Keep in mind that I have NOT performed a calibration yet and the set has a grand total of 9 hours break-in, so my current observations are less than rock solid...
My first impression after intital adjustment was, "wow, this thing has got massive potential". Its almost as good out of the box as my older sets were after calibration.
But, to be critical...
Yes, the image has clouding barely visible on 1% full fields and lower with the backlight set to 0 (why be concerned with low-level clouding in a bright room when you meed a bright backlight...wont see it anyway), though. I saw far worse from my LG 47LE5500 local-dimming (edge) set...and in most cases the clouding on the LG was not visible in normal viewing. After break-in and calibration, I expect the Sharp to greatly out-perform the LG.
Bright screen uniformity is very good to excellent. I haven't noticed any DSE yet.
Peak brightness could be a touch higher for rooms that get direct sun, but more than adequate for most ambient light levels.
The black level is quite dark. I haven't put a meter on it yet, but its the best I've seen in years. At least as good, if not better, than the old Samsung CRT I retired years ago. Better than my duvatyned crt rptv from years ago, much better than the LG, and leagues better than my older Bravia LCD. In a dark room it doesn't quite disappear next to the (excellent) bezel, but theater blacks aren't absolute either. (I'm of the opinion that blacker blacks aren't always better. Shadow detail is more important to me)
Shadow detail is equally good. The ramps and pluge patterns I put up showed only minor crush/clipping (again, essentially out-of-the-box). I'm 100% confident this will adjust right out once we dig into the grayscale and gamma adjustments.
Off angle shift is not the best I've seen from LCD (LG was better), but in my 15x15 viewing zone, all seats are quite watchable. We are probably +-45 degrees off axis in our worst case viewing positions.
What else....
The bezel is brilliant! I HATE all these shiny silver bezels and the polished blacks aren't much better. This one doesn't reflect hardly at all in bright room and is just GONE in a dark room. Even the bevel just adjacent to the screen isn't visible at night.
Screen face could stand to be a bit less reflective, but it's not bad. A tilt/swivel mount would be worthwhile if you have a problem with reflections during the day.
I haven't yet found a primary color filter in the menus. I'll miss that if I have to go back to gels.
Red linearity seems off. Brighter reds seem over-saturated. That should tune out no problem.
The motion enhancements are:
240 (looks pretty darn good, but I haven't spent much time with the others yet.)
Aquo 240
120 hi
120 lo
The DLNA browser seems slow, but I haven't played with it much. Playback is fine (wireless N). It just takes too long to page thru random titles if you don't have the metadata and folders all set up for sorting. I don't use DLNA or apps, so none of that really matters to me. The HTPC takes care of all that better than any convergence unit will.
Really it's not that big of an issue to me and i don't think it takes away from the over all pq. The clouding is only prevalent on total dark scenes/changing input in a pitch dark room. The only reason i see it now is because i went looking for it and now know what to look for. With even just a small amount of light in the room I was not able to see any clouding.
