73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
An amazing large LCD screen that's stellar when it's fed the right signals!!!!
I purchased the Sharp LC52D64U via a direct promotion with Sharp USA. The deal I was offered was too good to pass up. I have never bought a large format TV in my life and always got by with a Sony CRT 27" in my bedroom running SD TV. I was just fine with that for many years and when I moved into a new apartment with a nice big (and empty) living room and ordered HD cable,...
38 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
Warning: TV size 32'' or GREATER CANNOT be returned for exchange!!!
Just want to warn everyone that once the TV is in your hands, YOU cannot returned it back for an exchange even if the product is defective.
I just bought a LC52D64U 52-inch 1080p TV From Amazon---[...]. When delivered, I had inspected the TV and saw no physical damage and signed the delivery document.
Once I put it in my living room and hooked it up...
I purchased the Sharp LC52D64U via a direct promotion with Sharp USA. The deal I was offered was too good to pass up. I have never bought a large format TV in my life and always got by with a Sony CRT 27" in my bedroom running SD TV. I was just fine with that for many years and when I moved into a new apartment with a nice big (and empty) living room and ordered HD cable, I decided to consider purchasing a large HD panel TV.
When I did my research, I was overwhelmed at the number of choices, formats and connections types, such as LCD, plasma, projection, 720i, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, Hdmi, HD channels recievers....argh!?!?!?!
Well after I did enough research, this Sharp LCD has everything that I need for at least the next 5 years. I am running a Tivo Series 3 HD reciever pumping 1080i HD channels over digital cable into one of the 3 available HDMI ports. The image quality is, to say the least, MAGNIFICENT!!!! The deep blacks and rich colors really cut through exceptionally well. I have not yet played an HD DVD or Blu-Ray movie through it, but if the 1080i HD channels look this great, I can only expect the same from watching Spiderman 3 on Bluray at 1080P when it's available this late October.
When I was researching large format panel TV's, my eye kept going to plasmas like Panasonics and the Elite series from Pioneer. Suffice it to say, these brands were very much out of my budget and consdered LCD's instead. So I did some research on the Aqous series and found alot of useful information. I also read many reports of the Sharp Aquos series suffering from a bad phenomenom known as "banding" and a recent review of the LC52D64U on cnet.com indicated that the problem was still present in this new model. This made me nervous about buying the TV, but then I reminded myself that those reviewers have eyes like a hawk and scrutinize every little detail that an average consumer (like me) probably wouldn't even notice until pointed out.
Well I don't know if I can't see it, or if it is not present in my particular unit, but I have NOT experienced any "banding" issues that may appear as color bleed, ghosting effects or ongoing pixilation.
Sharp does offer Aquos models that have a higher refresh rate as much at 120 hertz. This unit, I believe, operates at a 60 hertz refresh rate. The higher 120 refresh rate is supposed to handle fast moving images (such as football player running across a field) and improve the image so as to reduce any bluriness or undesireable pixilation.
Well I do not watch alot of sports, so this is not a deal breaker for me. There were a few times I was watching a movie and saw some pixilation occurring due to fast moving images. But as long as you watch your 52" sharp LCD from a practical viewing distance and loose yourself in the entertainment and not scrutinize every single image that's on the screen, you probably won't notice it when it does occur, if at all.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with the Sharp LC52D64U. Remember that to get the most out of this LCD panel, be prepared to spend some money and feed it a high resolution data feed for both audio and video. Everything I am sending it comes in at full 1080i/1080P, if not upscaled from 720/480. I plan to get the new X-Box 360 elite and it has an HDMI output port and many of the newer games run at 1080P, so I can only imagine that there's more visual pleasure to come my way.
I hope this non-technical review was helpful. Now go out and buy this damn thing and be a happy couch potato!!! :-)
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Read this entire review , it will clarify a lot for you with the facts.
