Sharp LC-46E77U 46" LCD HDTV 46-inch 120Hz 1080p LCD HD Television

Just purchased this gem a few days ago and its performance has been spectacular. Setup was quite easy and multiple tweaks allow you to view the picture according to your individual taste. Blu-ray movies are as clear as you could possibly want, and baseball and football games on high def cable are equally enjoyable to watch.

With this set, you don't need to spend big bucks to obtain superior performance. It's a bargain winner.

I decided to take the plunge and get this TV after my last TV (a HDTV CRT) had its tube burst on me this summer. My requirements were pretty straightforward:
- 1080p (have to be future proof)
- 46"
- 120Hz or greater refresh rate so I don't have to deal with blurring when I'm watching sports

I'm happy with my Sharp LC46E77U with one exception: I think I'm seeing some blurring. Not a lot of blurring by any means, but I wasn't expecting any blur from a 120Hz TV. To be completely honest with you, I'm not sure if it's due to the broadcasts I'm watching or the TV causing ghosting effects, but it is a little bothersome right now.

The TV is great for almost all my daily viewing needs. We'll just have to see if the small amount of blur bothers me during football season.

We have had the LC46E77U for about a month and we are very pleased. We have the LC46E77U hooked to a Tivo HD box and digital cable. The combination is a true joy.

Setup is very easy. I really didn't have to do much. Setting up the picture was surprisingly simply... the picture was practically perfect out of the box. We have a 26" Samsung HDTV and setting up the the picture on that TV took a lot more tweeking. The controls were easy enough to use and I had a picture I was happy with in no time. The Tivo set up the channels for me, so no fuss with that.

I have the LC46E77U set to adjust automatically to the picture source and all HD and SD channels are clear and proportionate with side top bars where needed and the picture is never stretched, deformed or unclear.

HD channels are stunning. Very sharp, colors are just right. I have noticed that the quality of HD content can vary depending on the source. Some content seems to be shot and/or processed by better equipment. The very best HD content looks almost 3D. Series Equator and Planet Earth are so clear and vivid that I can't take my eyes off of it... and that's just on cable. I haven't even tried Blu-ray yet.

Sports on the LC46E77U look fantastic. I wanted the 120Hz feature for this reason and it doesn't disappoint. It's baseball season (the greatest sport ever invented) and it looks wonderful. I've seen some car racing, Tour de France and X-games and they all made me feel like I was right there at the event. I can't wait for football to start!

SD channels look very good. Of course we are hooked on the HD channels, but when we do need to watch something which is SD, it's really pretty good.

Viewing angles are very good and screen glare reduction is good. I have a sliding glass door in the room which is very bright in the morning. This is the only time I see reflections and they are not that bad. My old tube TV was much worse. The LC46E77U can automatically adjust to the light in the room and this seems to work well.

Sound is OK. I didn't expect much from a flat panel TV since the speakers have to be pretty small. There's really nothing wrong with the speakers; they are loud enough and don't sound tinny, but they do not have a very rich sound. I have the TV's analog audio output going to a pretty old stereo and the sound is quite good. I'm sure it would be even better with the optical audio output hooked to a more modern sound system, but I'm happy.

Watching DVDs with a Phillips DVD player which upscales to 1080P looks as good as the HD channels from cable. I don't have a Blu-Ray player but it's hard to imagine that it would look much better than the upscaling DVD. I think I can wait for the Blu-Ray prices to drop some more before going that route.

I have hooked a Macbook to the LC46E77U (via an HDMI to DVI-D cable) and it is amazing. The LC46E77U uses the full 1920x1080 from the Mac. We ran slide shows of our digital photos off the Mac and we were blown away by the perfect quality of our photos displayed on the 46" monitor. Photo viewing will never be the same at our house.

The cabinet is very attractive and well built. The gold champagne accent at the bottom of the bezel is subtle and nice. The swivel base is very handy if you want to reach around the back hook up an input.

There are plenty of input and output connectors on this TV. I can't imagine anyone would have a need for more. Having several connectors on the side is very nice.

