Official Sharp Aquos 42D62U/46D62U/52D62U Owner's Thread (NO PRICE TALK!) - Page 404

Someone posted in another thread that the movie "Mist" is very good for displaying banding if you have it. Try to take the picture with lights turned off at night, I don't think Sharp would do anything unless you send in pictures with banding during normal view of contents (I've gone through 3 sets myself, so I know the process very well). However, the chance of you getting a banding free replacement set is slim to none, you will just end up taking more time off from work to accomdate the technician and the delivery people.

Since I work 2nd shift, I am not too worried about having to take time off for the technician. The problem I do have is, it seems to me like they don't have a clue as to what they are doing. Like I stated above, I had to do the firmware update for them. I will be calling Sharp later to see what is going on and what (if anything) they are going to do about it. If nothing, I will file a complaint with the BBB.

I will have to rent Mist and see how that is. I have been taking as many pictures as I can. I just think it's stupid to have to take pictures of a TV because some of the time these bands show up MUCH better when the movie/show is panning left or right or up and down. Hard to get that on a digital camera and I don't have a camcorder.

Noone should live with a set where banding presents itself in normal viewing. Load up something like a hockey game and if you see it, snap pictures and advise Sharp. On the other hand my guess is most people who start to "see" banding do it under advisement of this or other forums. Does that let Sharp off the hook? No. Should so-called banding be exhibited in otherwise good TV? Absolutley not. Does it give rise to some folks' discontent? Yep. Dont forget, unlike others who speak with Sharp about the problem and sometimes get offered new or even upgraded set, unless you've noticed problem within 30 days or so, you're getting refurbished anyway. If you're within 30 days, seriously consider returning and starting from scratch with another brand -- and save yourself some aggravation. Just realize the other brands have issues as well, as indicated in these forums, so again unless you see banding in normal viewing you may just as well overlook the grey screens. IMO

I just filed a complaint with the BBB. Sharp had informed me that my TV was "within acceptable specifications". This based on 2 technicians that didn't know what they were doing and had to hold a cell phone 2 inches from their face to dial it (no joke).

I called Sharp and asked to speak with a supervisor. He tells me that this decision was based on what those 2 techs reported. Even after both techs told me that they could CLEARLY see the banding on each movie I played for them. He then goes on to say that I am only seeing this because I made adjustments in the menu. Meaning the backlight, brightness, color, etc. Why in the hell are they there if you're not suppose to use them? Apparently we are suppose to leave them at the default settings and not adjust them at all, that's according to Sharp. Bull. What else are they going to say in order to get out of repairing this TV? I just could not get anywhere with this guy. And now these 2 boneheaded techs appear to be on Sharps side.

I am not imagining this defect in my TV. Not when my friends and family can point it out and they don't even know what to look for. This is complete BS and right now I am so pissed at Sharp. Doesn't seem fair to me when you have to do everything in your power to try and prove to a company that something they manufactured is flawed and should be repaired. I am not going to give up on this. I wouldn't be making so much noise if this TV was fine. I just expect to get what I paid for.

I too am on the verge of lodging a complaint on Sharp with BBB. I have had intermittent problems (Tv shuts off after 10-15 minutes of viewing and even after 4 service visits the problem persists). I just asked them to replace the Tv and they say NO. Man i hate sharp and would NEVER EVER buy a sharp product again. Not to mention they have the worst customer service i have ever dealt with.

So searching in this Aquos owners thread led to some confusing information as to whether an Aquos LC-46D62U could successfully be taken from the USA (110V 60Hz NTSC) to the UK (220V 50Hz PAL). I have now performed such a move, and it works beautifully! I am very pleased with my Sharp!

It is perfectly happy with the voltage change, even though the back of the TV is somewhat confusing in "110V/60Hz USA" on the main sticker, and "220V/50 for Others" elsewhere.

It also accepts a SD PAL signal, and looks even better than the old SD NTSC signal (for obvious reasons).

