I bought my 36XBR200 4 months ago. Everything was perfect until recently the screen developed color distortion /shading in the corners and along the edge. The distortion is very visible when displaying all blue screen. I also have
slight geometry problem but hardly noticable, so I can live with it.

I wish I knew about all the complaint before I decided to buy this unit. If
I knew I will stay away from this thing. Hopefully my unit can be fixed. I
am having a technician look at it over the weekend. I am glad I purchaced
a service agreement with this one.

I purchased my set, a KV36FV1 in February of '99. Initially it had a tilt and slight geometry problem. I had a local Sony tech in and he performed a yoke adjustment which corrected the tilt. He also did some work on the geometry which made things quite a bit better (he also showed me how to access service mode!).
Afte this I spent some time working on adjusting the set with Avia. One thing about the set (at least the V series) is that it has a wimpy high voltage supply. You need to keep the contrast turned fairly low to avoid geometry problems. After playing around for a few hours and learning how the various controls interact I was able to get nearly perfect geometry in Movie mode. I adjusted standard and vivid modes with increasingly higher levels of brightness and contrast for use in normal room light and daylight repectively. These modes display greater degrees of geometric distortion, although it is never really objectionable except when graphics are shown on the screen (think the vertical lines at the edge of the Weather Channel local forecast box). It is still less than the distortion seen with more conventional curved screen sets of similar size.

Grey scale tracking in NTSC mode seems to favor warm toned blacks, with noticably cooler tones as brightness increases. Colors exhibit a slight red push, especially in darker scenes. This necessitates a drop in color levels to get acceptable color rendition (I'm a photographer and very picky about color). However, the color rendition is still better than the previous two sets I've owned, a 32" Toshiba and a 32" Hitachi, both of 1998 vintage. I intend to get the set calibrated, so I expect the situation here to improve. The need to have the set calibrated seems to be a requirement for all consumer sets so I'm surprised that this set needs to be calibrated.

Overall I'm very happy with the set. The picture is very clear and sharp. DVDs are absolutely spectacular. It took a little work, but basically the set has the best direct view NTSC picture I've seen (standard NTSC). I'll probably end up keeping it for another year or two until line-doubled 16:9 SDTV or IDTV sets are more readily available.

I just purchased the KV36FV1. The unit was manufactured in June and I have not seen any of the geometric distortion or color shading problems that many others have seen. I am using a Yamaha RX-V995 receiver, Klipsch Quintets plus 10 inch sub, and a SONY DVPS530D DVD player. The picture and sound are incredible. The whole system is nothing short of AWESOME...

I purchased an XBR200 about 2 months ago. From the very start it had significant problems with geometric distortion and convergence.
Following a number of calls to 1-800-222-SONY, Sony several times sent out a serviceman from the local "Sony Authorized In-Home Excellent Service" whatever, in Boca Raton. He changed parts, twisted the yoke, twiddled his thumbs and accomplished very little. He did tell me that they had worked on a large number of Wega FD Trinitrons, and had not been able to get any of them to work very well.

More angry calls to Sony, and finally I was contacted by the Sony Regional Technical Rep. This morning he came to my home, an actual Sony employee with 25 years of experience. He worked on the set for more than 2 hours, installing about a dozen little magnets on the picture tube, and making countless adjustments. When he was finished, the set actually could perform, as the sales propoganda had promissed. ("For the first time in a big CRT, squares are truly square. Circles appear circular. And all straight lines are actually straight." - www.sel.sony.com/sel/consumer/wega/difference/index.html)

The Sony Rep said that the problem with the Wega is not with the engineering or the picture tube or the yoke. The problem is with set-up. A properly trained and equipped technician who is willing to take the time to do a proper job, can make these apparant lemons shine. Unfortunately, many sets are not properly set-up at the factory - there is not enough time on the production line. Also, the "authorized in-home service" that Sony sends to fix your TV, because they are paid a flat rate and must give Sony a 30 day warranty on their service calls, have little incentive to take the time necessary to adjust what is a very finicky product.

The Sony Rep who came by this morning may have been exceptional technician. He has actually worked locally on the video equipment in the Delray Beach condo owned by Sony Founder Akio Morita.

Before today, I was just about ready to trundle on down to the Palm Beach County Courthouse to file a Small Claims Action against Sony Electronics. Inc., but now I am a satisfied customer. If you can get a properly trained technician to spend the time necessary to do a proper set-up job, your Wega XBR can be everything you thought it could be!

I fell in love with the 36XBR200 when I first saw it. I purchase mine in April through a friend who has a contact at Sony. I purchased a 36XBR200 that had been manufactured in October '98 that had also been refurbished. The set has been perfect so far. I wish that I knew how to check for all of the convergence proplems that have been well documented on this page. Maybe because my unit has be refurbished, that it is performing so well. Overall, this unit has met all of my expectations.

I purchased a KV-36XBR200 from Crutchfield about 3 weeks ago. With their free delivery and customer support you can beat it. I started to notice some color problems on the bottom left corner bu thought it was just me until I read some of these reviews. I call Crutchfield today and explained that I was not happy with this model and they are going to replace it with the new 250 model...not only that but they are going to pick up the old one! They are the best mail-order company to deal with!!!!!!!!!!

I actually sell the high-end true flat screen Panasonic model, so I am aware of differences between the Sony and that unit. First off (and I am not entirely sure this is still true to the extent it used to be), Sony starts with a curved piece of glass for the screen and adds glass to the front to make it flat! Darker spots appear in corners, because there is more glass for the light to project through. Panasonic has no such anamolies. Sony- three speakers for not doing it the right way.

Great Looking picture, so far

Remote I have does not have SWAP button to be able to change the PIP channel

I just bought it last night at the Sony Outlet store in Wrentham, MA and for $900 I figured it would be worth the gamble. Hopefully, "Refurbished" means that a quality Sony tech put in the time to make the issue areas go away. Last night the screen looked awesome, hopefully it can stay that way since it's so heavy that I can't even think of the hassle I would have to go through to bring it back.

I ordered my KV-36 before reading about all of the problems that other people have had with it, so I was really afraid that mine would be a dud too when it arrived today. Thankfully, mine was made in April '99, and I didn't see any of those problems (geometry, dead spots, color clarity). Time will tell, but maybe they've fixed some of the issues talked about previously. I can only speak for mine, but the picture is truly awesome. Sharp images, and very rich colors, especially with DVD (Toshiba 3109). I'm giving it 5 stars, even though I may have just gotten lucky. My advice to others before buying one would be to do a lot of groundwork to see whether Sony has addressed the problems. As an alternative, there's a 32" Panasonic with "Continuous Scan" that has a great picture.
I really feel bad for the guys who have gone through such a hassle with this thing - I probably won't take the risk again with Sony. Hopefully, this one will last until HDTV becomes a necessity.

I bought mine January, 1999 and it was big mistake.I had same problems as others(geometry, color purity, and
corner convergence). I'm very disappointed with Sony and
their services. I called dozen times to Sony to resolve this problems
and it was not going anywhere. They keep saying it was my problems not
theirs. I'm sure I'll never buy any Sony products in the future.
The TV is junk.