Remarkable TV for the money

Remarkable TV for the money, June 8, 2008
By digerati "digerati" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews


This is a remarkable TV for the money, with a great picure and resolution up to 1080p (P for progressive scan -- 1080 lines of resolution with no interlace), and also support for 24 frames-per-second movie playback with Blu-ray high definition DVDs.

Setting up is straightfoward -- you set up the stand where you want it, lift the TV onto it, and tighten 4 screws. sony xbr9 can also be wall mounted. On the back are the large range of inputs: three HDMI, two component, one S-Video, two standard video (RCA jacks) and one VGA port. You can guarantee that whatever you have, you'll be able to connect sony xbr9 to this TV.

The best quality of output and convenience comes from HDMI connections (order some low cost HDMI cables from Amazon; my local stores wanted $50-$179!) A Blu-ray DVD player connected to the TV via HDMI delivers outstanding picture quality at 1080p, with amazing detail. It's so good, in fact, that I found myself noticing film grain more often -- you can practically count the grains!

This TV supports 24 frames-per-second ("24p" in the jargon), which matches the screen refresh rate to that used in movies. The visible difference shows up in shots where the camera pans (moves parallel to the scene). With regular TV playback, panning makes the scene blurry and you can't see much detail because extra "interpolated" frames are inserted to match the TV frame rate. Panning shots in "Casino Royale" blu-ray DVD were clear at 24p, revealing some visual jokes I missed before (e.g. the Richard Branson cameo at airport security). For movies like The Bourne Ultimatum with lots of camera movement, 24p makes the whole movie clearer.

Screen contrast of the TV is also very good. Blacks appear black, color is not overdone (though there is a "vivid" setting if you want to boost saturation). Lower resolution sources at 480i look pretty good -- they are upscaled nicely by the TV. Connecting a Wii with the standard video cables worked fine and produced a good picture.

For HDTV sources, this TV does excellent noise reduction and yet still delivers crisp detail and good color. This is where other LCD TVs fall down, and Sony really has done a great job with the Bravia engine.

Sound from the internal speakers is very good indeed, with dialogue particularly clear. Home theater speakers are better, but then that's true for any TV.

I am very happy with my purchase -- the TV has a stellar set of features at a great price versus more expensive versions with more bells and whistles... which I don't need. sony xbr9 is not the cheapest LCD TV in the 40" size, but the picture quality and number of source inputs sets sony xbr9 apart.