It also accept the 50Hz HD signal from a Sky+ box, and from Virgin's HD service. I must say HD availability in England is pretty poor.

The tuners built into the TV are untested, though are likely useless (NTSC/ATSC/QAM). Everyone here has a decoder box.

Hope this helps future googlers.

I actually have some positive news to report. After numerous calls and pictures to Sharp, they FINALLY agreed to give me a replacement TV. On the plus side is that it's going to be replaced with a 52D64U. I don't care what model they replaced my old TV with, as long as I don't have to deal with a banding issue and/or Sharp customer service ever again.

Like I previously stated. It is a shame that a consumer has to go through so much and waste so much of their time to get their TV serviced PROPERLY. So, if you have a problem with your TV and Sharp is giving you the run around, be persistent! Do not take no for an answer.

hope you get a good unit in return, i just received my 3rd, my initial was a 62U and second as well, both had banding issues, my latest unit is a 64U which honestly has more visible banding then that previous 2 units. I just can't win. There are 2 dark verticle lines on the right side and 1 horizontal near the top portion of the screen, mostly visible on dark scenes and fast motion sports such as hockey in HD.

Costco has the 52" for $18xy.zz.

I have a 46" Sharp model 46d62u that was purchased just over 7 months ago.

I bought the 4 year replacement plan from Best Buy.

I am just now noticing banding issues...
Now That I am aware of it, it drives me nuts... I am always looking for it.

Best Buy is sending someone Saturday to look at it.
Apparently because its a larger TV they send someone out vs. just bringing it back to the store.

I am wondering what to expect from Best Buy.
I have read stories of "its within acceptable limits" and some have gotten complete refunds or even an upgrade.

I don't know about anyone else, but if I shell out $2500 after tax and warranty... ZERO banding is acceptable.

I am just curious because you don't always see the banding.. but on solid whites or light gray its obvious.

First time I noticed it was watching The Wild hockey playoffs, then watching a polar bear documentary.

When I create a picture slide show on my PS3 it is really noticable because of the gray backround.

The problem is now I am constantly looking for it.
It is ruining my HDTV experience.

I just hope I don't have some guy come here and say he doesn't see it... or its "within acceptable limits"

Anyone go thru a Best Buy return care to shed some light?

That's very interesting. Already aware that the D62U's could accept PAL via the SD inputs. ...Yet what amazes me is your success syncing to a 50Hz HD source.

My brother's 42" rejects any attempt to input 50Hz HD signals through HDMI or component. It displays a "signal not supported....blah,blah,blah" error message. However, the odd thing is, sound does manage to successfully pass via HDMI in despite the video stream being rejected. The reference player is an HD-E1 (Euro version of the HD-A2).

Has anyone else in this thread been successful passing 50Hz HD into their D62U??

I received my replacement TV (52D64U) and from what I can see so far, there are no banding issues at all. Very nice picture.

Well, Best Buy was just here and saw my issue.

I showed him banding on 3 different inputs, he documented both horizontal and vertical banding.

Sharp is not open on weekends so I won't get a call back until Tuesday to find out what happens next.
Apparently he has to call them to get a refund authorization... but he said they like to try and fix things first.

The "Tech" said something about replacing the video board.

I thought banding was not fixable??

Am I wrong?

Repair it?? Replace it??

Either way I don't care as long as the banding goes away.

I'm still humming and harring about this model. Here in Australia the LC-xx64D is sold as a LC-xxD63X from what I can glean from the various reviews etc. Except that we don't get the CMS control menus that the 64D manual says it has.

I have connected this model up to my VP (DVDO VP50) and it does indeed nicely work with a 1080P signal via HDMI dot for dot - it turns off the internal scaling and fills the whole screen and no problems with sync or any other problems of any kind. It does native Frame Rate (FR) at both 50 and 60 Hz (PAL and NTSC), BUT, it doesn't do native FR at 24Hz - at least our LC-xxD63/83 doesn't.