Excellent physical design with minimal bezel around screen and also very slim depth and light weight making it as ideal as possible for wall mounting. Excellent anti reflective screen, always clear and vivid in all room lighting. Descent sound and picture factory settings~ easily rectified and improved with adjustment to the settings. Great picture quality overall especially in HD, I enjoy watching the TV with an HD dvd player hdmi connectivity and an HD dvd the most, its also fun connecting my laptop to it with its VGA input. I have written a previous review of this set elsewhere, all in line with the very words in this review only this time regret to have to add that I have noticed the notorious banding issue on the screen. keep in mind that in 80-90% of the scenes you'll watch you wont see the banding, only superb contrast ratio and excellent response time/processing of all content. However, the banding does occur in scenes where camera moves horizontally or diagonally over a large span. for example when watching the planet earth HD DVD and seeing the camera pan or tilt over a long landscape I also saw the horizontal bands like thin thin barely there but there whitish lines across the screen. In spit of all that, i love the TV because again the banding is rare and all other scenes including the speed and rapid movements in a action movie or the color and clarity of the details in a rainforest while watching a documentary this TV does a excellent job. Overall, if you can put up with the banding in those shots where the camera filming a shot scanning a tall building from bottom to top or a wide landscape, This TV is a super cool and modern looking TV. Aquos branded with all the bells and whistles including 1080p and all the connectivity you can ask for. Almost near future proof only lacking 120hz refresh rate which I found not to be necessary at all with this unit. Bottom line, I plan on keeping my TV, every guest that has been over and seen the TV in action love it and want one for themselves.
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We didn't buy from Vanns, but have been enjoying this set at home for four days now. We haven't experienced the banding that others have complained about -- and I have been very vigilant looking for it. Set-up was fairly straightforward. The stand is gratifyingly solid. Connecting cables for inputs 1 & 2 was a little more difficult than I expected, the angle you hold the connectors is really important, much more so than on other sets -- although once done, everything is nice and tight. One nice surprise so far: the built-in speakers sound much better than I expected.
The picture is gorgeous. Even DVDs from an old non-progressive scan player are excellent (the progressive scan player I ordered arrives today). We watched Monday Night Football in 1080i and newscasts in 1080i, the image quality and detail were amazing. I didn't realize before what nice clothes the anchors wear!
We're very happy so far. We'll see how we feel in a few months.
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I bought this TV on sale from Circuit City, on the black Friday, so I have the TV for almost a month now and I think this is one of the best purchases I have ever made. Some more details to help you.
Oh, yes, there's no banding on my set, and that's all I was worried about before buying this set.
1. Read all the reviews and see for yourself, this TV can handle dark scenes better than any other, and yes it handles different black tones way better than much costlier rivals. Just look for the dark hair in front of a dark background in different sets, or look for shadows in a night scene to make this comparison.
2. Secondary color adjustment are just great, for some movies you need to use it, but overall the defaults are great. Also this TV come with 3 HDMI and host of other inputs, very useful when you want to hook it up with various toys.
3. I use Philips DVP5982 1080p Upscaling DVD player for watching movies, using the HDMI and I am convinced that you don't need a Blue-ray, at least for now. Because I watch the Pirates DVD and I have seen it on BR in Circuit City, and mine was very close.
4. This TV has fantastic sound out of the box, in my setup I use my Home theater speakers only while watching movies, for regular TV viewing the TV speakers are just great.
5. 60hz vs. 120hz, well unless you are willing to pay that extra dough I think you should be very happy with this TV with motion smoothing option that it comes with it. It artificially enhances the fast moving scenes to increase clarity, again it will not beat an 120hz set, but then the difference in most cases are hardly visible in naked eye.
IMHO this is a good buy for the money, we all know that you get better items when you pay more, but try to look for the optimum price-performance mix, and this TV hits the bullseye.
Go ahead and get it, check for the banding, if there is no banding you probably made a very good decision, if there is banding just return the damn thing and get another set. Btw, most newer sets manufactured after May'07 has lot less banding issues.
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Bought from Sharp Direct. Easy to set up. Light weight. Slim profile compared to the 62U. No banding visible during normal viewing. Be sure to use a good quality HDMI connector with gold plate. Really deep blacks. Vivid color. This TV rocks.
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I've had the Sharp 52" for several weeks now and we love it. Awesome picture quality, and it's REALLY big. I like the extra thin screen but was disappointed that the wall mount brackets are as thick as the TV; kinda spoils the effect. In the end we chose not to use the wall mount because of that and instead use the stand on a table.
