Sharp Aquos LC52D64U 52" 1080p LCD HDTV (Review)
Sharp Aquos LC52D64U 52" 1080p LCD HDTV
| Average Customer Rating: 5.0 |
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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! 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!!! :-) if this tv were any better i don't know what it would be like. super clear definite colors and sound even is amazingly clear. so far i only have two negatives. 1. i cannot yet figure out how to get the close captioning on 2. likely not the tv but the sound blasts you when yo go from a porgram to commercials. fcc should put a stop to this but dud? really fine tv and delivery was ahead of time and done quite properly with instructions for a two person delivery for off-loading. love it! |
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