Official Sharp Aquos LC-42D85U/46D85U/52D85U 120Hz Owner's Thread (No Price Talk)

Got my 52" 85U this past weekend as well; my first flat screen and HDTV. I went in to purchase the Sony V4100 (60Hz) and saw the 85U displyed side by side, and after playing with the adjustments over and over, the Sharp's picture quality seemed just as good as the Sony's (to my somewhat untrained eye). And in sunny South Florida's great rooms, reflection is a huge problem, so the Sharp's anti-reflective screen really performs in this environment. The free BD player made the choice a no brainer.

On a waiting list for a Comcast HD box so I haven't been able to see HDTV prrogramming. I plan on getting an antenna this weekend to see what OTA HD broadcasts I can receive.

I'm hooked up to regular cable cable right now, and I only subscribe to Expanded Basic right now, not Digital Cable, so when I realized that I was receiving digital channels like 5.1 and 12.1, I was very surprised. Does this mean Comcast is sending both digital and analog signals through the cable lines?

Another question... when I perform a Channel Setup, there are several digital channels that are stored yet there's no programming. I even ran the "Remove Scrambled CH" function, but they're still there. I had to delete the "blank" digital channels manually and that was a real chore. Am I doing something wrong?

just recived my lc42d85u 3 days ago i have only watched hdtv and upconverted dvd's and so far it looks good.my ps3 is hooked up to my projector so i have not wathced any blurays on it.i did play xbox360 for about i hour and i did not get the blackout screen like i did on my other sharp tv's when hooked up with component cable.

Does this unit upscale to 1080p?

- Yes. All digital displays (LCD, Plasma, DLP) have one native resolution.

Finally! I've been waiting for this thread. I will have my 42" tomorrow and will post some pics. Hopefully it won't disappoint me cos I pass on the 46xbr6 (regardless of the price difference) for the 85U just because I want to have a sense of what Sharp's "state-of-the-art" Kameyama factory can make.

i do not think so because when i am watching hd cable the on screen display says 1080i.

1080i is the source input. The LCD can only display 1080p progressive scan, so the 1080i source is upconverted to 1080p.

I have the 42 inch model (LC-42D85U) and am very happy.

Here is a link to a review of the 46 inch model by Cnet: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...?tag=mncol;txt

Does anyone have any ideas on calibration? I tried the Cnet numbers but didn't get a very usuable picture.

Rafael

just bought the 52 85du.

Would love to have some picture contrast numbers, i feel the colors look bland.

Has anyone messed around with theirs?

You can start with UltimateAV's settings.

http://www.ultimateavmag.com/flatpan...tv/index7.html

Just received the 42" few hrs ago. I took some pics of it fresh out of the box. I don't notice any banding and so far so good. I'll watch some movies later this week and see how well it can stand.

When I get a new TV the 1st thing that I do is feed it material and tough scenes in varying conditions (bright room, dark room, etc). I had a Hitachi 50v500 that wouldn't die on me, so I couldn't justify upgrading until I absolutely needed to get a wall mounted display and a display with better HTPC compatibility. After doing some reading I pulled the trigger on this display about 2 weeks ago for a great price.

I have a few questions regarding issues that I have seen with this set. I really don't want to trade it in; there are draw backs to every display as far as I am concerned so it is a matter of finding one that is most compatible with your needs.

I am using a PS3 to play Blu Ray and some DVD content, I am also using a home built HTPC to play Blu-rays, DVD's, and HD DVD'sboth are connected via HDMI (I also receive HD cable and OTA content with which I am not overly concerned about PQ because it usually is what it is). I also have an XBOX 360 hooked up via component.

If you are like me and look for defects in a picture when making up your mind on a display, and don't want to have some pointed out to you don't read these. I have found that I can never see what I am looking for on a showroom floor, and really need to get a set into my living room to see what the display is really like:

1)Black levels: this display tends to lose a lot of detail in black areas and has been my main pr There are scenes where half a person's face gets swallowed in shadow in a day time scene. I have tried adjusting however I almost have to make brightness too high to compensate. I have made this issue better though adjusting, but like I said it seems like I am running it a little on the bright side now. However, I would almost rather have less black than have details swallowed up by Shadow. The Bourne Identity on HD DVD is a perfect example on my HTPC. Could this be an HDMI cable issue with black crush? It was not an issue with my last display.

2)Flashinglighting/Strobing/Pulsing: I had to turn the back light way down, and turn off active contrast. Scenes with a rapid change in brightness would pulse with light momentarily while the set adjusted. This sort of defeats the purpose of having these feathers though.

3) I swear that there were a few slow pan scenes that had horrible judder/stutter. A slow Bankok Dangerous; however it didn't look like the movie had very consistent quality.

4)Moire there were several pans of the city in the latest Dark Knight that vertical lines would show a lot of it.

5) I have seen banding on SD DVD's in dark scenes on the PS3.
So far these are my main issues. I tried the utlitmatetv settings and I didn't think that they were very good. They seemed to be geared towards sd content since the film mode was set to on. I will give the link to TV Blink a try.

So far I like the fact that this set will allow for 1080p via component, and its non-reflective screen. The colors on this set also seem to be very good to me. The form factor of this display is perfect and looks excellent in on our living room wall.
This weekend I have the option to trade in the display. However it wouldn't make sense to trade one issue for another. All in all I am pretty happy with this display and would like to leave it hanging on my wall.

I have also looked at the Samsung 650 & 750's, various Sony's, and the Toshiba 52xv545u.

While I keep reading about the excellent PQ of Samsungs, the red color and reflective screen would make these a difficult chose for me. Also I think that I would be the type of person who was put off by the halo that has been reported on the 750.

