very good built in speakers. It is a Sony, so it is reliable. Great picture.

it is a tv on steroids...

This is an excellent tv. I have HDTV and the tv is awesome. It is everything I wanted.

Size, easy of movement. Picture quality. Menus. Remote (its big, but I still think its excellent. big tv needs a big remote doesnt it?)

glare during the day. just get blinds, because in the dark this is amazing.

We have had this TV since 2000,, over 2.5 years now, and we have not had a single problem with it. The picture is good with cable, and with 480p DVD it is excellent. We have experienced no problems at all, and I have moved it around a lot to hook up various components. glare is pretty bad during daylight, but blinds can fix that. Overall, from 2.5 years of use this tv is still excellent. I dont know why people complain a lot about Sonys reliability (I think many people complain jsut because its a big name) but we have a 13year old 27" Trinitron and it still works perfectly.

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no other RPs owned

Great Picture for the money.

Customer Service Management. The 1st Line Customer Service reps are great but limited on what they are allowed to do for you by their superiors

I first purchased the KP53HS10 and it had a beautiful pic! Then within a week or so we noticed when we would turn it on it would not show a picture but the red indicator light would just flash. I called and called and called several times to Sony. They recommended that I turn it on-then instantly back off - then on again. Oh yes that worked but do you know what kind of stress that puts on the electronics? I found it unacceptable and after complaining for almost 60 days with a guy named Jeff at Sony I demanded that my Sony at your service be honored and the set be replaced. Well they found the problem to be a resistor that affected all the sets. He wanted to just replace my resistor and I complained that after all this time i wanted a new set as now I am sure my MTBF on my set was shortened by doing this on-off-on thing for almost 3 months. The head of Sony service investigated and finally said that My Sony at Your Service should have replaced my set long ago. I had to pay the difference on the 61" but that was fine. Had the problem with this one a few times this time last year and Sony gave me the run around saying my warranty ran out from the date of my original purchase of the KP53HS10 and that my new purchase of the KP61HS10 did not start with a new warranty but carried over from the older 53HS10 and that but me 2 months out of warranty. BS!!! The set still has a good pic but I will never buy a Sony Product again because of their unethical tactics and lack of real customer care. Just bought an $800 receiver last night and though the Sony had great features and price I bought the better Onkyo instead.

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Mitsubishi

Excellent picture. Convenient--esily moves on wheels.

Having isngnificant problems with sound system. It continually cuts off for one or two seconds on random basis during viewing. The sound seems to work properly when using the VCR for recording, but is skipping when watching the TV. Repair people were not able to locate problem, and the problem continues. Additionally, repair service will not advise when they are coming, so have had to stay home entire day. Have also tried calling the 1-800-222-SONY telephone number for technical support (provided with the TV), but all we get is a business signal.

Perhaps I'm to old fashion. For $3000 plus tax plus price of extended warranty, I expect the product to work right the first time, and if not, be corrected quickly and to my satisfaction. SONY has failed in this regard.

Size, DRC, good range of display adjustments

Looked awful right out of the box, poor convergence, extreme red push, 16:9 only works on the digital input

Well I finally picked up the 61" after being amazed at the quality of the 53" in the showroom.

Boy was I duped. I plugged it in, hit flash focus, and it looked awful; scan lines, artifacts, blooming, bad contrast.

OK, must just be the normal factory defaults I thought, so I got out video essentials and started to calibrate. The first warning sign was that when the screen was black at the start of the disc, there were 3 faint verticle lines on the center of the screen. I hit menu to start tweaking; next problem; all of the white text has a distinct red drop shadow to the left, I take out all the color, shadow's still there. I'm guessing that the convergence is waaaaaay off.

I continue on to the contrast test ( the big white box ) guess what; a huge red bloom to the left of the box, again the problem doesn't go away when I reduce the color.

Next problem; the smpte color bar test: the magenta stripe has a dark purple stripe to the left of it and the red stripe has a smaller blue stripe to the right of it. I give up!!!!