It accepts 24Hz BD signals, but it does a FR conversion - apart from test signals that show this up very clearly (using the judder bar in the VP50 for example) you can clearly see it in parts of any movie that has moderate speed full frame panning scenes and of course also at the end of a movie when the credits scroll up.

Is the D64U model different in this respect? In fact, I wonder how many displays that accept 24Hz do in fact give you native FR at 24Hz?

I searched this thread for xbox 360 issues and unfortunately I didn't come across one that dealt with my problem. I just bought the 46D62U and so far I'm loving the set with the exception of this somewhat minor problem. When playing xbox 360 via component cable, on certain images the screen will go out for a few seconds and reappear. I did pinpoint the exact time it will go out for 2 of my games. On Mass Effect, the screen where you choose your 2 teammates the screen goes out all the time and on Call of Duty 4 if you lay prone and look into thick grass the screen will go out for a few seconds and come back. What I think is happening is the video resolution changes for a split second because on 2 different occasions I noticed the display number jumped from 1080p to 480i, then back to 1080p when the screen comes back. I don't have this problem with the Ps3(HDMI), PC (vga) or the Wii (s-vid). If anybody else has/had this problem and can shed some light, it will be greatly appreciated. And thank you all for a great thread I've been coming here for the past 3 weeks and learned alot. Keep it up!!! Thanks again.

I have a suggestion that is going to tick off allot of the posters here about the banding.

It seems that many people here don't really understand that Sony, Sharp and many other manufactures sell sets to the likes of you and me at the consumer level. Consumer level sets are mass manufactured, shipped en mass and sold and displayed everywhere they can put them. This is what we all have bought. They do have issues and Sharp is aware of "banding", Sony is aware of "clouding".

Problem here is that if both manufactures were to give you constant upgrades/replacements for a set that you paid $2400 for, they would go out of business.

If you were to buy a professional monitor from Sharp (starting at $10K and going up) then they would make good on any issue down to the last detail.

What I see here is people who feel that they should get the Champagne service on a Budweiser budget.

I expect things to not have issues for $2400.00
It's not like I got a $1100.00 Vizio an expect perfection.

I purchased my TV from The Magnolia room at Best Buy AND purchased an extended warranty.
I did not go to Wal-Mart or Sams Club.
So yes.. I expect it to work right, or them to fix it.

PERIOD.

You bought the EW from BB? Magnolia at BB is not Magnolia for real. It is stocked and ran by BB and there is a difference IMO.

The EW is supported by Best Buy, not the manufacturer and it is up to BB to make good on it.

Again I will point out for those that ignored me the first time, $2400 is not really allot to spend. Really doesn't matter where you bought it. Unless you went through a professional installer who is Sharp authorized to sell professional Sharp displays and bought one, you got a consumer level mass market set.

Yes they are probably better that the Vizio, but I think the expectations are really still higher than they should be.

Please keep us informed with what happens with your situation. I am in the same boat as you. I have the extended warranty thru BB and I am thinking about having them come out. I have been giving this some time to play out since I do have a few years on the warranty but somtimes the banding just really bugs me.

Feb-April 2008. My 46D62U warranty was running out end of March 08, so I e-mail Sharp Canada, mentioning the history of banding - best shown using the TVBlink.com grey scale & horiz/vert. scrolling tests. They asked me to phone, so now I had 2 reference numbers. They had me contact LCS in Montreal - the guy came out - excellent fellow, knew his stuff, took pictures & lo & behold a month later (we were away for a few weeks) Sharp sent me a new 46D62 of later production which was virtually band-free (TVBlink grey-scale doesn't show any bands til the very end of the test - you see nothing at all in normal viewing compared with my old set. I was very impressed with Sharp's support after nearly a year of operation. I'm happy now. Good luck to the rest of you out there. My daughter bought a Sony 46KDL2500 at Christmas, and it's picture is flawless- the TVBlink.com grey scale & scrolling tests show no banding at all.. My son is going to buy their later KDL3000 which is curretnly best choice on Consumers Report.

well Im not too happy now. My once Band free 42D62U set has 3 bands, one of them visible frequently. Ive had this set since 11/06 and up till this week no bands. Is there anything I can do? I did not get the 3 year extended warranty. I already had the mainboard replaced a year ago for power up failure.

