After having a 20" Sony tube television for about 5 years, I decided it was time to upgrade. After seeing this television on sale at Future Shop I decided why not, give it a shot. Read some short reviews, and decided the aesthetics (Sony always gets these right) were perfect for the room it was going in.. I went ahead and placed the order.

The box is HUGE. It will not fit in a standard SUV, I rented a pickup truck to avoid the 50$ delivery charge. When transporting it, ensure it stays right side up, those chips are highly sensitive.

Unpacking was a cinch. Literally I took the box apart, plugged the TV in and turned it on... The TV did some diagnostics and I was running.

So now I will go through 4 different types of picture signals:

1) Satellite HD (ExpressVu)

The picture quality is best at 720p. I think the television itself takes any 1080i signal and converts it to native resolution anyways, so be sure to set your box accordingly.

Unlike most HDTVs SD does not look like garbage, although it's not nearly as good as tube SD, it still looks a lot better than a standard LCD or Plasma panel.

2) DVD
DVD just looks stunning, high bitrate dvds are the best. The colours are vivid, and bright. There is one issue, black colours and dark skin. From what I've read this is standard across most LCD projection TV's. However with some careful tuning and an HDMI input (this gives you advanced tuning options) you can tune this to look much better. Be sure to use the Advanced Iris feature. One thing that it is missing is sort of an "intelligent-auto best picture function".

3) Blu-Ray
No skipping no pixelation, again be sure your blu-ray player is set to 720p, 1080i I didn't like, but this may depend on the type of movie you're watching. The black issue was a lot less existent on the Blu-Ray.

4) Playstation 3.
No pixelation or clipping. Smooth, be sure to use the HDMI interface. One of the beauty features of this tv is the Optical Audio out. So if your receiver does not have HDMI then you can just run an optical out cable from the television to the receiver.

Which brings us onto our next topic, sound.

With a slew of options to control audio, bass, treble, bbe, Trusurround XT... The controls are there, but the tinny speakers are as well. The sound is almost there, but not quite. Be sure to get a good receiver and speakers, mine is Yamaha, albeit an older THX model it's still great. However if you do not correctly set up the sound output of your HDMI device, the television will display "Unsupported Audio Signal".

The TV has a clock, sleep timer, all the standard stuff, you can program it to skip inputs and label the inputs as you wish. You cannot skip the cable input (weird). The display is very smooth and user friendly, it doesn't look cheesy either, and you can changed the colours.

The front panel buttons are neatly hidden away in a slide down contraption so no need to worry about breaking the cover off.

The remote is fully functional, and can support just about ANY other electronic device, including DVR, PVR, and DVD recorders. And my 10 year old Sony remote works with this television. How cool!

Bottom line, for a very good value this TV is great. You will need a receiver for the whole theatre experience.