Overall I am very pleased and really can't think of anything negative. For the price, quality and features, I don't think this set can be beat.

I got this LCD to replace an Aquos 42D65U; mainly because of my old set lacked a 10-bit panel and 120Hz video processor, features that are present with this set.

I am kind of picky regarding features and while some people might think Im a bit exaggerated regarding details this review is to address anyone whom needs to know specific details to help to decide about getting this set.

PROS:
-There are a lot of options in the menu that let you fine-tune the calibration of the image. If you own a calibration DVD or Blu ray you can easily achieve a perfect image and color balance that can also be tweaked to your personal taste.
-Input lag in GAME Mode is practically inexistent; I read that some brands have severe input lag while other brands also offer some sort of GAME mode to reduce such lag, but after personal comparisons SHARP manages it better.
-120Hz processing gives you a very smooth image and not as exaggerated as displayed by other brands and also NO artifacts!
many people turn this option off because it sometimes look unnatural, and I agree. Watching a movie that looks like a soap opera its not cool and sometimes it looks just plain silly and eerie, but this set manages it without going to the extreme and looks smooth and natural...and you can just turn it off if it bothers you.
Also note this: NO artifacts!

CONS:
note: I repeat, Im picky, maybe you wont notice these CONS and if you do you may not give a lot of thought to it as they are not catastrophic faults.
-that 10-bit panel promise of smooth transition between colors is not quite true. While it certainly alliviates some instances of color transition, that step between different shades of the same color are still present, not a deal-breaker issue, maybe you even havent noticed it.
-Light Banding, If you dont know what banding is, dont look for it, dont go fishing for problems. Old Aquos set had this problem and VERY more noticeable than it is in this set; also not a deal-breaker but mildly annoying if you look for it and visible only in specific panning scenes.
-Transitions of skin tones in faces sometimes look a bit posterized, or softened. Im stubborn and picky I want to see the pores on averyone faces, be able to count the eyelashes! But if you watch TV from the recommended distance then its absolutely no problem and also it might be a matter of personal taste for some people since professionals recommend to set the sharpness of the picture at low settings. Turning down the Fine Motion and dejudder settings dont alleviate this issue, but as I said, its only somewhat visible in skin tones at close-ups, otherwise the details of objects are spot-on.

MOVIE and GAME modes are my recommended settings since I found both DYNAMICs, STANDARD, PC and USER modes more of a chore to calibrate and ultimately pointless since movie/game work perfect for me.

The picture is gorgeous, Blu Ray movies look amazing and both Xbox and PS3 also have excellent image quality and no lag. The price is really accesible compared to other brands and it might not have LAN connectivity or included content as weather widgets or cooking recipes as competing sets but you might already have several devices that offer those functions and its not a big deal.

So if you are disappointed in looking around the web or forums for those very specific details regarding this LCD I hope this helps you.

Quality
I had another LCD Sharp for four years before this one. That one has survived two cross-country moves and the pixels are still perfect. My feeling is that Sharp's panels tend to have fewer dead pixels than their competition. Also, there are many fewer complaints about the sets suddenly not turning on after two months (in stark contrast to Samsung). So I regard Sharp as a high-quality but relatively cheap LCD TV maker.
Picture
The picture quality is fine (I'm not a videophile) and HDTV really is lovely. Imagine being able to see the food served on the Food network... to say nothing of a football or golf ball. I like the 120MHz motion de-juddering, but I have it turned to low rather than high. It really is quite unnatural in the high setting - everything looks like an episode of the Teletubbies. Maybe I'll get used to it. The "OPC" thing is annoying, but you can turn it off and/or stop the little leaves from appearing every thirty seconds. I think it has something to do with dynamic contrast, which takes the ambient light in the room into account, but I can't be sure. Suffice it to say, the picture is pretty good.
Sound
Also fine - how loud do you want it? Actually, the bass is a little overdone, but I've hooked up a soundbar and everything sounds great now. Nicely enough, this set acts a bit like a receiver: all my audio signals get channelled into the TV through HDMI connections and then I use a digital audio output to send it to my soundbar. I don't need multiple wires to connect my soundbar. I thought that was a nice feature.
Set-up
Easy. Clear manual. Good menus. Functional remote control (which also operates my other Sharp TV and looks almost identical!).
Why buy?
The styling is fine. It's not as thin as the latest Samsungs but it's only 40 lb (that's considerably lighter than last year's D85U, which this replaces) and the design works well.
It's energy efficient. Again, only the much more expensive Samsung LED-based LCDs are better, but they don't have even lighting across the whole screen. Oh, there's a Philips Eco-TV, too, but I never saw that in the shops.
It's high quality and does the job. Basically, it's a brand name product with the latest technology at a no-name price.
Why only 4 stars?
I wanted an LED set! No, seriously, this is a great TV with plenty of inputs (9 by my count, of which 5 are HDMI) and it's energy efficient and light enough to transport or wall-mount. It's not the lightest or the brightest or the loudest or the fastest, nor is it the cheapest, but it's a good compromise on all those things.