The store's tech is coming to look at it next week. I hope he has lots of room in the truck, because this piece of junk is going back.

Maybe I just got a lemon, but I'd be happy to hear any suggestions on a set to replace it with.

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Sony 32"

Value, 16:9 mode, Component inputs

Only one progressive component input

I've been in the market for an "HD-ready" RPTV for a few months and have been following the reviews on this site and others. After all of my shopping, I found that the HS10s offered the best quality for the price. I was set to buy the 53", but when I finally went in to write the check they had the 61" side by side with the 53" and I couldn't pass it up for only $350 more.
The set is awesome, in my humble opinion. Playing the battle scenes from Gladiator through the progressive component inputs with the 16:9 feature from my Pioneer DV434 is unbelieveable! Picture quality is great and the sound is incredible (using a 5-speaker plus subwoofer setup and a Sony DTS/5.1 receiver.)
Glare is somewhat annoying unless all is dark, but I'm looking into removing the front screen to fix this. I highly recommend this set to anyone in the market for an HDTV setup.

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Sony 32" XBR monitor

Strong NTSC Signal;Intelligent control set

like everyone else, one HD input

I recently received delivery on this set, while this is a preliminary review and another will follow after 3 months it so far is an awesome set. Out of the box with only a visual adjustment the set looks great. I will have a qualified tech come and adjust the set in a week or so; just so I can get the service code from him.

I hooked it up to the DVDO Iscan + line doubler and DVD's and satellite look fantastic. In the Tulsa area we have zero choice for HDTV. Having only one satellite channel that HDTV isn't enough for me to invest in the decoder so the lack up HD inputs isn't an issue at the moment. The DVDO gives me a true 480p progressive signal and I can channel DVD, satellite and VCR (with NTSC output) into it.

I have yet to figure out why someone would purchase a progressive scan DVD player for the same money I spent on the DVDO? They get one progressive signal and I get three and a better quality 480p signal. I do not know how to disable the Sony's internal line doubler (DRC) and this might be adding to the softness that I see because like all Sony's their picture is a bit soft. It might even be disabled automatically when it receives a progressive signal, I do not know yet.

Being able to skip unused inputs is a real plus and part of the intelligent control set they've employed. Real user thought went into this system. With either panasonics I've had in this house for the past month I had to wait a minimum of 2 seconds for switching between inputs and had to switch through all of them in a cycle. Way to go Panasonic...

PIP; Great concept! What a plethora of choices. I don't even like PIP but this could be fun.

Aspect ratio choices, well as of this writing I doubt I really use the 16:9 mode very much. With the DVDO line doubler I get the same width in 4:3 mode and it's a taller picture. The 16:9 looks a bit squashed. I tried the wide screen Panasonic and still had bars top and bottom on anamorphic DVD's and while I understand why, I was disappointed. I had bars on everything I watched. Top and bottom on DVD's and each side if I watched satellite or off air in the proper aspect. If I ever get true HDTV in Tulsa I might begin to enjoy it but for now and probably for years to come 4:3 is going to be the way for me go. Unless you live in a major city where they are beginning to transmit this signal it's silly to purchase a wide screen tv today.

All in all this is truly a great tv. I going to get off now and grab my AVIA disk and play a bit.

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Panasonic 51 HDTV 4:3
Panasonic 56 HDTV 16:9

DRC makes NTSC look remarkable on an HDTV capable set; except for the costly hi-end, ie Runco, and Pioneer sets, no other set can do make regular TV look this good

Poor set up out of box, lackluster remote, only one HD component input (tons of regular inputs though)

Word of advice, this set is extremely marked up over cost. Make sure you debate with your Circuit City / Best Buy / etc salesperson because they can come down further than you think in price. I repeatedly visited Circuit City for a month until I finally got a sales counselor to offer me a lower price; after 30 different people told me their 'lowest' price, the 31st person lowered another $1,000!!!

