correct; adjusting the brightness too high washes color vibrance out of the image.

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Unlike our last 6-bit LCD, the LL-191A does not use a Genesis controller (see also Dell 2001FP). Instead, Sharp uses a much different Myson chipset - the MTV312MV64. The Myson chip is fairly robust, since it can support four A/D channels (the LL-191A only uses 1 analog channel).

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From the looks of the controller circuit board, there is no room to expand a digital interface on future models. However, since the Myson controller does support digital and analog channels, we may see a digital version of this LCD yet.