I have been looking very closely at the new 65" Sharp LCD. There are two stores in the Bay Area that have them on display (both Fry's--the Sunnyvale location and the San Jose location) at this time. Here is what I have noted so far:
First location (Sunnyvale Fry's).
This store has put the 65 in its most prominent display location, just at the end of the main aisle as you walk toward the HDTV center. It is flanked on one side by 52" LCD's from Sharp (a D92 and a D62), and on the other side by a Sony 52" XBR LCD and a 52" Samsung LCD. I was delighted with the ability to compare that big baby with the other smaller units!
All of the units other than the 65" were running a sport car manufacturing loop of some sort, and the 65 had a (I think Shrek) cartoon movie. The 65" TV remote was at hand attached to the rear of the TV. This was my second visit so I knew I could select a different input and see the same loop as the units nearby.
I really dislike looking at these animation movies when evaluating a new TV because they make everything look good, even the cheaper sets. But I was bothered by the fact that this movie just didn't look as bright as I thought it should. It just wasn't as vibrant as I expected, but I am not really familiar with that movie so I can't say what I found next was for sure a problem or not. When I looked at the settings the brightness and contrast were punched waaaay up. I thought the screen should have been hurting my eyes, but it seemed dim to me. Dunno', but a small red flag.
Then I changed the input to the loop running on the other TV's. First, here is my impression of each of of the nearby units.
On the far left a Samsung 52' with that new bright screen. This is, I think, a special treated glass cover over the normal LCD screen. It seems to make everything a little brighter, and is becoming the standard on most new laptop screens. Well it is reflective as hell! I am looking at LCD's instead of plasmas because I don't want reflections in my brightly lit room, and I don't want burn in. If I didn't care about these two items then I'd probably be getting a plasma! One of the two most important reasons for having an LCD and Sammie messes it up. If you want to look at a TV in a darkened room then look at the Sammie and plasmas, but this unit is not for me.
Immediately to the left of the 65" was the Sony XBR and it looks absolutely beautiful. Vivid, well dialed in color, smooth and clear picture. A stunner! When I reported in another thread on my last visit, I said that it stood out from all the others, and it still does on this visit. But Sony doesn't make a 65", so it just gives me something to compare against, but not to buy.
To the right of the 65" are two Sharp Aquos units. The D92 immediately to the right and the D62 next to it. I look at the stickers highlighting the features of the D92 and note that all the specs are identical with the 65" D93 except that the D93 has HDMI-3 inputs. Both 52" Sharp units have a beautiful picture with no "red push" or other issues to detract from their presentation. But neither is a "stunner" either. I have an Aquos 45" in my home and it is the equal or better of either of these. But then I remind myself that I am running in "Dot by Dot" viewing mode and that makes a lot of difference. I check, and both are in dot by dot mode.
I was puzzled, thinking that these units were just a shade below where I thought they should be when a very nice guy walks by and sees me staring at the pictures. He rustles around and finds the remote for the D62. He says, "I have this unit at home. This picture should be better than this." He played with the unit for a few minutes and lo! the picture came to life! Beautiful and perfectly tuned color and light and the loop looked wonderful. That D62 looked as stunning as the the Sony, but in a slightly more natural way that I found appealing.
Now I had a real basis for comparison so I went back to the 65" and checked the view mode. Oooops, had to put it into dot by dot mode. Much improved! Then on to the settings. Contrast and Brightness were dialed back to the middle, sharpness was dialed back from max and the picture looked much better. I got the feeling that my earlier supposition was correct: Once I got working with the settings I could get this color looking really good. Heck, if the D62 could look that good, then this unit should be able to do the same, maybe better, I would hope.
I've seen as much as I can see from a cartoon and a short loop so I want to dig a little deeper. I look for a sales clerk and tell him I am interested in the 65" but I am concerned about the banding issue and could I please put this unit into the service menu and check out the grey screen. He checks with his supervisor and says "Not allowed". His supervisor comes over and gives me a "look" and puts the input n the 65 back onto the Shrek thing and makes a point of putting the remote behind the TV.
I am a sensitive fellow and can often detect when I have offended someone so I sadly left the store--obviously my presence was a source of irritation.
Onto the second location (Fry's, San Jose):
This time the 65" Aquos is set on a short aisle in a darkened area with several smaller Sharp Aquos models alongside, and a couple of smaller Samsung models on the other side of the aisle. I note that even in the darkened aisle I can see the video loop from across the aisle in the Sammie screen while looking at the same loop on the Samsung. That glass really is reflective!
