This review is now outdated.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.

Panel Performance

In a word - great! My old LCD WEGA from 2004 was once again the basis for comparison. Unsurprisingly, this new model wipes the floor with it. The 2004 version had a panel that was, I believe, produced by LG-Philips. Now that Sony have partnered with Samsung and jointly own the S-LCD factory with them, S-LCD panels are being used (as they have been since the launch of BRAVIA).

The 2004 TV suffered greatly from pure black and pure white objects leaving weird liquid trails. The best example of this was on Super Mario World - a game on the Super NES that features big thick outlines around almost everything. These dragged like crazy on the 2004 TV. See the difference for yourself:

Motion blur on the new BRAVIA is reduced to a trace. If you only watch films (that run either at 24 or 25 frames per second) then you'll probably not ever see any lag on this panel. If you play a fast 60fps video game, you might notice a slight trace, particularly on jet black objects - but it's not by any means unexpected. It's a tremendous improvement in a short space of time. Perhaps in another 2 years we'll have 100% ghost-free panels?

I should add that my panel came with one dead (constantly black) pixel in the bottom right of the screen. Luckily, the store I bought it from agreed to swap out the TV provided I paid the £25 collection charge - not exactly a bad price for a pixel perfect screen! The store, by the way, was CheapElectricals.co.uk.

There is NO backlight bleeding, "mure" effect, "hot-spots" - whatever you want to call it. The panel was uniformly black from the second it was switched on.

Live Colour Creation

UPDATED (May 12, 2006): Originally, I wasn't convinced about Live Colour Creation. After one day, I'm actually starting to appreciate it. Comparing the reds and greens to the panel on my older LCD showed that they were in fact far deeper and far more convincing. It's a brilliant finishing touch, but not a knock-your-socks-off instantly effect. Reds do look blood red when the source material demands it. Greens look really rich and good enough to eat! The blues - like on Stimpy's nose in the Ren & Stimpy Show - look really deep like they do on a CRT.

Puzzlingly, all the branding stickers slapped on the TV make no reference at all to Live Colour Creation. Instead, it's stickered with "WCG-CCFL", which must mean that Live Colour Creation is an enhancement to the WCG-CCFL system. I'd like Sony to explain exactly what makes Live Colour Creation to us!

If you want to see some examples of Live Colour Creation, head over to my post at the AV Forums (no login needed). Look at the shots from "Mulan" and "Psychonauts" especially.

Integrated Digital Tuner

Pressing the "Book" icon on the remote brings up the Electronic Programme Guide.

People that owned Sony's VTXD8000U separate Freeview set-top box will recognise the interface. It's the same thing, but now the screen is slightly more crowded and the colours have been changed to match the rest of the new BRAVIA menus. I'm glad they got rid of the bizarre vomit-yellow EPG menus they had on the last BRAVIAs.

A welcome improvement over the stand-alone set top box is that by pressing a button on the remote, you can skip forward 1 day in the EPG. This was a pain for me on my old decoder because I had to hold down the Right arrow button for a minute or two to see if a programme I wanted to watch was on next week as well. Selecting a programme in the EPG on the old standalone decoder would instantly switch to that channel. On the digital tuner in this TV, selecting a programme brings up an "Action List". The default option is the bafflingly named "Tune" which should really be a more user-friendly "Watch now" or "Switch to channel" or something. There's also "Timer REC" and "Manual timer REC". As far as I'm concerned, that's backwards design - there should have been a separate Record button on the remote control to do this, rather than a seperate menu popping up.

There's also a few other steps backward in the design area. The EPG doesn't show the full text of most of the programme names - for example, "The Simpso...". The VTXD800U would show more info about the highlighted programme - including the full name and description - at the top of the screen. On the new TV the entire screen is taken up with the programme guide. Also, when you pressed the INFO button on the VTXD800U, you'd get the programme info shown over the video. That's still here - but on the VTXD8000U, you could press the Up and Down buttons to see programme names and info of what was going on on other channels. What happened to that? Strange. Still, it's not really a big deal, I'm just keeping Sony on their toes here.

Unfortunately, the digital tuner isn't quite as fast to respond as the VTXD800U. Combine that with the new-style Sony remote, and the interface feels a little clunkier. It still does the job, but it's a pity that it feels a bit less responsive.

"Interactive" features work well. The response is only just slower than Sony's separate Freeview decoder.

