Bad picture quality on 42" sharp LC-42D64U?

try to bypass DVD player and Set-top Box upconvert functions. This TV may do much better scaler job than your DVD and Set-top box.

Andyman, your picture quality has everything to do with the source. You said you are running a digital cable box. Is this via HDMI? Also, you have to understand that these LCD tvs tend to dispaly standard def TV worse than old tube TVs. This has to do with the native high resolution of these new TVs and they are basically stretching and enhancing all the flaws of crappy TV signal. So don't expect anything spectacular from standard def TV. Plus depending on which channel you are watching, some stations have better signal then others.

Again with your SD upscaling DVD player. You can only expect so much. And depending on which DVD you are watching, your results will vary. For instance, Transformers and 300 are movies that don't look great on the TV (I have exactly the same TV as you) and I am using an HD DVD player to do the upconveting. Those movies show a lot of grain. But other movies like Pirates of the Carribean, Lord of the Rings, etc. look pretty good upconverted. However, they are NOT HD DVD quality. Don't confuse this. SD DVDs can look ok, but they will never match HD DVD quality. Try watching some High Def sources like HDTV or HD DVDs and you will not think your TV has bad picture quality, trust me.

I wish 300 would have a big warning on it... "Not to be used for display calibration" .... hehe... Andyman, 300 has a lot of grain added to the picture to achieve a certain effect that the director wanted. It is not your TV. I have a previous model Sharp which handles regular cable for me pretty well. Make sure you are using the smart stretch view mode to minimize distortion on your standard cable broadcasts. What type of connection are you running from the Cable box to the TV??

Generally, upconverted DVDs may look 'soft' but still very good, it will again depend on the movie you throw in. When you do upgrade to HD cable or one of the HD movie formats, trust me you will be in awe.

Standard def cable will continue to look mediocre no matter what you do. Use the highest-quality connection available from the cable box (HDMI - Component - s-video - composite in order of descending quality).

See the D64U Calibration and Settings thread for tips on getting the best picture quality.

Use Side Bars on 4:3 images. Use dot-by-dot on upconverted 16:9 material. Try Zoom on 4:3 material that is displaying a letterboxed 16:9 images, but it will look like crap. Smart Stretch mainly for use with OTA or cable HD broadcasts, to create a bit of overscan to hide the data stripe that is sometimes visible at the edge of the image.

Many cable companies include the local HD broadcast signals in their feed, but they don't tell you about it. Try connecting an antenna or the cable feed directly to the RF input on the Sharp; you may be able to find some HD content.

Andyman123, sources will have different video quality outputs. with the same source, you can try to do some settings to get the best display results.
1) when playing DVDs, try to use DVD hot key or menu to change the DVD output timings, 480i/576i -> 480p/576p -> 720p -> 1080i -> 1080p. Normally it is better to let DVD player output the source's original timing and TV may do better scaling;
2) set-top box, if low end one, is worse to do scaling. use set-top box menu to output the original source timings. or, check your set-top box manual to re-configure the TV supported timings by telling set-top box that your TV supports all timing 480i/576i, 480p/576p, 720p, 1080i or 1080p. It is to bypass the set-top box's scaling.

It's doing the box display thing in response to changes in the audio format output by the particular channel you're watching. If you change the audio to "mono" on the tv this may stop happening.

The fact that the display box also says "channel 3 analog" tells us that you've connected the cable box to the tv using the coax cable. If you have any other output connections on the box, such as RCA pin jacks as found on a dvd player or S-video you could possibly improve your picture quality by using them until you get a high-def box.

Another thing to try to help relieve the graininess is to use an AV mode (look for the button on the tv remote under the little flip-up panel at the bottom) to something other than "Dynamic" and reducing the sharpness setting.

Andyman 123....Off your topic,but many owners of the D64Us would like to know. What is the serial number on the display you bought? Is there a ser.# on the lower right side behind the bezel? Thanks

710,711,712?

Looking for a Dec. build (712) ser. #.

Red/white is analog audio. Yellow is composite video. Component video is usually color-coded red/green/blue.

You *need* to upgrade your cable. To the extent that you watch TV, you have will have pretty much wasted the money you spent on this TV otherwise, since everything will look subjectively worse than it did on your old analog TV.

This is a hi-def TV. It wants hi-def sources. Failing that, it at least wants standard-def sources to be fed to it at the highest possible quality. If your cable box has onlu composite and RF outputs, you can't give it what it wants.

Meanwhile, as an exercise, connect the cable directly to the TV without using the box at all. Run a channel scan. Look for channels with decimal points in their numbers, and for channels with numbers higher than 99. You may find you are getting your local HD OTA programming via your standard cable, tuned by your TV's QAM tuner. (This is very common.)

As long as you are using this cable box, at least use the AV outputs instead of the "connect to the TV's RF input and tune the TV to Channel 4" routine, which is how I connected my first VCR to my first color TV -- back in 1979.

I have the same TV as you Andyman. I have my computer hooked up through DVI -> HDMI and my Xbox 360 hooked up through components. Both the computer content and Xbox content look amazing. Regular cable does look grainy and mediocre at best.

If you have basic cable, you should be getting free HD feeds as well.
Go to antennaweb.com & type in your zip to see what free basic channels you get in your area.

The Sharp settings for sharpness are set to high. If sharpness is in the + range then start toning it down in the - negative. Also you should have a noise reduction feature.

BUT..be warned that SD is litterally like a 8" x 8" square that gets blown up to fill your huge screen. CRT's don't have the resolution and a screen door effect that effectively masks just really how terrible SD is. There is some good and bad SD content but in general is sucks.

I would upgrade to a HD box which can also upconvert SD content depending on the model/cable carrier.