There are a couple things about a video display that makes it look good. One of those things is the contrast ratio. Historically, CRT has had the best contrast ratio. Ever since, display manufacturers have been trying to match or exceed CRT’s historic contrast ratios. Many manufacturers are doing this with a dynamic iris on projectors. But a flat panel display doesn’t use an iris, so they have to find other ways to do it.

Sharp at CES 2007 showed off a 37″ “Mega-Contrast” premium LCD panel with a supposed 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. (How they would measure that is beyond me.) The Engadget folks said that this set’s black levels looked better than SED televisions (based on the same principles as CRT) they’ve seen.

Ah, we live in interesting times!

Sharp’s 1,000,000:1 Mega-Contrast Premium LCD vs regular LCD