Color rendition, stunning dvd and HD picture, decent performance with ntsc
sources, ease of use.

slight ghostlike artifacts to right of contrast boundaries.

I originally purchased the Hitachi 53UWX10B widescreen HD-ready set on the basis of my excellent experience with a 99 model analog 4/3 Hitachi rptv.

The Hitachi was initially pretty impressive with dvd from my progressive scan JVC, and very nice with the Toshiba 3000 HD box. It's doubling left something to be desired with my cable signal, which had looked quite good on the analog set. I then noticed a distinct greenish tinge in dark areas of the picture, and an inability to maintain consistent black levels when changing channels. After calibrating with AVIA, color was decent on dvd and HD, but looked flat and glaring on cable, like faces were actually latex paint. After 2 weeks I gave up on trying to tweak out the green and the cable picture was really unacceptable so I decided to return the set.

I did a little research on the net and decided to take a closer look at the new Sony HW40 series sets. CC had just set up a new 51HW40, and I played with it for a while, checking out both an HD feed and the store's ntsc demo loop. It looked pretty good so I arranged to exchange the Hitachi for the KP57HW40.

It only took a few minutes with the Sony to know this was a definite keeper. Out of the box all I had to do was turn down contrast and color to get a nice picture. Sony's DRC did a much better job with my cable than Hitachi's doubler--cable actually looks better on this set than on the old analog Ultravision, rare for line-doubled HD-ready models.

After a quick session with AVIA the Sony is clearly superior in it's ability to render subtle yet vivid, film-like color with none of the flat look the Hitachi suffered on fleshtones for ntsc sources. Now cable is quite watchable, and HD and dvd are truely eye candy.

My set does exhibit a bit of the ghosting the previous reveiwer mentionned. I have since observed the same ghosting on Hitachi, Toshiba, and Pioneer non-elite models in store displays, even after turning down sharpness and turning off vsm when possible.
It's a fly in the ointment, but a relatively small one, and I would still highly recommend this set, especially for those who still watch lots of ntsc material. I would hope that Sony would adddress this problem and come up with a cure, however.

It does not have a menu item for turning off SVM, but it is off in Pro mode, and varies from strong to mild in the other modes, most strong in vivid, less so in Standard, minimal in Movie and off in Pro. It can be turned off in all modes in the servic mode, which I have done.

Convergence was great right out of the box, no need for a manual touchup and didn't get worse when using flash focus. (The Hitachi was also excellent in this regard).

Black level stays very consistent when changing channels, and channel changes are very fast, not slow like some other HD ready sets.

The set does not lock into "full" when fed a progressive dvd signal, but does when fed 1080i from an HD STB. It has 4 aspect ratio selections for 4/3 material, Normal which puts up a 4/3 picture with gray bars on the side, Full (also used for anamorphic dvd) which does a uniform horizontal stretch, Zoom which zooms the picture to fill the screen to the sides but chops off the top and bottom, and Wide Zoom which is a variable stretch mode which is almost unnoticeable after a while. The picture can be scrolled vertically in Zoom and Wide Zoom to make stock tickers or sports scores that would dissappear off the top and bottom visible.

I am very happy with this set, but would be downright ecstatic if the ghosting could be totally eliminated.

I am of the opinion that the overall performance of the HW40 Sony superior to anything else out there at the price, and fully comparable to some more expensive sets.

After my experience with the Hitachi, I was afraid that a widescreen HD-ready set just wasn't going to work out for me, but this Sony has firmly convinced me otherwise.

Similar Products Used:

Hitachi 53UWX10B

Two component inputs, good remote, nice overall design

Some artifacts at medium to high contrast boundaries that are esspecially obvious on mono-chromatic areas. Also different settings on a per input basis would have been nice. Nothing can be put on the top due to the design. If you got a center speaker that has to go there some home-made shelf-like contraption will have to be build.

I bought this TV because it finally was time to migrate from my old 53" 4:3 set (a Sony XBR) to a 16:9 480p capabale set. After all I had both a progressive scan DVD player as part of my "upgraded" home theatre as well as a 480p capable videogame console.

The first impression was that the factory default settings for TVs seem to get worse and worse over the years. Nothing that couldn't be helped with a manual setup though. MUST be helped I should say...

As a warning though: all modes (vivid, standard, movie) besides the "pro" mode introduce a lot of digital artifacts into the image. DCR at it's worst - and the manual is not of much help to really decide which mode might work best. The "pro" mode seems to limit DCR's influence to the very basics (line doubling). This way it actually produces a really nice picture.

One very nasty exception, though! (I verified this with two different sets) At medium to high contrast boundaries (esspecially from dark to light) the image contains an "echo" of that contrast change. Pretty nast artifact once one has spotted it... The artifact is present inside the TV even without any external signals (easily verified using the menu).

The presence of that artifact is very sad, since it degrades the otherwise very nice image quality.

Audio-wise I can't say much, since I don't use the audio part of this set at all. One tiny thing, though: If one disables the speakers of the TV the audio is still faintly audible, while it's absolutely silent when the volume is simply turned down... funny, funny.

Image source: Denon DVD2800

Quality of picture is outstanding. Very easy to use our of the box. Excellent remote control.

At $3.000.00 it is still pricey

I read multiple reviews about HDTV and at the end gambled on Sony. I have always liked Sony tvs so I thought I could not go wrong and man, I was right! This Tv is very good. I am not an expert. My opinion is just the one of a regular guy. I am very happy with the tv. I hope this helps.

Similar Products Used:

Proscan