Anyway, the 65" Aquos is running a Samsung video loop that includes a lot of nice stuff including outtakes from a number of shows including football games, the Discovery Channel and other things. A very nice mix of stuff to look at and get a feel for the way the TV will perform in a variety of contexts.
I watched the loop for over an hour. There were a couple of times when I saw very grey screens but I saw no banding even though I looked closely. There was a jungle scene from Corwin's Quest that I found intriguing because the picture really drew me in, the 3D effect was so pronounced. There was an XBR just around the corner and it didn't give me that feeling to the degree that the Aquos did. I found myself thinking that the Aquos was a very nice unit indeed.
I asked a sales clerk if I could go into the service menu to see something. She said, "No!". I asked if there was an SD feed that we could look at. She said, "No." I asked if there was a live HD feed that we could look at other than the loop. She said, "No." I asked her if she would price match the Internet vendors. She motioned to another guy to come over. He said that he had checked the Internet and they (Fry's) had the lowest price when you considered shipping and set up and support.
So here is where I am. I like the unit, I like it a lot. I have some lingering questions: What does it look like with real feeds, especially SD? What about the banding issue? Does banding even exist on this unit (I have heard that this unit is actually made on Kameyama #1, which supposedly has never had a banding issue). And I have a lingering doubt about the ability to brighten this unit in a fully lit room. The fact that the first demo unit had the brightness turned up to max and it wasn't knocking me off my chair makes me wonder if that extra real estate over the 52" Sharp might come at the expense of some "vividness"?
Hopefully I can see this unit is a more congenial setting and come to a final decision, but I am still on the fence, for now. (EDIT: 6/1/07--see below)
(In an attempt to make this post as complete as possible I am editing my earlier post to include this information)
June 1, 2007 Visit to BB/Magnolia, Redwood City, CA)
Finally had a chance to get my hands on the unit and really play with it. BB at this location has just gotten one up in a darkened room. The room has the 65 Sharp on the wall just to the left of a big dorrway and it gets a lot more light than the other units in the room, but the picture just blows them away.
Two walls are taken up with an LG71 plasma in 1080p on one wall, and a 57 Samsung on the opposite wall, both offering a chance for a nice comparison with the Sharp. Opposite the Sharp is a projector playing some sort of DVD that I ignored.
To take up the big B word issue right away the Sharp shows virtually no banding! I brought in my DVE DVD and went immediately to title 14 and ran through the various grey levels. At the darkest grey setting it looked so uniform and perfect I double checked to make sure it was on the darkest grey setting, but no indeed it looked very good, and I got quite excited about the unit. I stepped through all of the grey levels, all looking wonderful, then stepped back to the first and darkest level and looked at it very, very carefully. Under this sort of scrutiny the salesman and I both thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a faint smudge near the center of the picture about three inches wide, but so faint that the eye didn't think it was there if you stared at it. Now this doesn't bother me at all and I would say that the unit was fine, but I am sure that if I had a picture of it posted that someone on the forum would say, I see bands!, so I guess I have to temper my remarks about banding to include that most sensitive group and say that the unit maybe has maybe some banding, but to me it is band free.
The inputs available in the store were DVD as mentioned, and a store loop of analog input, digital input, and HD, including a short HD loop showing one half the screen in SD and half in HD. The salesman left me alone with both the DVD controller and the Sharp TV controller. I first went through the menu system and lowered the brightness, contrast and the sharpness to normal levels, then played around trying to get rid of the red push (only partially successful). I cycled through the inputs and put the HD inputs to Dot by Dot and left the analog input alone.
Blacks:
I cycled through a lot of material both on analog and digital inputs looking at the blacks and found them to be very solid and inky. I think everyone will be satisfied with the black level (well, except for that guy in the front row who has much higher standards than I do and will probably post about it).
Shadow Detail:
I watched lot of stuff looking at shadow detail. Let me be quick to state that I just never watch a film more than once, so I don't have a DVD that I could just look at for a comparison, but I did watch a lot of dark scenes and the shadow detail was very good IMHO. I put on the DVD U-571 which the salesman let me have because he thought it a quite dark movie with lots of detail that is easily lost by a bad set. I can tell you that I was really impressed. The dark scenes in the submarine with lights dimmed (or out) were superb! Every minute detail in the backgrounds were clear and well defined, and facial detail was lifelike and immersive. I was very impressed with the unit on this DVD. I doubt that most people will complain about shadow detail, and I think I would be inclined to brag about it to my friends.
