Customer Reviews

Sharp Aquos LC32D40U 32-Inch LCD HDTV with Integrated ATSC Tuner

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

When you think Sharp, you think top notch LCD, you think Aquos. And today that's still true, Sharp makes some of the best LCD TVs on the market, but this isn't one of them. I bought, and tried it out for a couple days, and just couldn't get a good picture.

I got online and did some research, it turns out that this particular model, along with 26" D40U Sharp series TV is made in Thailand, by Orion (the same company that makes the Broksonic, Durabrand, Insignia products that get sold to big discount Walmart/Costco type retailers). Yup, you heard me, this TV isn't even made by Sharp, it's a rebadge. So while you're paying Sharp prices, you're getting a Walmart TV. Don't believe me? Google it.

Now if you purchase a Sharp LC32D41U (looks identical), then you are getting a TV produced by Sharp using a Sharp LCD panel manufactured at the new Kameyama factory in Japan. But the LC32D40U is just a rebadged TV built to Sharp specs by another manufacturer with a cheap LCD panel.

After I found this out, I felt cheated, and I returned the TV. I will not likely buy a Sharp product again.

To sum it up, buying this LCD has been one of the worst shopping experiences of my life.

I have been wowed by Sharp's extremely good picture quality and value in the past; so, I finally decided to give in and buy a "name brand" LCD after reading stellar reviews on this particular model of LCD.

The television came and I couldnt have been more excited about the beautiful packaging and the beautiful design of the television. It really is a beautiful television and I was very excited to see how it compared to my Olevia LCD that I've had for roughly two years.

I hooked my Xbox 360 up via component inputs, and the excitment died. The colors were dull, red push completely apalling, and the television exhibited artifacts and jaggies even in the Xbox 360's dashboard menu. I tried calibration with DVDs for the better part of an hour just while staying in the dashboard, and then I tried a game. Not only did reds STILL look pink, but the colors were dull and there were MAJOR ghosting issues. Ghosting was so bad I couldn't even play games; they made me sick. Buyer's remorse began to set in. DVDs and even such "action packed" channels such as PBS also exhibited these ghosting issues; people's faces would literally trail across the screen. My two year old Olevia had significantly better picture quality, color accuracy, and no ghosting either!

So, naturally, I went online to discover many people were having the exact same issues. Not only this, but this television is built by Orion in Thailand; the same brand that makes insignia brand products. This also made me feel cheated. I shouldn't be paying premium prices for a budget brand LCD!

I soon contacted Sharp customer support; and the nightmare began. Simply put, Sharp customer service is by far the worst I've EVER had to deal with in my life. I've worked in customer service for six years and I couldn't believe the things that Sharp does to customers. After being lied to, calling dozens of times, and flat out arguing with customer service; they finally decided to repair my television after a month or two of trying to avoid the issue. After roughly two months, I was finally able to drop off my television at a Sharp authorized service center. A month passed, and I was calling the service center just about three times a week. After THREE months of having no television and not even getting any use of this LCD, Sharp and my service center told me there WERE NO PROBLEMS with this television. Sharp basically admitted to me that they sell an inferior product and the service manager at my repair center said these Sharp were a piece of junk (which reaffirmed my beliefs).

I no longer have the television; after three months of bickering with Sharp I concluded I no longer wanted to deal with the stress or frankly, spend any more of my time. I wish Sharp would reimburse me for the hours I spent on the phone with them.

All I can do is to recommend people stay far away from this product, and possibly even Sharp in general. Which is unfortunate, because they did/do have some great products. That being said, I will likely NEVER buy a Sharp product again.

I got this at Best Buy 4 months ago, its been serviced twice, has a replacement board and there is a 2 month + wait for 2 more replacement boards (digital and scaler). The picture is lime green, especially on the left side. The Tech keeps saying all of them (this model) have a green picture so repairs won't work ... so here I sit waiting for repair #3 - by the way, don't get it at Best Buy or use their warranty - its a big battle getting them to replace it or even fix it. FYI This Model wasn't made by Sharp, it was made by a far inferior manufacturer, and the picture shows it. Anyway, it would be a great set if it wasn't like looking thru Lime Green Jello. Perhaps the other Aquos models live up to their rep.

The picture quality is very good.
The delay in changing channels is not a big deal, usually you will have a satellite or cable box hooked up anyway to avoid the problem.

I've had this TV for 9 months now and generally very happy until 2 weeks ago. For some reason the picture just cuts out after 10-20 minutes leaving only sound. If you wait the picture can come back on by turning TV off and waiting, but then it goes off again in a few minutes. Not happy with the service, still waiting for a call back.

I REALLY WISH I HAD SEEN THESE REVIEWS BEFOREHAND.

I have not bought a TV in some time - and I've been fascinated with the ability to hang your TV on the wall like you could hang a picture. I knew, because of that, that when I bought my next TV, it was going to be a flat screen TV.