I purchased the 46 inch Sharp LCD TV from an internet retailer for nine-eighty-eight including shipping in Oct 2009. It arrived within a week in a box as big as a small car. This is a great TV. When you go through the initial setup it will look for channels (a cable thing I think) so just let it finish. When done use the input button on the remote to select the input that you used (HDMI 7 for instance)and the picture will appear. The entire setup including attaching the base took about 30 minutes just in time for Monday night football. Watching football on this TV is unbelievable, it is like you are on the sidelines. The colors are perfect and the whole setup looks great. My old 26 inch lcd which was sitting in our built in now looks like we were watching TV in a closet or box. I hooked the TV to my Direct TV HD DVR. I also bought a Monster Home Theater power surge device to protect my investment. It did seem to slightly improve the picture, but since it was near perfect in the first place it is really hard to tell. I was going to buy and LG LCD but discovered it did not have a simple Audio out which I need for my wireless headphones. The Sharp has more inputs and outputs than I will ever need. The 27000 to 1 contrast ratio seems great. I can't imagine needing a higher ratio. I also recommend you pay extra to get a 120MHZ TV (4ms response time).

I actually own the sister version of this product (the Sharp LC-52E77U), but the information in this review is equally applicable to this TV since they use the same, albeit smaller, panel.

Since I have owned this TV for a few months now, I thought it would be helpful to share a few tips and tricks I have learned:

PROBLEM: INCOMPATIBLE AUDIO SIGNAL

All my A/V devices (360, PS3, Wii, Samsung DTB-H260F) were connected to my Onkyo TX-SR607 receiver with HDMI, which was set to output to my Sharp Aquos LC-52E77U. And, although the receiver was set to "Audio TV Out" off (and even with it on), the TV kept popping up this error:

"Incompatible audio signal has been received, please check the output signal."

It only pops up for a few seconds, and only when I would switch devices or resolution or whatever. Still, pretty annoying. Connecting the devices directly to the TV via HDMI caused the same error - the only time it didn't happen is when there was 2ch 44.1/48Khz PCM involved.

Unfortunately, unlike every other TV I have ever owned, the Sharp doesn't have a menu option to disable audio. Muting didn't help, either.

The solution? Set the audio volume to 0. No more error!


PROBLEM: NO DEVICE DETECTED (DVI -> HDMI)

When I first got this TV, I plugged in my Mac Mini, using a DVI -> HDMI cable. After using it for a bit, the TV would stop recognizing that the Mac Mini was connected. It turns out that, whenever the Mac Mini would be rebooted or would go to sleep, the Sharp would refuse to recognize that it was connected anymore.

The solution? Physically unplugging and plugging in the TV (not just pressing the power button), and disabling sleep on the Mac. I still have to do this unplugging dance occasionally - like for system updates - but not as often as when sleep was enabled. I guess that's the price you pay for a beautiful 1080p HDMI signal, as opposed to a letterboxed 1600x1200 VGA signal - the max this TV supports.