Motion:
Every review seems to have to find an imperfection and the motion on this set was, I thought, less than perfect. What with 120hz and 4ms specs to brag about I thought I'd see something great, but I didn't like what I saw today. Now this may have been the loop that the store had, but both the football scenes and the baseball scenes showed some steps in the fastest motion. For instance when the pitcher was pitching to a batter when the angle was from the side the ball seemed to step up to the plate in a series of fast frames instead of smoothly flowing toward the batter. As I say that may have been the loop that was available because I didn't notice this in previous visits, but it was distracting in those two sport shots, and the same thing happened with this loop on a couple of other TV's in the store. I did try it with the fast motion option both on and off and it didn't seem to matter. If I hadn't watched a couple of other Sharp 65units in previous visits with different loops where I didn't see any problem then I'd have a bigger red flag, but I am inclined to believe that the motion is at least better than my current 45 Sharp which has actually got quite good motion in everyday viewing, and I am a hockey addict. So for now this unit gets the benefit of the doubt.
Overall impressions:
At this point I am in love with this TV! The HD pictures are as good as you can get and the SD is probably better than most, and even better than all others that offer an LCD near this size. The black levels are wonderful , the controls are very good, and the picture is clear and a joy to watch.
I was enjoying the picture on the LG71 plasma in the same room today and thinking that it was quite a unit, very impressive, but then the Samsung across the room would have a fast moving picture and I'd find myself looking at the video on the Samsung in the reflection on the LG glass. What a pity that the plasmas suffer from such a reflection problem! But the Sharp 65' stands up to a much brighter location and has a simply superb picture with no reflection issues to worry about.
Am I gonna' buy this unit? Probably. I was so comfortable watching the unit today that if the salesman had come down some on the price he could have talked me into buying it on the spot, that's how impressed I was. I don't have a pressing need to buy this unit, I like my 45 so much, so I am taking it slow for now, but I do think it is not only the best LCD on the market in this size range, but it is probably the best that is going to be coming out this year. Really a quality unit!
First location (Sunnyvale Fry's).
This store has put the 65 in its most prominent display location, just at the end of the main aisle as you walk toward the HDTV center. It is flanked on one side by 52" LCD's from Sharp (a D92 and a D62), and on the other side by a Sony 52" XBR LCD and a 52" Samsung LCD. I was delighted with the ability to compare that big baby with the other smaller units!
All of the units other than the 65" were running a sport car manufacturing loop of some sort, and the 65 had a (I think Shrek) cartoon movie. The 65" TV remote was at hand attached to the rear of the TV. This was my second visit so I knew I could select a different input and see the same loop as the units nearby.
I really dislike looking at these animation movies when evaluating a new TV because they make everything look good, even the cheaper sets. But I was bothered by the fact that this movie just didn't look as bright as I thought it should. It just wasn't as vibrant as I expected, but I am not really familiar with that movie so I can't say what I found next was for sure a problem or not. When I looked at the settings the brightness and contrast were punched waaaay up. I thought the screen should have been hurting my eyes, but it seemed dim to me. Dunno', but a small red flag.
Then I changed the input to the loop running on the other TV's. First, here is my impression of each of of the nearby units.
On the far left a Samsung 52' with that new bright screen. This is, I think, a special treated glass cover over the normal LCD screen. It seems to make everything a little brighter, and is becoming the standard on most new laptop screens. Well it is reflective as hell! I am looking at LCD's instead of plasmas because I don't want reflections in my brightly lit room, and I don't want burn in. If I didn't care about these two items then I'd probably be getting a plasma! One of the two most important reasons for having an LCD and Sammie messes it up. If you want to look at a TV in a darkened room then look at the Sammie and plasmas, but this unit is not for me.
Immediately to the left of the 65" was the Sony XBR and it looks absolutely beautiful. Vivid, well dialed in color, smooth and clear picture. A stunner! When I reported in another thread on my last visit, I said that it stood out from all the others, and it still does on this visit. But Sony doesn't make a 65", so it just gives me something to compare against, but not to buy.