All in all, the implementation of the DVB tuner is no worse than on any other "big brand" LCD TV I've used. But, it's clear that it's been designed by different people and has been added in for the European market. That sounds obvious, since DVB isn't used for digital broadcasting outside Europe and Australasia, but stay with me. Selecting "Digital Set Up" from the settings menu takes you to a separate menu with slightly different aesthetics. Compare this to the the American models which had their digital TV setup menus included as part as the standard TV menus. It's not a big deal, but it is a little messier.

Other Features

The remote has as "Freeze" button on the top row. One press of this will freeze the main picture on-screen and bring up a smaller window at the bottom left which continues to move. Pressing the Freeze button again will remove the smaller window and only show the original still frame. Freezing an interlaced source typically shows up deinterlacing artefacts that aren't there when the picture isn't frozen - and didn't show up on the freeze mode of the older LCD WEGAs. Hmm. No big deal of course, I only mention it because it makes taking pictures of the TV strutting its stuff a little more challenging!

Pressing the "Tools" button on the bottom-right of the directional pad brings up some handy options in the top-right of the screen.

This lets you adjust the Power Saving function (which I recommend leaving on full for the best black levels and an overall brightness that looks more like a Plasma or CRT), and the Subtitle Setting, which gives a short-cut into the Digital TV setup menu to allow Subs to be turned On, Off, or to the Hard of Hearing setting (if offered by the broadcaster). The "added in for Europe" nature of the DVB tuner shows up again here, because it's just that - a shortcut to the menu. After you've selected what subtitles you want, you have to exit the menu manually. Ideally there'd be a subtitle button on the remote.

There's also a shortcut to your Digital Favourites, which calls up a list of your favourite channels (as defined by you). Picture Mode lets you toggle between the three picture preset options. That could be useful for people with SKY (digital satellite for all you international people) who want to make two picture presets, one for higher quality channels, and one with aggressive noise reduction for the poor quality ones.

However, "Picture Mode" had it's own button on previous BRAVIAs and LCD WEGAs which I already mentioned at the start of this review. This was a great feature so I don't know why Sony had to go and hide it away in a "Tools" menu, even if it is easy to access.

There's also options to adjust the Sound Preset, Sleep Timer, and Headphone output Volume.

Pressing the button in the middle of the directional pad brings up a menu that lets you quickly jump to the video input of your choice (or to the Digital TV tuner).

It's a great feature and it's a big step up from the WEGA models where you had to press the Video Input button to slowly cycle through all of the inputs. Of course, if you want to do that, you can still press the Video Input button, now located at the top left of the remote control.

The audio output is fixed - and my solution

On the LCD WEGA, connecting the audio outputs up to my (stereo) amplifier meant that I could literally turn the amp on and hide it away under my desk. My TV's remote would control the volume, muting, etc. But, the audio output on this TV is fixed, meaning it'll constantly output at the same volume. Even muting the sound on the remote will have no effect on the output. The American S2000 models have an option in the menus to toggle the audio output between "Fixed" and "Normal", which isn't on the European versions. I called Sony UK Central Service and asked if this could be added via a firmware upgrade, but they didn't seem too bothered. Personally I think there should be the option, but never mind - I came up with a fix!

To get the same effect, I connected the Headphone output up to my amp using a 3.5mm to RCA/Phono adapter and turned "Speaker Link" on in the menus. Voila! The volume and muting is now adjustable with the TV remote and I no longer have to adjust the volume on the amp with my left toe! (Yes, I'm the genius who bought an amp without a remote). There is no loss in quality using this method.

But doesn't that mean you have a big ugly cable sticking out the left of the TV, you ask? Yes, but it's not visible. Sony clevery made the side AV inputs hidden slightly away behind the back of the TV so when they're not being used they might as well be invisible.

The Set-Up menu also features options to assign labels to video inputs (for example calling an input "DVD" instead of "AV3"), Power Saving options (very important), Light Sensor On/Off, Quiet Power On (which gradually ups the volume after turning the TV on), Speaker On/Off (which I set to Off because I use my own external speakers) and an option to change what signal the second SCART terminal outputs, which is limited to what's on TV, what's connected to the first SCART input, or what's connected to the side S-Video/AV jacks.

Built in speakers

The speakers built into this TV are tinny. I definitely recommend hooking up your own. I won't say much more about them because I have them permanently turned off, with the audio fed to my Mission M71s. That said, the speakers are very unobtrusive and are placed in a very thin strip below the screen.

Next page >>

On the final page, I look at the connectivity. (Ouchhhhh!)

Unreadably small print: Design © 2005 by Lyris (me). I make no claim to any other properties or trademarks mentioned. NOT AFFILIATED with Lyris Technologies, an e-mail marketing software provider.