Sony Bravia KDL40W5500U 40-inch Widescreen Full HD 1080p LCD TV with Freeview and 100Hz Motionflow

tallpete33

at 1:27 am

When my trusty Trinitron (literally) went pop, I turned to amazon for my next TV purchase, having been impressed with their service and good prices over the years. I was looking for a 37″ W series Sony Bravia but as this model was only £10 more expensive, it would have been rude not to go for the bigger screen. Despite specifying next day delivery, it actually took three days to arrive (via Citylink) but the extra £8.80 charge was politely and promptly refunded within three hours of my inquiry. Like all amazon deliveries, tracking was easy online. It comes with a Sony 3 year guarantee.

OUT OF THE BOX

It was actually light enough to remove from the box on my own, though it helps if you have long arms like I do. Putting the TV on its own tabletop stand was nice and easy; you just carefully lower the TV onto it before fixing with the four screws provided. Simple. The TV swivels on the stand, which is very useful as I move around the room during the day though the viewing angle is very good anyway. Once done, putting it onto the Centurion Stand was much easier than I thought as the TV only weighs 18kg (plus it’s stand of course).

SET UP

Once plugged in, I connected it to my PVR and PS3 and powered up. It takes 30-40 minutes to set-up as it downloads the Freeview channels for its integrated tuner then you are ready to go. It is quite easy to accidentally skip this part of the set up but you can run it again from the Guide as I did so it’s no problem.

IN USE

The remote is light, functional, and refreshingly uncluttered with most of the functions being menu driven onscreen. The blue Home button puts you into a familiar PS3/PSP style horizontal menu (XrossMediaBar) which has all the detailed settings, or you can use the Options button for more basic choices.

Pressing the Scene button allows you to quickly adjust the picture (and sound) according to general, gaming, movies, sports etc. Overall, the functions and menus are quite simple and intuitive and I haven’t needed to open the manual yet. The full manual can be found in the menu and there is a system update function too so this TV is fairly future proof.

I am not a big fan of the integral TV guide (Guide+), it looks a bit cheap and nasty to be honest with annoying adverts around it. You get a small window of the current channel in the top left though which is quite useful and you can set reminders etc though I will probably stick to my PVR so I can pause live TV etc so won’t be using this much, same as viewers with Sky+ no doubt. It will be useful to have a third option though just in case I’m recording on two channels.

The TV has PIP – Picture in Picture so if you’re playing your game you can keep a beady eye on your TV and not miss the start of your favourite prog. The on/off switch is a nice and light button on the side next to channel, volume buttons etc. Never has switching a TV on and off been so enjoyable.

PERFORMANCE

1) GENERAL TV – When I powered the TV on, it soon became clear that the TV was too good for my geriatric Humax PVR800 which uses a SCART connector and so this will soon be rectified with a 9300T (HDMI upload) or perhaps a Freesat box. I will update this review once done. The integrated Freeview tuner delivers a better output, nice and clear with good contrast and no ghosting on movement, thanks to the 100Hz refresh and Motionflow. The moral of this story is the better the input, the better the output. This TV is too good for a basic digital tuner so one with a HDMI upload or HD is the way to get the most out of it if you’re picky about your picture (and you probably will be if you’ve spent nearly £800 on this TV).

2) PS3 – It really shines with the PS3; colours are nice and vibrant with excellent detail and it gives you a much more involving and cinematic experience. Ratchet and Clank, a big and bright game looks amazing, despite being produced in 720p. I’m playing it through again on this TV, it’s like I’m on a new game. Uncharted:Drake’s Fortune (also 720p) is excellent with lush greens against the rocky outcrops showing up beautifully, ditto the water.

3) DVDs are very good and my first BluRay purchase, Planet Earth is jaw-dropping in places.

4) Sound is good, excellent in fact, very clear but just lacking in bass when playing music. As I intend to use my PS3 as my media centre I will look into additional speakers of some sorts soon.

INPUTS

Amongst many others, there are :

4 x HDMI (2 side, 2 rear)

2 x SCART

VGA (for laptop, PC)

USB (view photos, other media etc)

RJ45 – for connecting to your router and other wireless DNLA compliant devices such as laptops

VERDICT

This is a stunning and very up to date piece of kit that I am very pleased with and am enjoying very much. I cannot find fault with it at all (apart from the messy TV guide), hence the 5 stars.