To the right of the 65" are two Sharp Aquos units. The D92 immediately to the right and the D62 next to it. I look at the stickers highlighting the features of the D92 and note that all the specs are identical with the 65" D93 except that the D93 has HDMI-3 inputs. Both 52" Sharp units have a beautiful picture with no "red push" or other issues to detract from their presentation. But neither is a "stunner" either. I have an Aquos 45" in my home and it is the equal or better of either of these. But then I remind myself that I am running in "Dot by Dot" viewing mode and that makes a lot of difference. I check, and both are in dot by dot mode.
I was puzzled, thinking that these units were just a shade below where I thought they should be when a very nice guy walks by and sees me staring at the pictures. He rustles around and finds the remote for the D62. He says, "I have this unit at home. This picture should be better than this." He played with the unit for a few minutes and lo! the picture came to life! Beautiful and perfectly tuned color and light and the loop looked wonderful. That D62 looked as stunning as the the Sony, but in a slightly more natural way that I found appealing.
Now I had a real basis for comparison so I went back to the 65" and checked the view mode. Oooops, had to put it into dot by dot mode. Much improved! Then on to the settings. Contrast and Brightness were dialed back to the middle, sharpness was dialed back from max and the picture looked much better. I got the feeling that my earlier supposition was correct: Once I got working with the settings I could get this color looking really good. Heck, if the D62 could look that good, then this unit should be able to do the same, maybe better, I would hope.
I've seen as much as I can see from a cartoon and a short loop so I want to dig a little deeper. I look for a sales clerk and tell him I am interested in the 65" but I am concerned about the banding issue and could I please put this unit into the service menu and check out the grey screen. He checks with his supervisor and says "Not allowed". His supervisor comes over and gives me a "look" and puts the input n the 65 back onto the Shrek thing and makes a point of putting the remote behind the TV.
I am a sensitive fellow and can often detect when I have offended someone so I sadly left the store--obviously my presence was a source of irritation.
Onto the second location (Fry's, San Jose):
This time the 65" Aquos is set on a short aisle in a darkened area with several smaller Sharp Aquos models alongside, and a couple of smaller Samsung models on the other side of the aisle. I note that even in the darkened aisle I can see the video loop from across the aisle in the Sammie screen while looking at the same loop on the Samsung. That glass really is reflective!
Anyway, the 65" Aquos is running a Samsung video loop that includes a lot of nice stuff including outtakes from a number of shows including football games, the Discovery Channel and other things. A very nice mix of stuff to look at and get a feel for the way the TV will perform in a variety of contexts.
I watched the loop for over an hour. There were a couple of times when I saw very grey screens but I saw no banding even though I looked closely. There was a jungle scene from Corwin's Quest that I found intriguing because the picture really drew me in, the 3D effect was so pronounced. There was an XBR just around the corner and it didn't give me that feeling to the degree that the Aquos did. I found myself thinking that the Aquos was a very nice unit indeed.
I asked a sales clerk if I could go into the service menu to see something. She said, "No!". I asked if there was an SD feed that we could look at. She said, "No." I asked if there was a live HD feed that we could look at other than the loop. She said, "No." I asked her if she would price match the Internet vendors. She motioned to another guy to come over. He said that he had checked the Internet and they (Fry's) had the lowest price when you considered shipping and set up and support.
So here is where I am. I like the unit, I like it a lot. I have some lingering questions: What does it look like with real feeds, especially SD? What about the banding issue? Does banding even exist on this unit (I have heard that this unit is actually made on Kameyama #1, which supposedly has never had a banding issue). And I have a lingering doubt about the ability to brighten this unit in a fully lit room. The fact that the first demo unit had the brightness turned up to max and it wasn't knocking me off my chair makes me wonder if that extra real estate over the 52" Sharp might come at the expense of some "vividness"?
Hopefully I can see this unit is a more congenial setting and come to a final decision, but I am still on the fence, for now. (EDIT: 6/1/07--see below)
(In an attempt to make this post as complete as possible I am editing my earlier post to include this information)
June 1, 2007 Visit to BB/Magnolia, Redwood City, CA)
Finally had a chance to get my hands on the unit and really play with it. BB at this location has just gotten one up in a darkened room. The room has the 65 Sharp on the wall just to the left of a big dorrway and it gets a lot more light than the other units in the room, but the picture just blows them away.
