first 1080p tv. bought from bestbuy so as expected we paid about $80 more from what is the listed price here on amazon. out of the box, tv looks ok. i've seen lots of tv's with prettier bezel than this from other brands. but not really a big deal. looking at it from the sides, its obvious that it is abit thicker (maybe 3in) than those upscale lcds or led-lcd's(note an LED tv is just a LCD tv but with a different back lighting). still its fine for me, i was like "does a TV 2in thicker make our living room that much crowded?" well no. so overall i was pleased with the tv's aesthetics.
this TV is heavy btw. i just use the tv stand provided. the tv stand doesnt swivel btw. and surprisingly you dont need a swivel stand on this tv. i will explain later. so we pluged all the cable connections. we turned on the tv. did the "first set-up"(if you made a mistakeor want to change something you can just comeback thru the tv menu).
so we finally saw how the tv's picture looks like in manufacturer setting. the way i could judge the manufacturers settings in general (vivid,normal,cinema,game,custom) i think it is somewhat between OK and terrible. its either too bright, too dark or just doesnt suit to your likes. you really need to take time and play with its settings for a long time.i just tweaked the "custom"picture and left everthing else as it is.
playing with its settings, i thought the settings menu is not as optionated(or finely detailed) as the other high-end tv's. but its fine with me. at least you can calibrate the options that really makes the difference.
so after hours of calibrating the tv, we finally got over it. and i liked what i saw. the tv's picture quality is very comparable to those priced way more than this. the viewing angle is plasma like, very wide. the picture looks very good even from the wider angles. you will not even need swivel stands(but still having that would be better). i watched football and basketball on espnhd and it looked great, the colors are very acurate and you can see the benifits of having a 120hz refresh rate(i think a 60hz is ok, but a 240hz imo is just not worth it[thats just me]). HBOhd, hd movies and boxing looks fantastic. HD channels looks awesome and will make you think you got more than you paid for. i cant say the same for SD channels, well its just sd anyways. (i heard bravia with its "bravia engine" improves SD qualities better than this, but idk maybe its just a sony marketting gimmick and like $250 more). sound from this tv was good enough for me, very clear. overall we are very happy with the tv's performance. like brett favre said on his commercial "you will pay more but you wont get more". this tv definitely has a great balance between price and picture quality.
other things about this tv:
has 3 HDMI inputs(2 back, 1 side)
a SD card slot(uncommon for many sub $700 tv's, tho i prefer having a USB port instead of this)
PC input
ole RCA cable input
speakers are at the bottom.
takes about 5secs to show picture after pressing power button.
and oh dont get ripped off by buying those $40 HDMI cables.. $15 for a HDMI cable is actually too much.
so my preliminary review ends here. i will update this in the future..
UPDATE****11-07-2010****
initially gave the tv 5 stars. now its 4. though personally i will give this tv 4.5 stars.(rounding it to 5 seems too much, the tv isnt perfect)
the picture quality is great, i see some moments where i think the color(red) is a bit off, its just i cant seem to find the right balance in the settings. im still in the process of tweaking the settings.
*****12-03-2010*****
i have noticed that at times the feature "Motion pro 4" is better turned off. and as the other reviewer has stated, it doesnt have a 1:1 pixel mapping on 720p. and as a result of this you can only view about 95% of the picture.. it is like the tv zooms in on 720p images, so you cant see the 5% of the pictures edges.. 5% loss of viewing area may seem unnoticeable, but its not. when i noticed this its a bit surprising how much picture is lost. but with all that said im still very fine with this tv.
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