CALIBRATION SETTINGS

This TV has some definite problems with blues in areas of high contrast. Here are the best settings I have found on the internet, in order of their appearance in the menus:

OPC: Off
Backlight: +6 (you can adjust up or down a smidge if need be)
Contrast: +36
Brightness: -12
Color: +1
Tint: +1
Sharpness: -1

CMS Hue/Saturation/Value: 0
Color Temp.: Low (leave at Mid for color managed devices, like Macs)
R Gain: +11
G Gain: 0
B Gain: -10
Fine Motion Enhanced: Off (leave on for sports if you prefer)
Active Contrast: Off
Gamma Adjustment: 0
Film Mode: Off (I used Advanced(Low) for sports)
Digital Noise Reduction: Off
Monochrome: Off
Range of OPC: +16 Max, -16 Min (it is off, anyways)

I bought my LC-46E77U to serve both as a TV and as a monitor for my living room computer (Mac Mini), so I was deeply disappointed to experience the same problem April King (11/7/09) and other internet reviewers have described: the unit would not consistently recognize the MacMini video signal via a DVI-to-HDMI cable. I'd have to power-cycle the TV, time the Mac's reboot, all kinds of nonsense simply to get a picture. Pretty darn useless as a monitor, no?

GOOD NEWS: Sharp's software update appears to have fixed the problem. Now that my E77 plays well with my Mac, I can happily give it five stars. The procedure is simple:

1) [...] / customer support / product downloads
2) LCD TVs / LC-46E77U / Firmware
3) Select firmware update for your set and save onto USB drive. Unzip and place in root of drive.
4) Follow installation directions in manual, page 30 (or just insert drive into TV and press MENU / Digital Setup / Software Update)

If it works for you as it did for me, your beautiful and expensive doorstop will turn back into an excellent monitor. Thank goodness -- I was thinking of returning it.

This is not just a fantastic TV, but also a fantastic value. After weeks of research in the 46" LCD 1080p TV class, I finally decided on this one, and am I glad I did. I was drawn more by reviews from trusted sources to the Samsung, but because I've been so impressed with Sharp over the years, I went with my gut instinct and I am glad I did.

Sharp is not just a brand name, but also an accurate description of their products. There is no other way to describe the picture clarity. Set up was a snap. Once I attached the stand, I pretty much plugged it in and was ready to go. The picture is crisp and provides a lot of contrast. I've experienced NONE of the problems my friends do with their LCD HDTVs. The picture is bright and there are no trails, mosaics, artifacts or other picture distractions. I love the HDMI link feature, which allows me to control devices attached via HDMI with the TV remote, with no setup required.

The only cons I can think of are the instruction manual. It lacks. If you want to change your digital audio set up, you have to be in TV mode, not one of the HDMI inputs. That's just an example of a small lapse in explanation in the manual. The TV also comes set to auto adjust to light levels. So the whole time you are watching, it keeps dimming and brightening. That feature can easily be disabled. The audio optical out port seems a little too 'big' for my cable. It fell out when I brushed against it. Not an issue now that the TV is set up and won't be moved. These are the ONLY complaints I can even pretend to have. Their set up menus are intuitive, like all Sharp products. The TV has an enormous amount of inputs and outputs. I think it has about 8 HDMI inputs. Ridiculous, in a good way. The remote is simple, not too many functions and easy to navigate.

I wasn't disappointed at all in the sound quality. While LCDs are notorious for having small, fairly useless speakers. While certainly not like a decent home theater system or similar, they don't sound bad and would be more than adequate for someone who just wants to watch TV or movies quietly.

I've had friends buying different HDTVs for years and spending twice as much. I think this TV looks the best out of all the ones I've seen, period. This TV is also a great price. If you want a great picture and easy use, this TV is for you. I'm more than 100% satisfied, it exceeded my expectations and then some.

all i can really say is that my PS3 really loves this tv. great picture, great features , great sound and great price. if you can get one of these straight away..!