Two walls are taken up with an LG71 plasma in 1080p on one wall, and a 57 Samsung on the opposite wall, both offering a chance for a nice comparison with the Sharp. Opposite the Sharp is a projector playing some sort of DVD that I ignored.
To take up the big B word issue right away the Sharp shows virtually no banding! I brought in my DVE DVD and went immediately to title 14 and ran through the various grey levels. At the darkest grey setting it looked so uniform and perfect I double checked to make sure it was on the darkest grey setting, but no indeed it looked very good, and I got quite excited about the unit. I stepped through all of the grey levels, all looking wonderful, then stepped back to the first and darkest level and looked at it very, very carefully. Under this sort of scrutiny the salesman and I both thought that maybe, just maybe, there was a faint smudge near the center of the picture about three inches wide, but so faint that the eye didn't think it was there if you stared at it. Now this doesn't bother me at all and I would say that the unit was fine, but I am sure that if I had a picture of it posted that someone on the forum would say, I see bands!, so I guess I have to temper my remarks about banding to include that most sensitive group and say that the unit maybe has maybe some banding, but to me it is band free.
The inputs available in the store were DVD as mentioned, and a store loop of analog input, digital input, and HD, including a short HD loop showing one half the screen in SD and half in HD. The salesman left me alone with both the DVD controller and the Sharp TV controller. I first went through the menu system and lowered the brightness, contrast and the sharpness to normal levels, then played around trying to get rid of the red push (only partially successful). I cycled through the inputs and put the HD inputs to Dot by Dot and left the analog input alone.
Blacks:
I cycled through a lot of material both on analog and digital inputs looking at the blacks and found them to be very solid and inky. I think everyone will be satisfied with the black level (well, except for that guy in the front row who has much higher standards than I do and will probably post about it).
Shadow Detail:
I watched lot of stuff looking at shadow detail. Let me be quick to state that I just never watch a film more than once, so I don't have a DVD that I could just look at for a comparison, but I did watch a lot of dark scenes and the shadow detail was very good IMHO. I put on the DVD U-571 which the salesman let me have because he thought it a quite dark movie with lots of detail that is easily lost by a bad set. I can tell you that I was really impressed. The dark scenes in the submarine with lights dimmed (or out) were superb! Every minute detail in the backgrounds were clear and well defined, and facial detail was lifelike and immersive. I was very impressed with the unit on this DVD. I doubt that most people will complain about shadow detail, and I think I would be inclined to brag about it to my friends.
Motion:
Every review seems to have to find an imperfection and the motion on this set was, I thought, less than perfect. What with 120hz and 4ms specs to brag about I thought I'd see something great, but I didn't like what I saw today. Now this may have been the loop that the store had, but both the football scenes and the baseball scenes showed some steps in the fastest motion. For instance when the pitcher was pitching to a batter when the angle was from the side the ball seemed to step up to the plate in a series of fast frames instead of smoothly flowing toward the batter. As I say that may have been the loop that was available because I didn't notice this in previous visits, but it was distracting in those two sport shots, and the same thing happened with this loop on a couple of other TV's in the store. I did try it with the fast motion option both on and off and it didn't seem to matter. If I hadn't watched a couple of other Sharp 65units in previous visits with different loops where I didn't see any problem then I'd have a bigger red flag, but I am inclined to believe that the motion is at least better than my current 45 Sharp which has actually got quite good motion in everyday viewing, and I am a hockey addict. So for now this unit gets the benefit of the doubt.
Overall impressions:
At this point I am in love with this TV! The HD pictures are as good as you can get and the SD is probably better than most, and even better than all others that offer an LCD near this size. The black levels are wonderful , the controls are very good, and the picture is clear and a joy to watch.
I was enjoying the picture on the LG71 plasma in the same room today and thinking that it was quite a unit, very impressive, but then the Samsung across the room would have a fast moving picture and I'd find myself looking at the video on the Samsung in the reflection on the LG glass. What a pity that the plasmas suffer from such a reflection problem! But the Sharp 65' stands up to a much brighter location and has a simply superb picture with no reflection issues to worry about.
Am I gonna' buy this unit? Probably. I was so comfortable watching the unit today that if the salesman had come down some on the price he could have talked me into buying it on the spot, that's how impressed I was. I don't have a pressing need to buy this unit, I like my 45 so much, so I am taking it slow for now, but I do think it is not only the best LCD on the market in this size range, but it is probably the best that is going to be coming out this year. Really a quality unit!