Any suggestions...Im pretty pissed...

Yeah, sell it on craigslist/ebay and buy a bigger better set. That's about your best option at this point. Other than that, you could investigate how stupid expensive it would be to have the LCD portion of the panel replaced or find out how much one would cost you and do it yourself. Perhaps moving it to another room and just flat out buying a bigger and better set might work too. Any way you go about it, it's not going to be cheap.

Well, they show up on a green screen as well... green like grass. So when I watch Baseball, Soccer or Football and the camera pans, there they are... I've lived with it, but it is a bit irritating to see them on an otherwise fantastic HD picture

Interesting, I can't really see my bands on a grey screen from the service menu, from light to dark. The first time I really noticed them was on a movie with scenes of sand dunes in the sun across it. Really noticable then. Just seems like certain colors.

so, when's the class action supposed to start up?

Is it me or is this banding? Never saw banding before but when i watch football and quick images are on the screen i see 2 or 3 stripes vertically on the screen.

Bad picture for example:

http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/3933/sharpam7.jpg

Sharp has an update for the 46D62U ... I was wondering if anyone knows were usb port to add the update is.

hola. great thread. long, but great

I've had this TV for about 5 months now, and it's phenomenal. Haven't had any banding issues or problems with the display at all. I was previously connecting my Macbook Pro up to the TV via a DVI-->HDMI cable, and it automagically allowed me to display in 1080p. I would connect to play movies, and to listen to music via Front Row. It was great - but I like to use my laptop for other things, and the eventual goal was to get a dedicated device for the music and movie playing. It seemed to me a Mac Mini was the ideal solution.

Last week, a friend of mine basically gave me a Mac Mini. I'm not positive on the specs, but I'm pretty sure it's a 1G (orig) model. The specs that I've noticed when using the system line up with these specs from Apple. (1.42GHz PowerPC G4, PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM, ATI Radeon 9200 with 32MB of DDR SDRAM with AGP 4X support)
I went ahead and wiped his old data off of the system and installed Leopard and brought it up to 10.5.3.

The mini displays on the TV great at 1280x720 (720p), and will go into 1080i, but having experienced 1080p from my Macbook, I want 1080p. I've searched around through multiple forums and it seems people have had success getting the Mini to do 1080p on these TVs, but I have not.

I tried the settings from the powerstrip screen capture at the beginning of this thread as well as some other settings using DisplayConfigX (some suggested using SwitchResX, but I couldn't get it to do anything at all) with very little success. Using the settings from the beginning of this thread gave me the best results, but the display is barely legible.

I'm starting to think that the old mini hardware just isn't up to snuff enough to do 1080p. Maybe anyone who's gotten 1080p out of the mini is using the new Intel minis? Maybe The old little ATI Radeon 9200's 32MB of RAM just can't cut it. Unfortunately, I haven't found any confirmation that 1080p simply isn't possible, so I have to keep trying.

Any suggestions - and especially DisplayConfigX settings - are more than welcome. I looked to see if there were any external video cards that could help me, but none of them seem to be able to handle the 1080p resolution. My next step is to download ATI's Mac drivers and Control Center for the 9200 and see if I can get anything out of doing that.

Is it possible to make the display taller in the supplied stand?

My TV is in the supplied stand on a table-like entertainment center and there is no place to put a center channel speaker except to place it on top of the entertainment center infront of the TV. All decent center speakers are quite tall, though, and would partially block the TV.

So, can I make the display taller in the stand or is there another option I am not considering?

TIA

i put my center channel behind the TV. Not optimal, but it works fine for me.