Sony Bravia KDL37EX503U 37-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p 100Hz LCD TV with Freeview HD

Richard Allen

at 6:35 am

After months of research, consideration and pondering, I finally made the decision to buy the Sony KDX37EX503. And after a couple of weeks of ownership, I’m VERY relieved to say it’s five stars.

The first question for me was whether to buy an LCD at all. For a long time now I’ve been pretty convinced that the industry’s replacement of the CRT with LCD was primarily a marketing drive for the benefit of the manufacturers. We’ve owned a 28″ Panasonic CRT for the last eight years, and it can’t be faulted. I purchased it just as CRTs were being withdrawn, and for me there was no comparison. CRT gave me a fresh, bright picture, with no distortion and, most importantly, no blurring. By comparison, the LCDs looked really poor. I understand there’s still quite a hard-core following for CRT out there, and based on my comparisons until very recently, I was in that camp.

So, what persuaded me the change my mind? Two things really. The first was Blu-ray. Watching a Blu-ray movie on a good LCD/Plasma is very impressive. Certainly a huge leap from DVD. The second was Freeview HD. We’re lucky enough to live in one of the first regions to provide HD on terrestrial. Whilst I was still unconvinced by the quality of SD on an LCD, HD did seem worth having, particularly as BBC and ITV have started showing movies in HD. So I decided to take the plunge.

The next question was what to buy. I had already decided that I wanted a built-in Freeview HD tuner. That limited my choice somewhat. I preferred LCD over Plasma due to running costs and longevity. I reckon 3D is just a fad (as it has been in cinema over the years) and there are very few LED’s with a built-in HD tuner. So I visited the local electrical stores to check them out, which proved to be a complete waste of time. Why do the stores have dozens of TVs on show that aren’t correctly tuned? How can you make a decision based on picture quality when they have £1,000 sets so badly tuned that it’s like watching through a snowstorm? Hopeless. So apart from deciding that 37″ was the correct screen size for me, the shops were no help at all.

So I fell back on an approach that’s served me well over the years; when in doubt, buy Sony or Panasonic. That pretty much left me with on-line reviews , and after lots of study and consideration, I chose this Sony.

Now the important bit; what do I think of the TV? As you expect these days, setup is very simple. Ten minutes to get it out of the box and on the stand, five minutes for it to tune itself in. Picture quality on HD is excellent, every bit as good as I hoped. Colours are vivid (better than CRT) and well defined. The sense of depth you get is very impressive and the contrast with the blacks is very good. SD is surprisingly good most of the time, although with some programmes there is noticeable pixelation, particularly with detailed, multi-colour images. I suspect that may be a feature of the broadcast image. Sound quality is also very good, although perhaps not as well defined as I’ve noticed with a friend’s Panasonic.

What else? It looks very elegant. The EPG is very good. You have the usual wealth of setup options to play with, which I will get around to one day.

I also took the step of purchasing the UWA-BR100 wireless dongle to connect to my WiFi. Setup of this took me about an hour (thanks Sony for providing almost no documentation). It works very well considering my broadband speed is only about 2mb. My only complaint is that I expected it to work with BBC iPlayer. It turns out this isn’t yet available with Bravia TVs, but works with the Sony BDPS370 that I also bought, so not a major problem.

So overall, an excellent TV. If you’re like me, and thinking whether it’s time to make that upgrade, then I’d highly recommend it.
Rating: 5 / 5