This review is now outdated. Since I'm now a hardware reviewer for DVD Times, a cleaned-up and revised version of this review is available at that site.

The following review is left here for completeness only.

Picture Tweaks

Sony's typically really good to us when it comes to giving us control over our TVs. Some TV manufacturers now have the utter nerve to not even let you adjust the backlight lamp behind the screen. Not so here.

This TV has per-input settings. For each individual video input (as well as the tuner) you have the option of storing picture settings unique to that input, or to apply one set of settings to all the inputs. On these new models, ALL three picture presets (Vivid, Standard, Custom) are editable. (On previous models, only the Custom mode was tweakable - although it was possible by entering the service menu as I detailed in my Sony BRAVIA Tips & Secrets article). This means that you have 3 sets of picture options for each input.

Let's go through all of the tweaks.

As I said, the Backlight is fully adjustable. Use this in conjunction with the "Power Saving" mode from the Features menu turned on High, and you will let your BRAVIA produce astonishingly deep blacks and a controlled brightness that looks much more like a Plasma than the blown-out, lit up messes that many other LCD TVs produce.

This is a very important, but much-ignored tweak. It's all well and good having a high contrast ratio (which many LCDs including this one now do have), which means that all of the detail in dark areas will be reproduced by the panel - but that would be put to waste if the said dark areas are being lit up like a Christmas tree by the backlight lamp. Some manufacturers have the nerve to not even let the user adjust the backlight themselves. Sharp's new range suffers from this blunder - they removed it from their TVs because it "confused" some people. Sony have their act together and aren't removing tremendously important options like this just because some people can't RTFM (geeky moment!).

Yes, Sony prove exactly how the backlight should be done. Not only can the user adjust the backlight to their liking (and/or lighting conditions), as well as enable the "Power Saving" mode to drop it to levels that produce the most realistic blacks I've ever seen from an LCD display, the Brightness Sensor (which senses the room light and adjusts the backlight intensity automatically) is also an option for people that want easy, no-tweaking viewing. A huge thumbs-up to Sony for having the common sense to offer this flexible set-up. This will please absolutely everyone.

Contrast, Brightness and Colour should be self explanitory. At first I thought that setting the Contrast to full was suitable, but I later found that this was blowing out details on some shades of white and I lowered it into the mid-80s.

Anyone out there correct me if I'm wrong, but with the Contrast this flexible, that means that the TV can produce extremely bright pixels on its own without so much need for the backlight to light them. That should mean in pratice that the TV is capable of producing very good black levels - PROVIDED proper control of the backlight lamp is given. As I already said, on this TV, proper control IS given and as such, the black levels on this TV have the capability to be absolutely stunning.

Now, Colour Temperature. Sony gives us 4 different options to make the colours in the TV look weird. Warm1 and Warm2 give your pictures that Summery fake tan (Warm2 looks especially ridiculous), neutral still has far too much of an orange tint to whites, and Cool actually gives the most convincing whites but I'm convinced that it can be refined better with a good calibration - something I'm going to look into later.

Sharpness. This TV has edge enhancement that is MOSTLY but not completely defeatable. The Sharpness is best set to the tiny figures - 1-8 maybe. Pulling the slider to the right produces pictures that absolutely nobody would want to watch. Apparently, the first BRAVIA models had a bug with the sharpness that limited the choices to either "Edge Enhanced" or "Edge Enhanced and blurred". I called Sony UK a few times and wrote them a ton of e-mails because I was terrified it would happen to these models.

Update (August 8, 2006): All standard definition modes and 1080i mode are slightly affected by halos around high-contrast areas. Sony have stated that they are not releasing a fix for the problem. If this would annoy you, you might want to wait for future TVs, perhaps from a manufacturer dedicated to higher standards.

The Component EE is defeatable if your DVD player or output device lets you turn down the sharpness (as opposed to relying on the TV to handle that part correctly). Above shows the results that CAN be acheived through the Component output. Sadly, most devices don't allow the sharpness to be altered on the device itself so this is a problem. I will post Sony's official response as soon as I get it.

