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Review 4 of 15 Summary:
I was very excited when I bought this set. I did a lot of research, including checking the reviews here at Audio Review. Everything seemed to point to this being the best value for the money I could afford. In the end result, I'd say that it is still a great value, but unfortunately the set gave me months of headaches before I was finally satisfied with it.
First, the good things: This is a 27" set with component-video inputs. Such a thing is still relatively rare, especially for the reasonable price I paid. It has a good selection of other inputs as well, and the tube is pretty flat.
Now some problems, in ascending order of seriousness:
1) The speakers could be better. They're not terrible, but it's definitely worth upgrading to a stereo/surround receiver and separate speakers.
2) The picture geometry is slightly flawed. I had a service tech come out and look at it. When he put a grid pattern on the screen, all of the lines were perfectly straight right up until the very top quadrants, at which point all of the lines curve inwards. The tech did everything to try to adjust it, but came to the conclusion that this model of set does not have the particular type of control that he needed to fix it. Since the problem is only visible in the very top part of the screen, and since the vast majority of programs I watch are letterboxed anyway, I decided that I will have to live with it. Still a nuisance.
3) The most serious problem, by far, is the color adjustment. When I first purchased it, the set's gray scale was way off, adding a very distracting green tint to dark grays. If you watch a black & white movie, it becomes green and white. Even on color programs, any dark scene becomes greenish and muddy. I spent many hours and days and weeks messing with the user controls to try to get this to go away. No dice. The only thing that helped was pumping the contrast and brightness to unacceptable levels.
Fortunately, with some help I was able to crack into the hidden service menus and adjust the green cutoff, among other annoying things that it was not possible to change by the consumer controls. I also found it necessary to change the settings individually for each type of video input (composite, S-video, & component). Otherwise, I would need to ride the brightness and color levels each time I switched between TV, VHS, LD or DVD.
Now that I have done all of this, I am finally happy with the picture on this set. Had I not been able to, I probably would have returned it and spent more money on something that would cause me less hassle.
I've heard from other people with this model who tell me that haven't had so many problems. I don't know, maybe I just got a lemon. Regardless, I can only recommend it to someone who is prepared in advance that it may need a substantial amount of tweaking to get it to look right. Strengths:
Lots of inputs, including component video. Great price. Weaknesses:
Picture geometry is a little off. Set requires extensive adjustments in the service menu beyond the standard user controls in order to get a decent picture. Similar Products Used:
Sharp 25"
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