7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Two LC-37G4U's arrived defective, third time's a charm.
Date of Review: Oct 19, 2004
The Bottom Line: Many defects due to cheap manufacture by Sharp, and poor analog performance but MAN does HDTV look sweet on this thing. I would buy again.
I also had defect problems with not one, but TWO LC-37G4U's.
The first arrived with the screen showing nothing but up and down lines where any image should be. It was obvious to the repair man they sent out that it was a bad monitor, but Sharp insisted the repair guy come back with a BIOS update card to make sure it wasn't a software problem. A couple of days later he returns with the chip, flashes the BIOS, and no change of course. Takes that one back to the shop and about a week later they sent another one. That one worked for about 36 hours and then died. It would turn on, cycle the lights on the front of the box, then turn off again after a few minutes with no picture showing up on the screen. Call Tech Support again, get the repair guy back out, do the same stupid BIOS flash on this TV, of course it fixed nothing, and back to Sharp for a third replacement.
HOWEVER, one month after the first set arrived, I now have had a working LC-37G4U, and it's pretty darn cool. The picture quality for HDTV is EXCELLENT, the picture quality for digital cable stations is very good, the picture quality for analog cable stations stinks. It has tons of snow and artifacts that my old tube TV did not show and makes analog stations very annoying to watch. If you watch lots of UPN, WB, or other local stations that don't have a HDTV cable feed in your area, you will likely be disappointed with this set.
Fast motion HDTV tends to get pixelated, but it's not significant or particularly annoying, just noticeable.
The standard color settings on the set need to be tweaked. It's way pushed toward Red and Magenta. To get it right I used a book with Sesame Street characters and tape of Sesame Street to tweak until it matched and since the color has been outstanding.
It could use another DVI input on the back however. Connections on the back include HDMI, one DVI, and two Component Inputs. If you want a high def DVD player and a computer hooked up to one of these, you need a HDMI DVD connection and not a DVI one, since there is only one DVI slot.
UPDATE: Note that none of the current generation of Sharp Aquos (including this one) support the second transmitter/receiver in a Dual-Link DVI cable. You will NOT get any resolution benefit of a Dual-Link DVI cable and a length greater than 33 feet will not work with this TV. I bought a 50ft Dual-Link DVI cable to run from my PC in another room to this TV, and after much research, trial and error, and discussion with Sharp support, found that the Aquos only supports a single link cable.