The Toshiba also looked like a good choice since it has dejudder processing and the various display modes this display is capable of. However issues with green are also making me hesitant and I also don't like the fact that it would display 1080p via Component. SRT up scaling is an ok feature that wouldn't really tip the scale form me since this can be accomplished through a receiver also.

Thanks for reading and for any input.

It will not accept 120hz only 60hz (I tried). My understanding is that the tv doubles the 60 to 120 internally.

Rhinochaser, Do you have the 52D85U?
Try my settings:
opc off, backlight -5, contrast 32, brightness 1, color -2, tint 0, sharpness 5, hue 0's, sat. r -6, y 0, g -6, c 0, b -12, m 0, color temp low, but middle looks good too, gains 0, fine motion on, active contrast off, ip fast, film mode on, digital noise low.
Hd looks really good on my ATT uverse and standard def looks fairly good but I turn up the digital noise to high when I watch standard def.
I used the getgrey.com disk to calibrate my tv.
I have been testing the active contrast and sometimes it make the screen way too dark and you loose a lot of detail like when I was watching a Lackers basketball game, the crowd of pitch dark in the stands.
I also noticed that backlighting is a personal preference setting, a lot of the online reviewers turn it way down and the screen just looses too much life to me even in a very dark room.

Thank you for the reply and the settings.

I have had the 52D85U for about 2 weeks now.

I watch a lot of HDDVD/BluRay content so the Film Mode doesn't really help me.

However I will definitely try your other suggestions and see if they help.

Your last comment about the screen losing life was exactly how I felt about the ultimateavmag.com settings.

I plan on burning a few calibration discs tonight. My DVE must have never returned from the last time I loaned it out...

You have to remember that the settings are a rough guideline. The settings will be different due to your particular TV and more importantly, your viewing environment. I had to adjust the contrast using DVE and a HDNet pattern.

You also shouldn't keep changing the settings. Put the settings on for a few days and get used to it. You need to give it a little time.

Tried the settings, the dark scenes were still too dark. I also used the THX test patterns from a dvd. I'll probably get the blu ray dve disk and give that a shot.

I am going to change the output settings from my HTPC's Graphics card and put the PS3
s output to limited and see if that helps.

Thanks for the input!

It didn't help adjusting the backlighting to your room environment Rhinochaser?
I think what tokerblue said is correct, every tv is different, room environment, and personal taste for settings.
How did the colors look?
The ultimateavmag.com settings just looked horrendous on my tv.

- The PS3 should be set to Limited. I don't think the Sharp is set up for the Full colorspace over HDMI or component. That is most likely why you are seeing black crush.

It seemed like shadow wasn't shadow it was just a black cloud obscuring too much. I have some time to tweak the set so I am happy to keep playing with it.

Regarding ultimatemag--funny, same here! After seeing what their settings looked like the veracity of the entire review was put into question.

There are some scenes that blow my mind on this set and I love the 1080p over component for my 360. I started playing some of my older titles just to see if I had missed anything.

@tokerblue yeah I plan on messing with output settings tonight. Both easy fixes from my HTPC and PS3. It would be great it if were that simple.

I connected my laptop to the tv and I noticed that its a tad darker than regular tv and my blu ray but the colors looks amazingly vibrant on the big screen. Maybe I should have adjusted the gamma settings on the pc but I haven't played around with that yet. But playing flight simulator and the pc version of NBA2k9 looks amazing at 1920X1080.
I also have a ps3 connected, the graphics don't even compare to the pc on the sharp lcd of course, 720p vs 1080p. But I haven't watched any blu rays on the ps3 yet because I have the Sharp blu ray player.
I have a pretty good laptop, Dell XPS M1730 with SLI 8800's with a native resolution of 1920X1200 17" screen.

Hello

Do any of you witness banding in any of your 85U sets? Im in the market for the 46" and dont notice banding while its hanging on the BB wall, however, I also notice their repeating video they show doesnt have much panning material one would notice it.

I have a Westinghouse now that drive me nuts with banding. What a foolish buy that was (Hind Site)

Thank you

Just got the 46U. Like the set and 120Hz.

NO.

Not on my 46" that I got 2 weeks ago.

I set my HTPC's Graphics Card to output YCbCr 4:2:2 that seemed to help. I saw major improvements in 2 scenes on the HDDVD Bourne Identity. Details weren't completely blacked out and there was a finally something that resembled shading and a normal shadow.

On the other hand I changed the PS3 to limited and I didn't see much of a difference. I set the display brightness using a pluge test pattern but the darks were still too dark...

One example that I can use would be the Joker's clothes in Dark Knightwere completely lost in shadow in broad daylight. This was in the scene when he was standing on a street corner waiting to be picked up by the van before robbing the bank (the camera was zooming in on him from behind).

With the improvements that I saw on my HTPC though I am starting to hope that this might be an issue that I can pinpoint and resolve.

Re Banding: I have only seen it in passing in 1 or 2 scenes that were dark with bright objects. It was nothing permanent, and if I had taken the time I could have probably adjsuted the display to make it stop. It happened on the DVD Apaloosa played on my PS3 (Upconverted & Fullscreen). Nothing that I have seen on my set would indicate that banding would be a problem that should deter you from considering an Aquos D85u. Additionally if you did happen to have that issue it would be easily resolved by exchaning the set for a new one...

Edit: I started reading up on the PS3. Here is an issue that someone else had. It was resolved with settings on both his PS3 and his Sony display. I haven't seen any comparable settings on the Sharp.:

Here is a link to the post: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=967106

yes i have the 42d85u and i have a little banding. not as bad as my first 2 sharps.

Last night I used this HD Calibration disk:
AVS HD 709 - Blu-ray, HD DVD, & MP4 Calibration

This is an outstanding tool!! You could really see the difference with super white enabled on the PS3 while making adjustments.