Pretty good but not perfect
Pros:
Sony quality, sharp vivid picture
Cons:
No great way to view normal TV image without distortion
The Bottom Line:
Still a top choice, but be aware of picture display limitations
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
Well, we finally bit the bullet and upgraded to flat panel from our old Mitsubishi 32" TV with the bulbous tube and a big pink spot in the upper corner. The Sony 40" fit in our cabinet with a half inch on either side to spare.
Haven't been able to experience the real hi-def picture yet. Our cable company (Charter) says it's out of hi def tuner boxes right now, if you can believe it, especially since they are constantly advertising their hi-def channels on TV. So, I'm having DirecTV come out in a few days and install a satellite receiver. They offer many more HDTV channels than the cable company anyhow... and are $20+/month cheaper.
The Sony TV is great in most respects-- lots of inputs and a great picture with the new Denon DVD player hooked up via the HDMI cable. Apparently the type of cable you choose to connect with can make a big difference. HDMI is better than component video cables, which are better than S-Video, which is better than composite... but the Sony can handle them all (as most brands probably can as well). It just makes sense to me to pop for a $69 HDMI cable if it can deliver a better picture.
The one thing I'm not crazy about is how the Sony handles regular TV images. If you view it in Normal mode, you see a picture in the 4:3 aspect ratio with no distortion, but there's probably about 7 inches of black space on either side of the image. The overall effect is a picture that looks strangely small on the big screen.
I've seen TVs that give you the option to slightly stretch the picture, so that on a 40" screen there would be perhaps 3 inches of black space on either side. Sometimes this system distorts (or stretches) the edges of the picture a bit, but keeps the middle section undistorted.
The Sony doesn't give you this option. If you don't select Normal mode, you can select either Wide or Wide Zoom mode. Wide mode fills the entire screen with the TV image, but significantly distorts. Heads of people looked squashed down. The Wide Zoom mode eliminates this squashing effect, but also crops out the top and bottom 10% or so of the image.
I just wish Sony had included a more intelligent compromise mode to view normal TV images. With DVDs this is not an issue, since they are formatted for the wider 16:9 screen.
Other than that, I really like this set. It's amazing how quickly you get used to viewing a bigger image... it seemed normal after a day or two. I wonder if I replaced it with a 14" screen if that would ever seem normal-- probably not!
