Poor reliability - avoid! (Sharp 66FW53)

Member Name: GroundZero

Product:	Sharp 66FW53
Date:	27/03/01 (498 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonable value, long list of features

Disadvantages: Unreliable, poor sound quality

After experiencing the delights of DVD, I decided it was about time I upgraded to a widescreen TV. Previously I had either watched films on my PC DVD-ROM or on a standard 4:3 Hitachi TV, which is almost as old as I am…

After the hassle I had ordering a TV from Letsbuyit.com (see other opinion), I decided that the smartest move would be to buy from a large electrical store, since it would be easier to return the TV if anything went wrong. I could also see exactly what I was buying.

My budget stretched to around £400, not a great deal when buying a large TV these days. The choice was thus severely restricted, but I was determined to get the best I could for the money I had. After looking at all the models in that price bracket, the Sharp 66FW53H struck me as the best buy. I bought it from Comet, at a cost of £399.95, including the cabinet.

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Looks
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The TV comes in a dark grey colour, which, while not exactly the most attractive, at least does not look as cheap as some of its competitors, namely the Bush widescreen TVs. The cabinet comes as a flat-pack, so you will need a minor amount of work to assemble it. It has a glass door, and removable back panels (which come in handy when your VCR is too wide to fit through the front!), although these are a touch on the flimsy side, and had a habit of falling out.

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Screen modes
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The TV offers a number of viewing modes. These are:

• Panorama – this is probably the best option for watching normal TV (4:3). The picture is stretched more towards the edges, to enable it to fit the screen. This is the least noticeable form of stretching, since objects in the centre of the screen are stretched only a small amount.
• Full – the picture is stretched equally to fit the full width of the screen. This can look a bit odd with normal
TV channels though, and I preferred not to use this option.
• Normal – this option allows you to view 4:3 broadcasts as they are meant to be seen, with black bars on either side of the picture.
• Zoom 14:9 – this is the option used for films shown in widescreen format on normal TV (mostly Channel 4 films in my experience).
• Cinema – this blows up the picture to a ridiculous level, and makes the picture look very blocky. Best avoided.
• Auto – perhaps the most commonly used option, this puts the TV into panoramic mode for terrestrial channels which use the 4:3 format. When you play a DVD, it recognises the signal and switches to the correct screen mode.

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Remote Control
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The remote is one of the better ones you will see. It comes in grey, to match the colour of the TV, with black and blue buttons. It is not overcrowded with buttons, and it is pretty easy to work out what everything does. If you have a Sharp video recorder, you can use the buttons at the bottom in place of the VCR remote.

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Connections
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The TV has an impressive range of connections for a budget model. Around the back, there are 3 SCART connectors (only one of which is RGB compatible unfortunately), along with a standard RF input for the aerial connection.

Pull down the flap on the front, and you have an S-Video connector, a video input terminal (for connecting a camcorder), a headphone socket and 2 audio input terminals (left and right).

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Picture quality
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The picture quality is reasonable for a budget TV, although nowhere near as crisp and colourful as more expensive makes like Sony. The factory default settings need to be changed, as they give a picture badly lacking in colour. Ramping up the contrast solves this probl
em to a degree.

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Sound quality
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Unfortunately, the sound quality of this model is quite poor. Although you can change the sound settings, the speakers sound very tinny, and are sadly lacking in bass. There are a number of pre-programmed settings you can use, although none of these are truly adequate.

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Teletext
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One of the really nice features about this TV is that you can split the screen, so the left half shows the channel you are watching, while the right displays your desired teletext page. You can also choose to have two different teletext pages visible side by side, although I can’t really see why you would need this. As with most TVs these days, you can choose to fill the screen with the teletext screens, or have them displayed transparently. Fasttext allows you to quickly navigate to your favourite pages by selecting from the 4 coloured buttons on the remote. You can also program 40 “favourite” teletext pages into memory, to allow you quicker access.

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Features
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The main thing that made the Sharp stand out was the range of features it offered. TVs costing several hundred pounds more struggle to match the long list of features present in this model. As well as the split screen teletext, the TV features a postcode lock (in case it is stolen), a child lock (set the times you don’t want anyone watching the TV at) and a demo mode, which demonstrates the different features of the set.

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Setup
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The manual has a number of diagrams which show you clearly how to set up your TV for a particular configuration, including which sockets to connect your video, DVD player and digital set-top box to.

Once you have everything connected up, switching the TV on la
unches the auto-installation routine. This tunes in all your channels for you, including your video if you are not using a SCART connection. You may need to sort the channels into correct order, and may need to rename them (I found that the channel names were wrong in a couple of cases).

On the whole the TV is quite straightforward to use, with a simple menu structure and intuitive controls.

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Opinion
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You may be asking by now why I have given this TV such a low score. Well, the answer is, I have had 2 separate TVs of this model, both of which were returned due to faults they developed. In both cases, the TV developed a fault where if you were to watch a 4:3 broadcast in either normal or 14:9 modes, the sides of the picture would ripple horrendously. I found this really off-putting. When you watch the TV with the screen filled, you can see a large amount of bending of the picture near the edges, most noticeable when you have a rectangular block on screen. I wasn’t too impressed with this, especially as no other TVs I have seen have done this to the same extent.

The first TV was replaced, only for the second to develop exactly the same problem. In addition, the menu screens occasionally became scrambled, which didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

In the end, I managed to get Comet to take the TV away, and I now have a (more expensive) Sony TV to replace it. I am much more impressed with this, in terms of picture and sound quality, and would recommend that you steer clear of this particular Sharp TV. If you are interested in this model (and I would strongly advise you to choose something else instead), you can download a copy of the manual from Sharp’s UK website. Despite the attractions of this model, its reliability record is doubtful to say the least. My advice would be to spend a bit more to get something with a better reputation, maybe a Tos
hiba, JVC, Sony or Panasonic.

Summary: