Sony Bravia

I have one of the V series and it is an excellent TV.

I asked abkout the X series and was told that no current source has 1920 x 1080 output and there was therefore no extra benefit for going for more than i have now.

It is unlikely that I will upgrade my DVD player for blu-ray etc when we know which way the market is going. Hence I went for what I have,

Regards

PB

Andrew

Its a very good panel. There are only two DVD players that I know of that can output the signal your looking for. Meridian G91 does it and the Classe machine also does it. It is however only an upsampled signal as the source is still DVD.

I would go for it for future proofing, with Blu-ray and HD DVD you will have a great panel ready for what ever wins the day.

Neill

Ps If you have an xbox 360 then the Hd DVD drive comes out for this in November. I'am going to add this and have a play about with this format. Dip me toe !!!!

quote:

If you have an xbox 360 then the Hd DVD drive comes out for this in November. I'am going to add this and have a play about with this format. Dip me toe !!!!

Neill, if you can find someone taking pre-orders on this I'd get your order placed now. I've ordered mine from Amazon.co.uk but it was only on their site for six days and it's now been taken down. Looks like they've filled their allocation. Demand is going to outstrip supply and Microsoft are concentrating their resources on the USA launch in order to compete with Sony.

Allan

quote:

Originally posted by Polarbear:
I have one of the V series and it is an excellent TV.

I asked abkout the X series and was told that no current source has 1920 x 1080 output and there was therefore no extra benefit for going for more than i have now.

1920x1080 I have heard is the maximum resolution avaiable for HD, so whilst today there might not be anything that uses it, who knows what tommorrow brings? I have had a Sony Trinitron TV for about 15 years, when I got it hardly anything had a SCART output, and even less used SVHS sockets. Today it is rare to find an AV device without SCART.

Think of the future! Who knows what resolution will be avaliable? In the 1960's when PAL625 was developed I bet they never dreamed there would be 50" TV's in living rooms!

quote:

Originally posted by Polarbear:
I asked abkout the X series and was told that no current source has 1920 x 1080 output and there was therefore no extra benefit for going for more than i have now.

If only Google translate did salesman-ese....

Perhaps the result would look like this:

Yes sir, you certainly could hold off and buy the higher res screen, and get loads of benefits from the more advanced picture processing it'll need to have with that resolution. On the other hand, if you and everyone else does that then I'll have to sell all my 720 line screens for buttons, and I have a hungry dog, wife and child at home. Therefore, I'll play the "well if you don't need it, you're not gonna miss it" card and pray you don't pop back 6 months later and see what you could've had.....

You cynic

Keep away from any Sony Plasma (easy as now discontinued) or ANY large screen LCD. They are crap. Stick to Panasonic or Fujitsu Plasma screens and get them ISF'd by a proper technician. Outstanding. Better than any Plasma or LCD TV.

quote:

Originally posted by Spike:
Keep away from any Sony Plasma (easy as now discontinued) or ANY large screen LCD. They are crap. Stick to Panasonic or Fujitsu Plasma screens and get them ISF'd by a proper technician. Outstanding. Better than any Plasma or LCD TV.

Please do enlighten us all .......

No idea about the Sony Bravia TV but the new ad for them is stunning! Colour me clicky

quote:

Originally posted by Polarbear:
I asked abkout the X series and was told that no current source has 1920 x 1080 output and there was therefore no extra benefit for going for more than i have now.

High Definition DVB (satellite, cable) receivers are already outputting 1080i. Which looks completely stunning, by the way.

You might be best off with a display that wouldn't have to scale such a signal down to 768 or whatever number of lines. Scaling artifacts on machines with improper scaling engines are more disturbing than any other noise I've seen so far.

BTW, I've asked Loewe how (and if) they scale down 1080i for their 1024x1024 ALIS panels, but have gotten no answer so far. I'm very anxious to hear from them...

quote:

Originally posted by Spike:
Keep away from any Sony Plasma (easy as now discontinued) or ANY large screen LCD. They are crap. Stick to Panasonic or Fujitsu Plasma screens and get them ISF'd by a proper technician. Outstanding. Better than any Plasma or LCD TV.

I'm with this guy. I have always favoured plasma over LCD for large screen sizes, go to a decent AV dealer and you'll usually find that they agree.

I've seen many Sony Bravia sets and have never been impressed. I saw a huge Samsung LCD the other day and it was absolutely crap.

It's hard to fault the picture on a good pioneer and panny plasma... and they are pretty much all good!

At work we are considering ordering the new 103" Panasonic plasma.... boy do I hope we get it

I am in general agreement that a large screen plasma is a better proposition than lcd.

However my own viewing posistion is aprox 7ft (2m) from the screen. I found that no large screen tv is any good that close. I had set my heart on the 42in pioneer, i even waited for the very latest model to come out, but even that did not stand up to nearfield viewing.

I reluctantly settled for the 32in Sony Bravia v series, but to be fair, it is actually a good tv. The picture quality on hdtv or via nvi, is quite simply stunning, on normal sd viewing its not so hot. Certainly not as good as the Toshiba crt that it replaced, but you soon get used to that.

So i would say that if you dont have room for a large screen plasma, the Sony Bravia is definitely worth a look, and easily beat all the similar size/price lcds that i looked at.

Mike.

Today I have installed a 40" Sony W series LCD - it is quite simply stunning.
Bear in mind, like for example an FM tuner, it will only perform relative to the signal fed into it.
Perhaps a lot of talk about poor picture quality has more to do with this?

quote:

on normal sd viewing its not so hot. Certainly not as good as the Toshiba crt that it replaced, but you soon get used to that.

Is it not true that all LCD/Plasma's are pretty rubbish with a normal signal?

I have only ever seen them look good when fed with HD or a DVD.

Until the majority of programming is HD I don't see the point of getting rid of good CRTs (unless you need the space). My Tosh CRT is better on a normal Sky signal than any flat screen I've seen so far.

Steve.

Steve,

Picture quality wasnt the major factor, ------- I am married, and want to stay that way.

Mike.

I'm confused.

Perhaps someone can explain the difference between the V, W and X series Sony LCDs, and which is the very latest (and best?).

I guess the answer I should give is that you should look at the Sony website, but the key differences (and I am no expert) appear to be:

Resolution: V - 1366 x 768; W & X - 1920 x 1080

Picture enhancement: V & W have the Bravia Engine; X has the Bravia Engine EX

Dynamic contrast ratio: on the W & X only

HDMI inputs: V has 1; W & X have 2

Scart sockets: V & W have 2; X has 3

Optical audio output: W & X only

I am sure there is other stuff which is relevant, but that's what the back of the Sony brochure highlights.

Also take a read of
forum dedicated to the Bravia

and

yet another forum

I recently purchased the Sony KDL-46V2500 BreviaLCD (actually the Costco version with a slightly different number). This is the lower cost version of the XBR series. Absolutely stunning picture quality on HD. I compared lots of TVs for weeks, plasma and LCD, and I found this one be the best for my purposes. I like plasma better in some respects, but the reflection of the glass simply was not acceptable for my viewing room, both during the day and with artificial light, so I went with what I think is the best LCD out there at the moment and have not regretted it. The picture quality in HD is amazing (and pretty good for most SD sources too, at least the ones with a decent feed--it's still garbage in, garbage out for tv picture).

I replaced my old Sony TV with a 32" Bravia HDTV about a month ago. Wow !!! I would upgrade to the 40" version now if I had the additional cash - or sell some of my Naim gear, which isn't an option.

I shopped HDTV units for a long time and found nothing that surpassed Sony's offerings. What they do with color presentation is unrivaled by other manufacturers, in my opinion. That, coupled with a great local dealer and the reliability of my last Sony unit (12+ years) made the decision clear to me.

They are the less expensive brands out there, but much like Naim, I think my Sony Bravia unit is worth the extra $ layout.

Scott