Customer Reviews

Sharp LC-26D4U AQUOS 26-Inch Flat Panel LCD HDTV

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Don't be misled by the heading that this Sharp set is only "HD-READY." It in fact has all the tuners you need for HDTV built-in, including an ATSC tuner for over the air and a QAM tuner for your digital cable (if you have it).

The picture and quality are OUTSTANDING. Even better is this is the 2005 model, which was made BY Sharp themselves, and not the 2006 model, which was manufactured in another country by a different manufacturer (under the Sharp name).

I can't say what a phenomenal set this is -- especially at Amazon's price. FANTASTIC!

The sound on this tv is just that good. After receiving this item the day after I ordered it(Thank you Amazon!) I have done nothing but watch tv. I am watching HD through my cable company, so they get some of the credit here, but the picture is AMAZING.

The black case on the TV makes it sleek and sporty looking, and will look great using the included pedestal mount, or hanging it on the wall is even better if you wish.

Sharp added all the inputs that you could need on this tv. In my opinion, the HDMI is not worth the money, as you will not notice the difference in the picture quality using component cables, so save the hundred bucks.

Overall, a great buy for an even better price. I can't find a single merchant that will sell this tv for less than or the same as what Amazon gave it away for. You will be thrilled beyond belief when you take this puppy out of the box. Don't let the small screen size fool you. Once you power it up, you are hooked forever!!!

First off... the TV is gorgeous. It looks like it costs a fortune, but really this is a fantastic deal for an HD LCD including tuners. We get a decent range of digital HD broadcast over the air here in SF. The picture using upscaled DVDs over HDMI is also incredible.

A warning about firmware. After 30 minutes of using this out of the box, the set started to turn on and off by itself. Turns out there was new firmware released in April. Our set was manufactured in March even though we bought it in late July.

This was a major pain. Because of the size of the TV, we had to bring it to a repair shop and have the firmware upgraded. Sharp paid for it under warranty, but who has time to deal with stuff like that?

The firmware issue is well documented on AVS forums and when you get the upgrade, you will no longer experience these problems, assuming you need it in the first place.

You can check your firmware versions in the service menu. The current versions are 1.04 and 1.12. Mine shipped with 1.03 and 1.11. To access the service menu on this TV:

- Unplug the TV.
- Hold down the Input button and the Volume down button, then plug the TV back in.
- The TV will power on with a little "K" on the left hand side of the screen.
- Hit the Channel Down and Volume Down buttons at the same time.

This TV was very easy to take out of the box and set up. I have not used the Cable Card feature yet, so I can't comment on it, but this TV delivers as promised. You should get free OTA HDTV channels (locals) without using a separate set top box or cable card. You know they are high def channels because the display will show either 720p or 1080i for the channels. Digital analog channels are 480i. The picture quality is excellent and there are plenty of inputs. The TV has a handle which makes it easy to move around.

Price with free shipping is terrific. I was waiting for decent size LCDs to break the $1K price barrier; I'd seen the Sharp Aquos's among other LCD and Plasma TVs and it was my brand of choice. Cable card slot is added bonus. I am using this with non-digital cable and picture resolution is sweet - great for French Open tennis and subtitled DVDs.
I'll admit I've come from a 13-inch color TV, but find this awesome and as large a screen as I would want.
Set up is particularly easy and fast. Elegant design; all black, really cool.

I have this TV in my bedroom system. It is a nice TV with very good picture quality. I have it connected to an OPPO DV-970HD upconverting DVD player (I have a review on that item too - it's great). The picture is just fantastic. To really do just to this great panel a good upconverting DVD player is a must.

The reason I give it one less star is because broadcast TV does not look as good as on my old TV. The picture looks more grainly and snowy that before the upgrade. Using my old DVD player with S/Video connection, the picture was not as good either. However feeding it true HD signal, either from the upconverting DVD player or Comcast HD cable, the picture is just unbeatable.

This is my 3rd Sharp Aquos I have purchased and I couldn't be any more pleased. They are the leader and inovators in LCD's and it shows in the quality of their products. Their customer service is also great if you have any questions.

