45" Sharp Aquos Titanium (LC-45GD1E) - has anyone actually seen one working?

NicolasB

Distinguished Member
Joined
Oct 3, 2002
Messages
6,862
Reaction score
1,247
Points
1,390
Location
Emily's Shop
What's the picture quality like? Anyone seen it displaying 1080i (or even 1080p) material? Is it an improvement on a lower-resolution plasma? What about for 720p?
 
Yeah, I'd be interested to hear people's opinions also. This should be the perfect set for Sky's hi-def 1080i service, and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray 1080p.
 
I think Ultim8Fury is the only person on here to have one of these - have a search on his posts and you'll find he seems quite chuffed with it
 
Seen the Asian 45" model on display at some shops fed from a HDTV source - not bad at all but I have the feeling the physical screen format is not 16:9.
A quick check of the dimensions reveals this seems to be correct: 1084(w)x802(h)x307mm(d)

I still have a thing for the previous 37" model but it's soooo expensive here ...
 
Reiner said:
I have the feeling the physical screen format is not 16:9.
A quick check of the dimensions reveals this seems to be correct: 1084(w)x802(h)x307mm(d)
I don't think those are the dimensions of the screen, though, they're the dimensions of the whole cabinet including speaker, the border round the screen, etc. If you have a look at a picture of it (click here) it's obviously roughly 16:9. Certainly nowhere near 11:8.

Edit: Yeah, according to another thread on these very fora, the screen dimensions are 989.1mm x 556.7mm which is 15.99:9. Close enough. :)
 
This screen has a resolution of 1920x1080.

1920 divided by 120=16
1080 divided by 120=9

Ergo, the aspect ratio is 16:9.

QED !
 
I contacted Sharp and they advised (don't know if the situation has changed) that the Cheadle store was the only one with the 45" on display.

I may well check later next month if they have as I might have to make the trip to see it - Sharp advise any other John Lewis should be able to order just that 1 had it on demo.
 
Evil Engineer said:
...Ergo, the aspect ratio is 16:9....QED !

Assuming that the pixels are square. Which they are, in this case - but not always. The point being, you can't safely make this assumption in every case.
 
1920 divided by 120=16
1080 divided by 120=9

Ergo, the aspect ratio is 16:9.
Now you try that for the Philips plasma that has 1024x1024 pixels. And no, it's not square. :devil:
Seriously though, the ratio of the pixels does not necessarily match the physical aspect ratio on some models (LCD or plasma).


But I stand corrected on the Sharp LCD as I accidently quoted the overall dimensions, not the screen. In the shops it looks weird though compared to other 16:9 screens - maybe it's an optical illusion. :blush:
 
I breezed through the Oxford Street (London) branch of John Lewis yesterday, and they have an LC45GD1E up and running in there. JL is, of course, not reknowned for setting up televisions favourably - clearly most, if not all, of the screens in there hadn't been properly calibrated and were being fed a rather poor quality signal. The LC45GD1E was showing BBC News 24, which clearly wasn't doing it any favours.

But, even allowing for all that, I was surprised at just how bad the picture looked. It reminded me a bit of a video clip on a PC that's being dithered down to a lower colour depth: very blocky, with any one block tending to shimmer between two visibly different colours.

Looking at it from about 20 feet away it looked all right - but there's not much point in having a huge screen if you have to sit 20 feet from it!

So, probably I shouldn't draw much in the way of conclusions from this at all, but, if I were to, I think I would suggest that you wouldn't want to use one of these things without an external scaler....
 
Don't know whether the 45" is the same, but the difference between the 32GA3 and 32GA4 are the position of the speakers (GA3 bottom, GA4 sides). When first looking at them, I would have sworn they were different panels !
 
I saw it showing HD-1 1080i channel via satellite. The picture was unbelievable :thumbsup: The best I've ever seen. Much improvement over Pioneers which stood near. Also compared with Samsung lcd 1920*1080. Samsung was also very impressive but some grain visible on the background(as on Pioneer plasmas) . But Sharp's picture was smooth and integral. I suppose that it's the best HD picture available on the market. :)
 
I have seen several of these panels in Tokyo. They look really very good with an HD or even DVD feed but really bad with a sd satellite feed both of which I saw in Japan. There is one in Allders Croydon generally with a DVD which again looks pretty good. That particular one is reduced from £7,500 to £6,700! Later in the year they will be much cheaper and probably have HDMI as they do in Japan and the US. Sharp's sales of these 45in panels are going well and they have announced their 8G line in the Kameyama plant which will produce 45 and 52in panels next year thereby increasing quantity and decreasing price. By far the best big panel I have seen is the Sony Qualia 46in LED backlit LCD panel also to be sold by Samsung. Not sure if they are coming over here though. The Samsung panel is $12,000 in the US which is very high end there.
 
The 45-inch Aquos is currently showing high-def at the Bristol Sound and Vision Show.
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom