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Full LED backlighting with local dimming, when properly implemented, is the gold standard for achieving the best black levels in an LCD HDTV. But such a set also requires a lot of gold to acquire. LED edge-lit designs, needing fewer LEDs and less complex processing, cost less. While LG makes fully LEDbacklit local-dimming sets (its LM9600 Nano designs), the company’s premier, edge-lit LM8600 offerings also include local dimming. Local dimming, even in an edge-lit set, is usually better than none at all, but it’s less comprehensive and in theory less effective than the fully backlit variety. We reviewed the 55LM9600 Nano back in our September 2012 issue. But the 55LM8600 now lays down a strong challenge to its pricier sibling.

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All LCD HDTVs require some form of backlighting. The LCD panel’s pixels modulate the light and provide filtered color, but without backlighting to shine through the panel, you’d have no picture. Recently, LEDs (light-emitting diodes) have replaced the fluorescent backlights used in older flat-screen LCD sets. LCDs aren’t perfect in blocking light (which is why so many early models had poor black levels), but if you can shut off or dim the LEDs on demand, the LCDs’ light-blocking chores become far more efficient. And LEDs can do this; they can be shut off and turned back on almost instantaneously in reaction to the signal coming in.

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The most popular, current approach to designing an LCD HDTV with LED lighting is to position the LEDs around the periphery of the screen and rely on diffusors to spread the light out uniformly. Sometimes (but not always) the brightness of the LEDs is also altered dynamically to help the LCD pixels create deep blacks, where needed.

Editor's Note: It's with great pleasure that Home Theater brings you this exclusive first review of Sharp's new ground-breaking LC-90LE745U HDTV. With this 90-inch set, the first at its size truly intended for mass production, Sharp begins the era of projection-size flat panels suitable for any light environment. While the $10,000 (street) ticket price still exceeds the cost of a high quality 2D/3D projector and screen, as a sign of what's to come, it is a significant introduction. And, as you'll read in Tom Norton's detailed review, not a bad TV. - Rob Sabin

Ninety inches diagonal is not all that big as projection screens go. But Sharp’s new LC-90LE745U, at that same 90 inches, is immense by flat panel standards. With more than twice the screen area of a 65inch set, it has little flat panel competition for its size, and none at all for its combination of size and cost. Panasonic has an 85inch plasma, for example, that will set you back nearly twice as much. LG showed a 4K 80-inch LCD set at last January’s CES, but exact pricing and availability is still undetermined. Mitsubishi offers a 92-inch rear-projection set at some remarkable street prices (around $3,000), but its massive 194 pounds and 25-inch depth (225 pounds and 32 inches in its shipping carton) might be just a little intimidating.

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Panasonic has improved its plasma sets each year, and while that march forward has generated torturous verbiage to describe its continually improving plasma HDTV black levels (Infinite Black, Infinite Black Pro, Infinite Black Ultra, and, perhaps next year, Infinite Black Pro Ultra), the company has kept pushing the design envelope. And it has done so even as flat panel prices continue to drop. A 65-inch plasma for $3,700 would have been considered an impossible dream just a few years ago when the goal was to get prices down to $100 per diagonal inch.

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When Tom Norton reviewed the 65-inch Vizio XVT3D650SV 3D LED-edgelit LCD TV last year (see review here), he found it to be an excellent performer in most respects. However, its list price of $3,700 kept many potential buyers away—and, along with the few problems he did find, kept him from bestowing HT's Top Picks designation.