The TV manufacturers are not telling the consumers nor the retailers about the issues they are having with the compatibility with CableCards. If you notice the new 2006 Sharp LCD's do not offer the CableCard because Sharp has has so many problems with them. But Sharp is not taking responsibility for the fact that they marketed and sold TV's knowing there were compatibility problems. I bought my LCD4U TV a few months ago and love the piano black frame, the beautiful picture and the easy to use controls. For the few days I had the TV before Comcast came out to install the CableCard, I had basic cable on it. I was learning all the controls and figured out how to delete/skip channels so I did not have to see channels I would never use. The CableCard is installed and the channel skip function would not work so now I have 700 channels of which I may only watch 120. I spent days and days with Sharp technical support and they finally said that they tested the TV with an older model Motorola CableCard and it worked fine, so this must be a Motorola problem and they take no responsibility for it. I did contact Comcast who told me that this is the first and only model CableCard they have ever used so they don't have the ability to give me an older model. So we the consumers pay a higher price for CableCards and when they do not work properly, Sharp says they were told to build a basic PCMI slot and thats what they did, the fact that the CableCard is not functioning properly in the slot is not their problem. I have kept in contact with my TV dealer who has been so helpful. So far Sharp is the only big TV manufacturer that has new models and dropped the CableCard. Mitsubishi and Sony LCD's are still using it. So for a major company like Sharp to not stand by their product is a little unsettling. Just as a side note, I had 60 days to return this product and chose to keep it because there were no others out there with the Piano black finish and the picture quality. I don't think I will purchase another Sharp product because of the shady way I was treated.

SOund meets and exceeds expectation.

Picture quality, basic analog cable is hit or miss (depends on your provider).

Another note about picture color, strandard settings show some weired color variations, (blues and greens), one can easily correct with settings... dynamic seems to work very well.

Channel changing is slow, I really dont see why that should be, just lazy engineering I suppose.

Overall, I did pic this set out for asthetics, it is slick as hell, performance wise, face fact this is a 2005 model, 2006/2007 models will obviously have an advantage performance wise.

For Amazon $799 free shipping price, its a decent set. Performance wise these units do not stand up to their counter parts CRT, unless usieng a digital source, then they are ALMOST as good. The absolute best is Sony HD CRT. Now that is truly wicked.

BE AWARE THAT THE BUILT IN STAND IS NOT ADJUSTABLE! NO PAN OR TILT, I CAN UNDERSTAND NO TILT DUE TO WEIGHT, BUT ROTATION WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO HAVE... TO GET BEHIND FOR CABLE ADJUSTMENTS.

I bought this as a second HDTV (for my bedroom) and it's perfect for that. The picture is amazing and has qualities that appear better than on the best plasmas. For example, the picture looks brighter and the whites are whiter than on plasmas. I can't explain this because the Sharp has a brightness spec of only 450cd/m2, and 800:1 contrast, whereas my plasma has a brightness of 1300cd/m2 and 10000:1 contrast.

To see this for yourself, go to an outlet store and you will see that the LCDs are brighter and crisper than the plasmas. This brightness is especially noticeable with outdoor scenes. Sometimes I almost want to shade my eyes from the sun! You don't get this with plasmas. The Sharp picture also appears "smoother" and less noisy than my plasma. All plasmas have a little bit of "screen door" effect which can cause flickering of pixels during movement. The Sharp doesn't have this flaw. The Sharp also has a more even white balance than on my plasma.

However, plasmas do give a better color rendition, especially skin tones. On LCDs, faces looks white-pasty-like as if light is shining thru them from behind (actually, this is probably precisely why this happens because there is a backlight on LCDs). This doesn't bother me but it does to some people.

I like the four assignable channel presets on the remote. You can assign 4 channels for each button (but I wish it had even more buttons). It has an on-screen drop down menu for input source choices (most remotes only have one button where you have to keep pushing the button to get to the next choice).

The sound quality is good for a bedroom HDTV (but not great).

Now for the bad news. The Sharp doesn't have many features. No Picture-In-Picture, or split-screen (EVERY tv should have PIP with a switch button).

If you're viewing 4:3 size video, you can expand or zoom the picture by pressing the "view mode" button, but if the channel is showing 1080i, this feature doesn't work. (My Samsung does).

The Sharp has an QAM turner but it has a confusing channel assignment and it doesn't pick up all of my Comcast clear channels (my Samsung plasma does). If you have a cable box then this isn't important because then you don't need a QAM tuner. The over-the-air turner picks up channels just fine, however.

The mute button, if left on for about a minute, turns the volume to its lowest setting! This is dumb. This is frustrating because you have to spend time holding the volume button to get it back where it was. This, in effect, makes the mute useless.

Switching to different channels or input sources takes too much time. Apparently tv manufacturers have yet to learn how important channel surfing is to us. Give us faster switching, more channel presets, easier and faster input selections, damnit!

If they made a 50" Sharp LCD with the wished features I described above, I would prefer it over my 50" plasma.