I was surprised to see that they have standardized the wall mount in the same way they have standardized other things about monitors. The same organization that made all computer monitors use more or less the same standard timings and connections, VESA, has made everyone agree on the layout, screw size and threading, so you can say, "This TV has a 200 by 200 VESA wall mount" (which is the size it actually is, a set of holes laid out in a square and the holes are 200mm from each other on center in any direction) and any mounting system made by a manufacturer that you trust that can be attached to a 200 by 200 VESA support system should support any TV that has the VESA 200 mounting holes on the back.

To safely install the mount into a stud wall, you will most likely need a stud finder with an "edge" function, and one that can tell metal studs from wooden ones like the Black and Decker BDL100S (see http://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-BDL100S-Bulls-Finder/dp/B000AEGJD8/sr=8-2/qid=1162770092/ref=sr_1_2/104-5544319-6674369?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden)
--- unless, of course, you know what type of studs you have. If you have wooden studs, you need to put the screws right in the center of the stud. With metal studs, you need to follow the instructions carefully, you might need an additional plate or extra screws and special anchors. You can mount in concrete - follow the instructions carefully

The support system I bought went in easily - in fact, the Peerless system that I bought allowed me to attach the mounting plate to the back of the TV, and the articulated arm to the wall - then I lifted the TV (with help, it was not real light) and hooked it over the attachment plate. Once it was hooked, gravity held it in place. I checked it and it was not quite right, only one of the three hooks had engaged. I lifted it again and my helper pushed the arm against the TV and when I lowered it all three hooks locked in. There is a single light weight screw that stops the TV from falling off if there is a quake or if someone bumps into it and I screwed that in, but I was not holding anything in place when I did that.

I used an improvised plumb bob to make sure the holes were absolutely vertical. Thus, I never had to lift and then screw while holding anything heavy in midair. The VESA mounting holes on the back of the TV look to be very well set up - there were threaded metal inserts that were well connected to the structure of the television, and which interacted well with the mount. I expect the TV to stay up for years despite vibration and so forth. The instructions given by the mount were that I needed to get the screws three full turns into the mounting holes on the back of the TV and a number of different lengths were supplied but the holes on the TV were well positioned - the shortest screws fit easily into the mounting holes more than three full turns without bottoming.

To me, these new flat screens are all about mounting options. Lighter weight with the same sized screen area is a result of the new technology - you don't need to build a big heavy glass bottle of nothing - not having that big heavy bottle strong enough to contain a high quality vacuum allows you to hang the TV, safely, from two screws on the wall. Being able to hang the flat screen from the wall and to swing it around on a suitable mount is a major part of how the TV changes the way you watch it, and being able to make this happen in my bedroom is an important part of why I'm willing to spend the money on this particular TV.

This TV does have a pedestal - so you can put it onto a table or old style TV stand if you want. The new TVs are all about options.

But I am also talking about the TV. Lots of inputs. Read the manual - there are tons of inputs - both for audio and video and outputs to drive your dolby sound system. The picture is too good in a way - some of the artifacts that I could not see on my CRT TV are clearly visible on the Sharp Aquos - but these are clearly in the transmitted picture - and you can't soften the adjustments enough to take them out. I now want to get a new DVD player that has an HDMI output so that things are crisp and clear when I watch a disk. The TV is no bigger than my old Hitachi CRT but there is more viewable area - many programs have those black bars top and bottom and this TV will stretch the screen so that the bright part of the picture fills the viewable area. So far I prefer to watch 4:3 programs with black bars on the side - and the one thing I wish is that I could put the captions over in those blank areas. That might just be a day one thing.

Someone commented in another review that the picture was "too red" out of the box. That is as may be, but there are easy adjustments of color temperature, and I was able to get a temperature I liked, that looked neutral to me, rather easily - it was one of the first things I did, I just went through all the simple to use menu settings. You can also adjust the picture position - vertical or horizontal, easily - as well as how you'd like it stretched to fit the screen (if you want it stretched to fit the screen at all). The menus are simple and well laid out - it only takes me a couple seconds to find anything.

The built in speakers are decent for built in speakers, but I am looking forward to some inexpensive, decent surround speakers and a subwoofer, driven by an external amp and the optical cable.

I have a minor hearing problem which allows me to hear well and still makes me more comfortable with the captions turned on - and this TV has absolutely the BEST closed caption system I have EVER SEEN! Like I said, I have not shopped for a TV in a while, but this is far beyond anything I've seen. You can select fonts, select style of font, select the outline style (none, depressed or raised letters) and the color of the font and the background. Furthermore, you can decide on level of transparency - you can independently make the background opaque, transparent or translucent and you can do the same for the foreground.