Back to the options. The final one on the list is Noise Reduction. This type of Noise Reduction is TEMPORAL Noise Reduction which means that it works by comparing frames as a sequence. It doesn't erase defects from single frames - it analyses sequences of still pictures to detect noise. That means that if you have it set too high, the frames will become blurred together and you'll get motion blur, so be careful. I found that for watching older, noisy analogue video sources, like LaserDiscs (yes, I own a LaserDisc player), turning this on to Low helped. I was impressed at how non-destructive this setting was.

For those of you wanting to fine-tune the colours, the hidden service menu gives the usual Sony colour adjustments. If you look carefully you can see my reflection in the screen (kidding).

In fact, when I entered service mode under the "Cool" colour preset, the first 3 values all read 256 and the bottom 3 all read 512 respectively. I'm by no means a calibration expert, but to me this looks like almost no fine-tuning has gone on in the factory. I'll bet a good tweaking from an ISF calibrator will give this TV a massive improvement. For now, ignorance is bliss and the colours given are still very pleasing.

And now, the Advanced Video Options, previously shorn from the European models, now present. So, are they any use?

No, not really, but it's nice to not be denied them all the same. "Contrast Enhancer" does the usual on-the-fly adjustments to the Contrast to try and make a "richer" picture. Black Corrector tries for the same "false-richness" thing by crushing the blacks (for example, dark brown objects would turn black). On this TV, the black levels are so good (I talk more about that on Page 4) that you shouldn't have to resort to these sort of tactics to kid yourself. Gamma is a useful option to have, but I haven't needed it just yet. Clear White - this gives the white areas a slightly blue-ish tint. Live Colour - which as you can see isn't always available - is an option that I'm sure I'll understand some day. Sony's manual claims that it "Makes colours more vivid and reproduces clear skin tones" but I think this is a mistake - all I've seen it do is act as a sort of "Auto Contrast" for colours. For example in the game "Psychonauts" (480p video from the Xbox), it would make subtly different shades of red in an on-screen icon become more alike each other.

At first, I thought "Colour Space" was totally bizarre. You get to toggle between "Normal" and "Wide". Why don't you judge its effect for yourself from this BBC News 24 screen grab?

Colour Space "NORMAL" (default)
Colour Space "WIDE" (on)

In this example, it seems to knock the tint off a bit, giving fleshy tones a purple look. Apparently, the reason for this option is that this LCD can produce a wider range of colours than NTSC or PAL broadcast standards are actually capable of (now THAT is progress). I'm sure it has its uses, but the example above is one of it being used in the wrong place. I seem to prefer Xbox and GameCube games connected over Component with "Live Colour" turned on, which would make sense seeing as these games have nothing to do with old fashioned NTSC or PAL systems and are almost fully digital at heart. But, as always, see what you like best because I can't guarantee that this is how these games are meant to look!

As for MPEG Noise Reduction, this is much the same as you get on some DVD players. Turning it on to its highest setting will of course erode any detail from the picture and look more unpleasant than the MPEG blocking itself. If you're jealous at how pretty all the people on TV are, then you can turn the MPEG NR on to Full so it makes it look like their faces have been melted. I found though that setting it to "Low" gave pretty good results for Digital TV pictures, though - the reason for that being that most DTV pictures don't have much detail to erode to start with!

Don't be put off by how useless most (but by no means all) of these "Advanced" options are - they're just those - options. In the competitive LCD market, manufacturers need to put in mostly useless stuff like this to try and set themselves ahead of the competition. So, this TV has just about all of the picture tweaks you'll ever need, and some you won't!

There's also an option to adjust the Overscan hidden away in the "Screen" menu. You can't completely defeat the overscan on this TV but there doesn't seem to be very much of it. You can, however, choose to zoom the picture in further. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do this.

Next page >>

On the next page, I test-drive the KDL-32V2000 with various different types of video.

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