Gimmick or not, there were a ton of 3D sets at CES. Unless you were walking around staring at the floor, there’s no way you could’ve missed the 3D invasion at CES this year. And even if you were staring at the floor? There were stickers and ads on the floor pointing you to booths with 3D.

So yeah…3D was all over the floor.

You might think then that our favorite TV set at CES this year would be something with 480hz technology and ultraHD-10k80p, .2mm thick with holographic 3D technology. (Okay okay, we made up those specs).

Nope. Our favorite sets at CES were from none-other than Quad-Pixel sets from Sharp. (Check out our initial look at Sharp’s sets at CES)

Seriously, with all the sets to choose from (like the unbelievably slim and pretty Samsung 9000 series), why did we choose Sharp as the best?

While every other set at CES had 3D or some other “new” feature (thickness, better blacks, or otherwise), a lot of them were just incremental upgrades. While 3D is cool, we didn’t find the technology revolutionary. Besides, the 3D discussion is for another article and not this story…so let’s get back on topic.

Sharp’s technology, in one word, is beautiful. There’s no other way to describe it. Understand, that we were skeptical what adding a fourth color to the RGB palette would do. I mean seriously? A trillion colors? A billion is a lot and there’s no way a human eye can perceive so much color.

But looking at the sets, you realize what Sharp has done. Not only have they established the next leap in TV’s with a fourth color to mix, but the effect is astounding. Every color, not just the the primary colors, are “Sharp”. (yikes…that was a cheap pun) The blacks are deeper and colors are fantastic.

The rep we spoke with kept pointing us to the color yellow. Of course, those would be better, but when you focus on the other colors, the reds, blues, and greens, the primary colors, you see the effect that Sharp is touting. Those colors, because there is yellow there to support the palette are that much more pronounced.

The best way to explain it is perhaps to go back to grade school art class. Imagine the color wheel and how you mix colors. With 3 simple colors (RGB), you can create any color in the rainbow (i.e. red and green make yellow, red and blue make purple, etc).

(We’ve added a color wheel here for reference)

TV sets today reproduce colors by mixing RGB in the same way, only much faster than your fingers and with a whole lot more clarity. So by adding a fourth color (RGBY), more colors and shades can be mixed together to produce absolutely stunning images.

It’s the excellent execution of such a simple concept that gets Sharp our Editor’s Choice, Golden Bucket Award for Best TV at CES.

Who knows how 3D is going to play out, really. Is it a passing fad or is everyone going to be slapping on glasses to watch their local news casts? From my perspective, forget about 3D, Quad-Pixel from Sharp makes the colors jump out of the set…without glasses. And that’s why they’re the best LCD sets.

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