I can't remember an instance where it missed converting a caption - it is sensitive and accurate. The caption decoder seems to be able to pull captions where my other TVs can't. This, of course, does not improve the miserable quality of captions as produced by American TV - they barely match what is going on and frequently are produced from the scripts so that if there is any adlibbing, or if the director changes lines or cuts a line the caption shows the old version - for live sports events where the captions are done in real time they are so garbled that they frequently contradict the actual statement made by the announcer - and I have to backspace the TiVO to decide whether I was hearing the announcer correctly or if the caption typist was simply incompetent (usually the latter). If court reporters are this bad I pity any defendant or prosecutor who needs to appeal based on the record. They need to video tape the proceedings and do the transcription properly. But the TV is not responsible for that, the TV only decodes what was transmitted, and the TV gets the translation right more often than any other TV I've ever used. By that I mean that I've never seen it fail to repeat the same thing when the recording is backed up and replayed - and a Hitachi TV which used to be connected to the same TiVo in the same way (that is, via the channel 3 connector - I will get a better connection system) would frequently garble the transcription and then, on replay, garble it differently.

I shopped locally - Best Buy was $1100 ($60 more than Amazon) and they had just dropped the price $200. Costco was $999, $40 cheaper than Amazon (but chances are you don't pay sales tax - and as I write this, Amazon was not charging for shipping. I happened to, literally, have a pain in my neck because of the angle that I'd been holding my head at watching my tabletop TV, and a major part of what sold this TV to me was the ability to have a standard mount system that would allow me to mount it near the top edge of the wall, and a clerk who said, "We have this mount in stock to work with this and all of our other standard TVs that have VESA standard mounting holes between 100x75 and 200x200 and we know that it works with this TV since it has 200x200 mounts."

Had I not been in the store, I would have bought it from Amazon since it would have saved me the cost of the trip to town - the gas is cheaper when you don't buy it.

I'm glad I bought it and I'd buy it again. I have seen so many of the new HDTVs that were missing one function or another and this TV seems to have all the functions - at least one of every sort of input I've ever heard of - with the right adapter cable it could be used as a computer monitor - or a for any other thing you would want to connect a video output device to.

I have not tested the V-Chip but that is not an important function to me. It comes with no default code so I set one - if anyone watches my TV I don't want them to accidentally set a code and not tell me that they have done so.

The one thing that I am slightly upset about is that the remote does not have the ability to control my Tivo - and I do see myself needing to change the viewing stretch from sidebar to zoom depending on what I am watching. But my TiVO blue remote can turn this TV on and off and set the volume, but can't do any of the other functions and the remote for the TV can't control the TiVO. Thus I'm stuck with two remotes - or an aftermarket remote that actually controls both devices. Sigh.

We bought this TV after reading glowing reviews only to find out that the picture quality is poor when viewed from slight angles. Also, after 13 months of use ours has now died. Sound works but picture is gone. Cycling power on/off might bring back a partial picture for a few minutes but then it is gone again. Another expensive lesson.

This TV worked great for 10 months. The picture appeared better than similarly priced TVs at the time. Sharp, bright, color seemed good, tuner seemed to work well with an amplified table-top antenna. The menu system was probably the biggest weakness. Also, it used the 5.001, 5.002 format, which is a pain when you want the digital version of channel 5.

But then, after 10 months, the picture randomly started going dark. Channel changing worked, audio worked. Now, after 11months, all that happens is the "Please wait" screen appeared - then darkness. Now, fortunately under warranty, we are trying to get it repaired. But this is totally unacceptable quality for a name-brand product with significant cost. Two weeks now no TV (not that that is the worst thing in the world) - does the warranty provide for a loaner?

This product came highly recommended by a technoid at my workplace because of all the specific qualities it has and will need for future television transmissions. I have been very pleased with the TV. Set up was easy. Picture quality is excellent.

I bought it when it first came out (yikes $1700 after taxes).

After learning the in's and out's, it was a great TV. Using the integrated tuner I can get a few HDTV channels (local only) for free! So I can watch NFL games on FOX in HD [woot!].

Some complaints are that there is a little delay when changing channels, and the remote is long and clumsy, but those are minor complaints.

The big problem is that after 10 months the picture started dropping out, leaving only the sound. I took it to a Sharp Authorized Repair Center, and after a little work they worked with Sharp to replace it with a brand new one (not a refurb).

The new TV works great, but I would get a different TV if I had it to do over again.

Drew

I brought this baby home, had it set up in only a few minutes. The one thing that drove me crazy and prompted me to return it ... there is a delay whenever you turn it on (it says 'please wait' on the screen), and then there is a delay everytime you change channels. For the die-hard channel surfers out there, it's a deal-breaker. I should note, however, there is no delay if you are changing channels through your set-top box (I had it set up both with and without it).

When I returned it to the store, they said it was standard with Sharps (I don't know if it's all of them ... my 2 year-old 20" Aquos has performed admirably with no delay).