40” Sony BRAVIA LCD HDTV

With my home theatre in a shambles and my satellite dish disconnected since May, I’ve been watching TV and movies on my 23” Apple Cinema display. For me, BitTorrent has been the only way to catch up on Heroes and House.

Last week, the brother-in-law gave us a very generous house-warming gift — 40” Sony BRAVIA® LCD HDTV (Model Number: KDL-40S3000). It looks fabulous in our new living room. Now I just have to get my dish reconnected so that I can watch some football or hockey in HD.

I have to say that Sony’s Xross Media Bar on-screen menu system is the nicest I’ve seen in a television set. No wonder it won an Emmy. The graphic user interface is beautiful. The animation is fluid and the graphics are very slick. I found myself playing around with the menus just to see them animate.

The 10-bit processing and 10-bit display is supposed to provide better colour reproduction with HD content. I haven’t had a chance to test this yet but it’s nice to know that it has that capability. The LightSensor™ is another interesting option that “intelligently adjusts screen brightness to match the ambient light in a room” — no need to adjust the brightness/contrast during the afternoon and evening.

Another option called S-Force™ Front Surround provides better sounding audio from the two front speakers. It’s by no means a replacement for a proper surround sound installation but if you don’t want to make your living room into a home theatre, then it’s a nice feature.

Lastly, this model has had nothing but favourable reviews on various websites. I hope I have better luck with this Sony product than the last one I purchased.

Stumble It!

Posted in Home Theatre at 11:15 AM