I specifically chose this model because of the thinness and the non-glare screen. We use it in a family room with many windows and lots of sunlight, so I've been pleasantly surprised that it has almost no glare off the screen and looks great even in the middle of the day.
No issues with it at all. Highly recommended, especially if you have a room with lots of sunlight and windows.
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This set meets and exceeds my expectations. There is every type of input/output connection available. I use HDMI and optical audio. The number of HDMI inputs means no HDMI switching needed in a home theatre receiver. The internal speakers are not on par with a great HD TV. You need to use a 5.1 surround (or 7.1 if you wish) sound system and speakers.
The picture is excellant (no banding). I have it between a window and a door wall with no daylight viewing problems. No reflections (like a plasma would have) and great contrast. I use the stand that comes with it sitting on a 30" high entertainment center with glass front for four components (HD Sat receiver, ONKYO Home Theatre, DVD/VHS recorder with HDMI up convert, and 200 disk CD player). All those cords are neatly behind the cabinet. Too hard to get them out of a wall mount.
Also, the Amazon delivery was fast and they brought it into the living room for me.
So far, two months of excellant performance. I highly recomment this HDTV.
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Just bought this TV on a great black friday sale for $2199. Love the case design, the picture quality is near perfect, tons of ports. My only complaint so far? The tuner. Changing channels is painfully slow, literally about 3-5 seconds for every channel...
UPDATE - 1-10-08 Update - 1-9-2008 Tv has stopped powering on. Power and OPC light flashes. Was told by tech support to unplug for at least an hour (conveniently tech support closed in 45 minutes) to "reset" the TV. Of course this fix didn't work, and called back to Tech support. 1.5 weeks before I can get a Tech to my house to look at the TV. Good thing I bought at Circuit City and they have/had extended return policies for the holidays...Will exchange and hope for the best. FYI - a quick search will show that this is a widespread problem with no known remedy on models purchased (from what I can tell) from around 11-20 until around 12-26...It's a shame because the picture and style on this LCD are fantastic. One more side note...annoyingly when watching movies via coaxial cable (I havent purchased a blu ray yet) i get/got a menu box in the upper right every time it thinks the audio track has changed...Presumably because my coaxial connection is not 100%?
UPDATE - 1-11-08
Return and exchange went great...including a free $499 Sharp Aquos Bluray special that is going on right now with CC. $1700 for TV $499 for Bluray...Total still $2199 for black Friday Deal...
Now only if I could have switched for a PS3 for BluRay AND Digital Media Server. Might Try...
New UPDATE - 1-14-08
Ended up with PS3 HOWEVER after 1 day of perfect picture, Sharp LCD now shows a very "grainy" picture...have checked all inputs and all seem to show this low detail grainy picture...I guess I will have to return AGAIN. ALSO when changing TV Channels, TV "Froze" Had to unplug to "reboot" as the power button would not even shut down tv...AM regretting my purchase at this point, change my shars to 2 star recommendation...
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I can't describe the months of tortuous research I performed to prepare for this purchase. It boiled down to the Sharp Aquos 54 Series and Sony Bravia. They were both almost identical. The Bravia almost had me because they had the 120hz refresh rate and connectors all over the place. At the time of research, the aquos had the slower refresh and a disappointing lack of HDMI, PC connectors. Then out of no where, the 64 series Aquos released and had all if not more than the most current Bravia, and at $1,000 less. At this point it was a no brainer. Amazon delivered and set up the set in my living room and hauled away packing material at no extra charge...a nice treat. The set performed exactly at representated since. Colors are brilliant, black is black (and that is easy feat). I thought 52" was too big, but once set-up it is actually now the minimum size for my living room I would consider. Becareful not to buy too small, I almost made the mistake of getting the 48". I am very satisfied with this purchase.
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I was scared to purchase this TV because of complaints of banding in many end user reviews. But I saw those complaints primarily in the "D62" model reviews, and the price was too good to pass up (I saved over $1000 over Circuit City's price). I have had it two weeks now and have absolutely no banding issues at all, and the colors and blacks are as nice as these other reviewers say. Git yerself one of these bad boys today!
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