Sharp refreshes its full line-up of HD and UltraHD TVs

Sharp remade its whole line-up of large-screen TVs, ranging in size from 60 inches to 90 inches, at a press event today.

Sharp made the announcements at the 2014 International CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week.

The models include 4K UltraHD TVs — which has four times as many pixels as a current high-definition 1080p TV — that the company claims have the best picture in the industry. With the heavy emphasis on high-end, large screens, the company is getting away from low-cost TVs. (LG, by contrast, is still making plasma TVs at the low end).

Sharp is now selling TVs with IGZO screens, based on a hybrid of chip materials, to provide brighter, low-power displays. The company announced that technology last year.

John Herrington, president of Sharp’s North American business, said . consumers will have a lot of choices in large-screen TVs. He said Sharp has sold more than 2 million such TVs in recent years.

With THX and Red, Sharp created a 4K film competition to generate new content for UltraHD TVs, which have four times as many pixels as current high-definition 1080p TVs.

Sharp is launching Aquos UltraHD TVs, but it acknowledges the prices are steep. There’s a $3,000 gap between equivalent screen-size TVs between UltraHD and HD technologies. So Sharp is also adding new colors and details to its existing line-up of HD TVs. The Aquos Quattron+ is an HD TV that can also play UltraHD content. Quattron creates 10 million more subpixels in an image than a full HD TV, for a total of 16 million pixels.

Compare that to 24 million pixels in a UltraHD TV and 6 million in full HD.