Pros: Well calibrated right out of the box. Nice looking cabinet. Extremely easy to live with.
Cons: Built-in speakers completely worthless. Lacks DVI. HDMI not as accessible as other units.
The Bottom Line: Despite great competition, the Aquos is perhaps the easiest panel to live with on a daily basis. Picture quality is fantastic, however a separate audio solution is absolutely necessary.
randomroyalty's Full Review: Sharp AQUOS LC-32D44U 32 in. TV
This TV is our first flat panel display after our ancient (but high-end) JVC 27" finally bit the bullet. This panel was purchased primarily for casual TV viewing, as we have a projector setup with a 100" screen in our basement for watching movies.
Since we watch TV generally 8 feet away from the screen, don't play games, and given that HD cable is virtually all in 720p/1080i, it did not make sense to spend any extra money on a 1080p or higher frequency (e.g. 120 Hz) panel. Quite simply, if you spend most of your time watching TV, don't waste your money!
Our criteria was that the new screen had to fit into our existing TV "armoire" cabinet that was built before flat panel widescreens came on the market. This restricted our choice to 32" screens with a small enough bezel on either side to allow the foldaway doors enough room to operate. The only flat panels that fit were the Sony Bravia and the Sharp Aquos. We went with the Sharp based mainly on reputation and appearance. The entry level Sony Bravia had slightly better sound quality and HDMI inputs on the side of the cabinet, but the rather cheap looking assembly and materials, especially when compared to the Sharp, made us hesitate. (The more expensive Sony panels are lovely to look at in any decor, but at double the price.)
One thing that most people don't realize when going from standard aspect ratio TV (4:3) to widescreen (16:9) is that the height of the screen is considerably smaller for a given diagonal measurement. For example, the overall height of our old 27" screen was still bigger than our new 32" flat panel, which makes it seem that our newer supposedly larger flat panel appears smaller than our old CRT. The rule of thumb is that you have to add 10" to the diagonal measurement when moving to a 16:9 flat panel. If you currently have a 32" CRT, you will need a 42" flat panel to get the same viewing experience. To maintain our screen viewing size, we ideally should have purchased a 37" panel, but unfortunately this would not fit in our existing cabinet.
One of the biggest hassles in setting up a new flat screen TV is understanding inputs. This Sharp screen supports a huge array of inputs, including HDMI, Component Video, Composite Video, S-Video, an analog RGB connector (for a PC or Laptop) and finally an RF coaxial cable input. (Oddly enough this panel does not support DVI). Generally this should be enough to support the widest variety of devices, however using older devices that have only composite, S-Video or RF will not give you anywhere near the type of image quality that you would expect from this panel.
Since our HD cable box and DVD player are a bit older and did not support HDMI, we opted instead for Component Video and normal stereo audio connections. Since HDMI provides essentially the same image signals as Component Video, it did not make much sense to upgrade our components just to use HDMI. (The main advantage of HDMI is considerably less cable clutter, as you are replacing 5 separate wires with a single one).
We also decided to use a simple 2.1 Altec Lansing computer speaker setup (2 small stereo speakers and an amplified subwoofer) in order to make up for the built-in speakers rather inadequate sound.
Once everything was plugged in, setting up the screen was a snap. All of the features on this screen are well thought out, and logical menus really help. Some of the great user friendly features include memorizing all settings for each input and mode. This means that you can customize all of the settings for HDTV, normal TV, DVD, etc. For example, you can set 4:3 standard definition to automatically stretch the image to fill the screen, and have it go back to normal whenever you are watching HDTV. For us most DVDs tend to be a bit on the dark side, so we have it set so the brightness is a bit brighter for DVD input.
Another great feature is that you can have the TV control the volume of the external audio output, whether or not it is plugged in to a sound system or using amplified speakers. This means that you don't have to resort to using separate remotes for TV and audio functions.
I always expect most screens will require calibration. I was quite surprised to see that this screen was well calibrated right out of the box when using standard test patterns from the DVE Video Essentials DVD. It is worthy to note that we did turn off some of the automatic picture adjustment settings such as OPC (brightness adjusts according to ambient light) and Active Contrast (contrast adjusts according to the scene image). We also set the color temperature to Mid-Low to get a slightly warmer image, which is our preference. Basically when these features are on, it becomes very distracting seeing the brightness and contrast pumping all the time.
Setting up our HD cable box was considerably more difficult than the TV. The cause for this confusion came down to understanding the differences between the different resolutions and scan rates that are broadcast and how the cable box and TV both have features to compensate. For the most part we did not want to be constantly fiddling with TV and cable box settings whenever changing channels. The problem is not really with standard definition, which is always in 480i, but that some HD channels use 720p and some use 1080i.
Fortunately our cable box allowed for scan conversion, so in order to simplify things we opted to have all standard definition broadcasts to output a 480p signal and all high definition broadcasts to output a 720p signal. The main reason for this that a progressive scan image will have considerably less noise, which means we were able to turn off the TVs digital noise reduction and 3D-Y/C circuitry.
After trying to understand and taking the time to set things up properly, everything works well with a minimum of fuss, which is the way we like it! This TV is extremely easy to live with, and has enough brightness to work well in a sunny room. The anti-glare screen, black levels and color fidelity are top notch.
What we truly marvel at is that this screen cost less than half what we paid for our 15 year old JVC.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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