Questions about Sharp Aquos LC-32DA5U. (1 Viewer)

[DmitryS]

I am planning to buy the Sharp Aquos LC-32DA5U. Most of the reviews that I have read are very good, so I went to the local CC store to check it out.

Luckily the TV was connected to the Direct TV satellite (this is the setup I would have). I was more concerned how the regular satellite signal would display on that TV, because most of the channels still not HD. The TV was connected to the receiver using the component cables. When I switched the TV to the 480p resolution I was very disappointed. The picture was very pixilated, even standing 5-6 feet away from TV the distortions was very noticeable. I asked the sales person if it is possible to connect TV using the HDMI cable, but they did not have one open. So I do not know if that cable improves the picture. Also maybe the pixilated distortion was more visible because the resolution was 480p. The sale person also said that connecting S-Video will improve the picture for regular channels.

So if you have that TV and using it with satellite, please answer these questions.

1. Will the HDMI cable improve the picture of the regular broadcast channels?
2. Will switching to 480i by connecting the TV using the S-Video cable improve the picture of the regular broadcast channels?
3. What is diagonal length of the 480i (non-stretched) resolution?
4. Are there other ways to improve the picture quality of the regular broadcast channels?
5. If you have an indoor HD antenna, then how is quality of local channels in HD?

Thanks

 

[Steve Schaffer]

You can't switch that tv to 480p resolution. It has a native resolution of 768x1366 and the set converts all incoming signals to that resolution. If the blue display box in the upper right hand corner of the screen indicated 480p or 480i, that was the resolution of the incoming signal.

That model Aquos has an excellent scaler to convert incoming signals to the set's native scanrate. CC has incredibly lousy SD signal quality.

If you connect that set to a DirecTV HD capable receiver via HDMI and set the DirecTV receiver to output all channels at 720p you should get really decent SD picture quality. It should work pretty decently using component cables also.

I have the 26" version of that Sharp set in my bedroom, and one of the incoming signals is plain old analog cable, SD picture is at least as good as on the 27" Sony XBR analog set I had previously.