Rating: 5 / 5

Mr Entropy

at 2:50 am

I’ve had this TV for about 6 weeks now and this was my first foray into LCD or HD TV following 2 months of research. I’ve outlined my conclusions below:

STANDARD DEFINITION TV

The SD picture is generally great but really depends on the channel and the program itself, the main first 5 channels tend to look the best, and from just over 3 metres away hardly any noise is evident in the picture (providing you have found the correct picture settings) To rate the picture quality, if SD was a 5 and full HD was a 10, this would be a 7. All other channels vary depending on transmission quality, the free music channels are pretty dire for example. Switching to the analogue mode shows that all the digital channels are still a big leap over the analogue reception. Be aware that even though there is a freeview tuner in the set, you will still need to attach an aerial to pick up the signal.

BLURAY

Many reviews already here state how excellent the picture is on bluray, and they are right to praise, the colours are great and the onscreen contrast between dark and light regions at any one time is excellent and great pristine colour representation. As modern movies have black borders, if too unbearable for you, this TV does have a couple of zoom options, though you are likely to unnaturally stretch the image, or cut some of the side detail off.

I connected a Sony Bluray player and I find the Bravia sync functionality futile, the fact remains that to access all commonly required features both remotes are still needed for proper control.

GAMING

With an Xbox connected to the TV the quality of the image is brilliant, try some of the campaign levels on Call of Duty 4 to see the excellent contrast and detailed textures.

However I must say that I was initially disappointed with the level of input lag. I had been using my Xbox on a CRT computer monitor for 2 years before moving to this TV and that had no lag on it, so the difference was very noticeable. Using CoD4 as an example, strafing was a nightmare, it was like being on ice: slow to start moving and slow to brake. Switching on the game mode cuts this and it is definitely more bearable to play, but comparing to CRT it is still inferior. While evident on this game, it was less of a hindrance for slower games such as resident evil 5. My problems involved movement and aiming, not so much button presses.

6 Weeks later though, I’m not bothered by input lag. I must have adjusted to it, I don’t notice it on any game apart from CoD4 and if I don’t think about it, I might just forget about it as the image merits give such a great experience! Only steer clear of this TV if you are the sort to want to become the top 10 in the world at a particular game! Otherwise your brain will naturally compensate for some lag.

MOTIONFLOW 100hz

I was adamant I wanted to have this feature in my TV. However in all honesty its really not important. It gives the image a very smooth look, that is almost too smooth. There is a choice of settings, off, standard, and high, but I’ve never wanted to use high as the image looks too artificial. This is most useful for sports such as football, but the TV handles motion very well on its own and doesn’t suffer from those older motion problems that plagued LCD. Hence this was a non essential feature to have, in fact on high setting I found the image deteriorated slightly. It cant be used in game mode as it takes up processing time. In retrospect I might have chosen the model without motion flow which was cheaper and no big loss.

BACKLIGHT

Originally my set suffered from a very uneven back light and major `spotlight’ bleed in the 4 corners even in the daytime. Taking general advice I stuck with the set hoping it would relax down a bit and it did. In a dark room yes is it still visible and may probably never fully disappear, but while an image is on the screen you really cannot notice it, especially on bright image films even with black borders the sensitivity of the eyes is too weak to see these faint backlight variations. Overall The bleed is a mild hindrance and the overall great picture quality is more than enough to compensate for that woe, definitely not a reason to halt your purchase!

SOUND

Its pretty poor though no worse than other LCDs apparently. The biggest issue is a complete absence of bass. I plugged 7 year old computer speakers and sub in which made an extreme leap of an improvement. Beware that the sound output from the bluray films is extremely quiet and you will probably need a more powerful sound system, this led me to get an accompanying 2.1 theatre system (space limitation).

LOOKS

I wouldn’t buy a TV based on its looks, but aesthetically the gloss black is simplistic and subtle. It is a magnet for dust, the plastic electrostatic wrap cover didn’t help.

BUGS

Guide plus – The TVs own guide generally works ok though at night some channels just show no listings.

On two occasions in one day, while watching freeview the image froze and the TV turned itself off and back on.

The TV guide and Xross media bar have frozen before but patient use remedies this.

Occasionally the de-interlacing has failed on some freeview images.

CONCLUSION

With the specific deficiencies in my set listed above, I still give this set 4* due to the overall enjoyment factor, the superlative levels of contrast and wonderful colour and detail possible with high definition sources and SD to varying extent.

Rating: 4 / 5