Sadly this is a big disappointment so my suggestion is to look for an alternative.
We upgraded from the prior Sharp 160 which had served up well for several years and, on the back of high levels of satisfaction with the 160, chose to stick with Sharp.
The GUI, menu structure, features and functionality are backward steps in virtually every key aspect. It seems that actual users weren't taken into account in evolving/developing this product. It now appears essentially as a connectivity/advertising/promotions box for "Top-Up TV" - fine if it was advertised, marketed and priced as such but it isn't.
All the convenient everyday features of the 160 are either absent or have been messed about so that they are much less intuitive and require more clicks. For example, the 160 had a 2 minute advance at the press of one button - brilliant for skipping adverts or swiftly returning to where you left off. The 502 doesn't have this feature. The Guide takes forever to populate whereas it was virtually instantaneous in the 160. Recording is less intuitive, watching a current recording from the start while continuing the recording is less intuitive, returning to resume an interrupted recording is less intuitive, the list goes on.
What you do get is irritating advertising everywhere, winking and flashing at you and taking up screenspace that could have been better used and irritating pop-ups and promotions pushed at you far too often.
Much of the above would have been raised if Sharp had run a decent user focus group but the impression here is that the users are very much a secondary consideration. Sharp and Top-Up TV come first in the pecking order for this product, avoid it!
