Customer Reviews

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, 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!!! :-)

the bottom line on the sharp lc52d64
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.

Excellent set!
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.