Why'd I wait?,

Why'd I wait?, June 29, 2008
By L. Shuler (North Carolina, United States) - See all my reviews


Bought this at WalMart for two reasons, picture quality and inputs. Picture quality was outstanding considering sony xbr9 side-by-side with everything else they had at the store. That wasn't enough for me. I wanted connectivity options. This "TV" has 3 HDMI inputs (not 2 as the description says). One of the HDMI inputs is on the side of the TV so you can plug in anything you want, any time. sony xbr9 also has 2 VGA ports - one on the side. If that's not enough, there are two HD component inputs and optical and RCA audio outputs. But wait, there's an S-Video input too. Did I tv mention sony xbr9 also has an HD15 video monitor (from your PC) input? How about a 3.5mm audio input? WOWIE! Oops, it's got a coax input as well so you can use sony xbr9 as a regular old TV.

Pitcure's great, blah, blah, blah... but did I mention the connectors? This TV doubles as an admirable PC monitor at full 1080P tv (assuming your video card supports it). Was able to play FPS games at full resolution. Wow again.

Cons: Well, there are some. The first one is the minimalist remote control. Everything is menu driven, sony xbr9 seems, and sony xbr9 wasn't intuitive for me. I'd like more of sony xbr9 to be in shorter menus you can access from the remote. How about a universal remote? I have a Sony DVPCX995V 400-Disc DVD Mega Changer/Player that does HDMI 1080i upconverting (outstaning btw), a Sony home theater sound system as well. I have to have THREE different remotes for three Sony products. Arg. Then tv I have a satelite controller too.

The other beef I have is the highly limited PIP. It's got that many inputs, but you can only use one at a time. The only PIP functionality is when you're in PC mode with the HD15 input. Of course, if you're using the HDMI for PC tv input it's gone. This function is highly limited being a small box you can't change positions of. It's also poorly described in the instructions.