Sony KP-57WV700 57 in. HDTV CRT TV

So there I was, at Circuit City circa 9:25 Monday night, just precious moments before closing, already planning the quickest route from my post amidst the projection TVs to the front door and the blissful freedom beyond it, when a pair of nondescript newlyweds wandered in our purgatoresque doors. Immediately my heart sank: were my approacher a scintillating college co-ed, I might have been excited. However, I knew that reluctant, window-shopping stride: I had a pair of naifs on my hands, and this was going to be a past-closing, all-evening explanation extraordinaire.

Or so I thought. Instead, the gentleman calmly asked, "Could you show me where the 57" WV is?"

"Ah, the WV; a fine choice," I replied, painfully beginning to usher him toward his television of choice.

"Yeah, I want the best," he finished, and correctly at that. You see, "WV" is short for the Sony television about which you're reading this very moment, and, excluding some wild upper-echelon selections, it's safe to say it is indeed "the best". Hell, it's certainly the best at my Circuit City; excluding, of course, yours truly.

Even in just walking towards the marvelous set, you immediately pick up on the wild aura emanating from it. Perhaps it's attributable to the imposing protective screen that lies on top of, not within, the cabinet, offering not just heightened protection but also an unparalleled glare-massacring deep purple tint (not that you can see this purple tint, of course; in fact, you can't see much of anything when looking at the reflections cast upon the TV when it's off, and that's just the point). Or maybe it's the striking black border that perimeters the screen (see photo), creating what has been dubbed by someone clever as a "floating frame effect", in which the blackness of the border melts into the darkness of a light-off, shoes-off movie-watching environment in such a way that it seems that the TV doesn't even exist, but rather just a floating image. It was my initial reaction that if I were to find images gallivanting through my darkened living room, it'd scare the kidneys out of me, but the effect is actually pretty neat.

And, if neither of those two features contribute to the impressiveness of the monumental TV, it's safe to say that it's size does: 57 inches is 57 inches, especially when your Circuit City discount on car audio speakers is better than it is on TVs and so you have a swell-sounding car but watch the cinematic equivalent of talking Q-tips on your 20" TV back home. So hey, I mean, I'm still awed by it. Don't even get me started on the 65".

But, as any brilliant midget knows, it's not the size but rather what's inside that really sets the value of the TV. I mean, GE makes a 43" projection TV, but you'd be better off with a 43" flip book of your favorite shows. And inside, the WV packs more punch than a glass of the famous Gamma Pi Sigma Chi Busch Lite / Vodka / Fruit Punch Jungle Juice. Start with the CRT guns: the red, green, and blue sources of your image. Within the guns are a series of lenses, which amplify the light emitted from the gun into the whopping picture seen on the electronic canvas in front of you. The more lenses you have, the more refined the amplification will be, and the sharper the picture. Most TVs have three or four lenses; the GE has none; the WV has five. That's sharp. Real sharp. To further sharpen things, the TV employs a 3D Y/C Digital Comb filter. What's that? Imagine, if you will, the source of your TV as one mass of information that needs to be finely separated by color and hue. And then imagine a real comb. If the comb has wide teeth, you won't be able to separate this mass of information as well. The more teeth (or, say, a 3-line comb filter over a 1-line), the better the separation, and your colors look more vibrant than Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker in 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde". Add in the wild Y/C processing, which further analyzes the relationships between the different signals in the input, and your colors are more separated than the 1950s South.

Now, I know what you're thinking: color separation is great (except, of course, the 1950s example). But what happens when the guns get knocked out of line and the colors don't properly align anymore?

Ok, maybe that isn't what you were thinking. Hell, I'm thinking about Shakira right now.

But, for those viewers in the audience who were thinking that, fear not: relief is just a button-press away. Sony has offered one of the most impressive auto-convergence (read: CRT gun alignment) programs on the market with its "Flash Focus". With one deft press of a button on the front of the TV, the WV goes to town in a whirlwind self-diagnosis, flashing a psychedelic Fourth of July of reds, greens and blues as it ever-so-slightly adjusts its guns. In the end your picture is perfect again, and the whole process takes under ten seconds. A comparable RCA model takes upward of thirty seconds. A comparable Samsung model actually loses convergence when you use its auto-convergence. The GE model explodes when you press the convergence button. Wisely, Sony abstained from including the fan-favorite, yet usually disastrous manual-convergence feature.

Additionally, the WV also offers DRC, which is an abbreviation comprised of the first letters of the words Digital Reality Creation, which takes feeble signals such as VHS tapes and sharpens them a bit. Similarly, it has 3:2 film reversal, which sharpens the rough edges that occasionally result from the transfer of movies from film to digital formats. The recurring trend with the WV? Sharp sharp sharp.

As far as getting pictures onto the screen, it has more inputs than . . . something with a lot of inputs. You'll find a pair of high definition component inputs, a trio of S-videos (including one on the front), and even an input for DVI, the bastard of the bootleg civilization. (Composer's note: DVI, or digital video interface, is a new digital-to-digital input that allows for pure, fully copyright-protected signals to be transferred from source to source. Hollywood is pushing for it to be the new standard. I want to be in Hollywood, on the stage!) Not only that, but it also has an input for Sony's Memory Stick, so if you have a Sony Digital camera or the like, you can pop the Memory Stick into the front of the TV and, with the press of a button, a slideshow of your images will rock out on the screen. Not too shabby.

The sound is, as you'd imagine, solid. It's no Infinity Prelude 7.1 surround sound system, but Sony's TruSurround 3D audio system is more than up to the task of rattling your house and ensuring premature deafness.

Probably my favorite feature(s) is / are the different picture-with-picture formats. You can either divide the screen in half, with two independently tuned screens on each half (each of which can be resized larger or smaller, as well as have the audio assigned to it), or you can have one main screen and a series of thumbnails (big tuckus, ogre-sized thumbnails) scrolling up the right side, programmed the display only the channels you want. Both provide for the ultimate in laziness; the former even allows you to split inputs, so half the TV can be Tecmo Super Bowl on your original 8-bit Nintendo, and the other half the real Super Bowl. Wow. Neat.

"Does it have any detractions?" I pretended to hear the guy ask.

Some. It's expensive, and you're paying for some features over the few-hundred-cheaper WS series that might not be worth it ("floating frame", anyone?) Similarly, it is a projection TV: limited viewing angles, prone to expensive damage, and unwieldy. But, you know and accept those things when you shop for a projection TV, and if that's what you want, the WV is truly at the front of the pack.

So, after a sales pitch such as this one, how could the guy turn me down?

Or, seeing as how he came in with a purpose, and most of what I told him was redundant, how could I take credit?

Hey, whatever, he bought the TV, I hate the job.

The TV, on the other hand . . . I'll miss. My 20" might be jealous of all the time I spend with the 57", but it's like I tell her: it's not cheating if I don't plug my own source in.

Ba-dum-dum-crash. Wow, what a great audience.