The glare problems mentioned in other posts are real, but are no different than any other RPTV if you have direct sunlight that hits the front of it. All RPTV must have a dark room for optimal viewing; light should only come from behind the set. (ever seen a window in a movie theater!)

The DRC for regular NTSC viewing is simply stunning. Although a degraded signal will be magnified by the display, it is not very forgiving. If you have poor signal quality (a problem which can usually be fixed), you will notice it on this set, even if you did not notice on your previous set.

HDTV or progressive video from a progressive DVD is almost as good as it gets, however I will say that this set is not the sharpest or most visually stunning HDTV in HDTV mode; I have read reviews in Widescreen mag. and others that do agree with me. I have not seen the banding problems mentioned in other posts; my build date is recent so maybe this is fixed. I have never had the 5-blink code error either. This set is good with HDTV, but not stunning - it looks as though the engineers focused more on NTSC quality with compromises 80% of my viewing any way. One HDTV plus is that the set will except 3 input component, or 5 input RGB+sync signals, most sets only accept one or the other not both.

By the way, this is one super-sized TV! You're gonna need to make some room to fit this mother in the living room!

The real value here is that you can still see regular broadcasts (4/3 non-letterboxed material) without squishing or distorting like you see on other widescreen HDTV’s. My old Toshiba did this and made the picture look horrible - make sure you see a real regular cable or VCR feed on any HDTV before you buy it because that is what you will be watching a majority of the time, and most HDTV’s look like piss with such a signal; not this baby.

This is not a naive review like others who are obliged to write glaring reviews because they just dropped 3-5 grand on a TV; those dopes usually buy the 'Monster Cables' with it, sure sign of a rookie. When I use to sell electronics, I would always tell people it doesn't matter what you buy because you will never have the other similar items in your home to compare it with - you won't know what your missing or what you have gained. I spent 3 months traversing around 10 different stores bringing my own VHS videos and DVD’s to compare picture qualities with, I even brought my own cables and DVD player to one of them. Other sets included similar Hitachis, Toshibas, Sony XBR versions, and the Pioneers. This set is hands down the best over all value, the Pioneer does blow my set away when it comes to picture quality though, at double the price unfortunately. The Toshiba has the best options, being able to control your viewing sizes no matter what input which is impressive, this set locks you into 16:9 on a HDTV signal, no choices there. The Toshiba and Hitachi butcher NTSC, making it almost unbearable to watch. The good Pioneer's are widescreen only. You must compare the same sets in the same place next to each other with the same source to get an accurate idea - then repeat this test in other stores before deciding.

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Magnavox 32", Sony 53" Vseries, Toshiba 1st generation widescreen HDTV

Incredible Picture, especially with my digital satellite system. Best viewing at 15 feet +…

It would have to be the remote, unless you have the hands of a giant. There is no remote code for my Hughes Network System(DirecTV). Does anyone know a code I could try to make it work with the receiver and remote?

I was just going to buy the Digital TV for now. But after seeing this baby in action, it's time for the entire home theater experience. Santa is going to be good to me this year!

My 4 month old loves it. Disney is now a popular channel at our house...

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1st Digital TV

Good picture with analog input

Only one component input, reliability problem
This set is full of bugs, 5 blinks and no pictre, incompatiable with progressive DVD players which creates horizontal banding, also has the same problem with HD materials

This is a follow up- I finally gave up with this set as there seems to be no solution to banding issue. Sony has given us a product that should truly have remained in R&D department for further testing and refinements. Picture is good with analog and DVD (interlace). However, the quality of picture is a step down compared to new entries from Mitsubishi and Toshiba wide screen sets. If in the market for a digital 4x3, make sure that you understand the problems with set before committing to it. For me, it did not stack up neither in the picture quality nor reliability. I have to admit that as Sony fan, I am deeply disappointed with Sony quality at this time. Ended up with buying a Mits. TV. Check the following link for discussion on banding issue.
hometheaterforum.com

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See below