Really great for TV and Movie enthusiast
Written: Jun 16 '03 (Updated Jun 16 '03)
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Pros: Widescreen, HDTV ready, 57 inch, lotta inputs, nice sound, PiP
Cons: Weak remote, input label weak, no PC link
The Bottom Line: Buy it if you trust Sony and are a Television enthusiast.
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| leopard850's Full Review: Sony KP-57WS500 57 in. TV |
I'm the kind of guy that does alot of research before buying a product, and I think I made the right choice with the Sony KP-57WS500. First I will give you some advice on buying a TV in general. The most important thing is to go to a store and actually try out the products, get a feel for what you want in a TV. Most importantly, ask the representative to show you a channel that is either broadcast TV, or a regular cable channel because in the store, they usually show you an HDTV signal, which looks 10 times better than what you would normally watch. Bring in your own VCR or DVD player and actually hook it up to the TV if you have to. Thats what I did, I brought in my TIVO and tested it out on a couple of TV's. The people at Circuit City didn't mind at all, since they don't work on commissions any more, they were more than happy to help me. Finally, remember that the lighting and position of the TV is different in the store. There's not much you can do about that, but its just something to think about.
Now here's the good stuff about the TV. First, its widescreen, which is where the market is going right now. Supposedly by 2006, all TV is supposed to be broadcasted in widescreen format, but who knows. Its better to be safe than sorry anyway.
This TV is also HDTV ready. It was 2 component video ins on the back, and also an HDTV serial port. This allows for nice connectivity to your DVD player and your cable/hdtv box for recieving the HDTV signal.
Its huge at 57 inches. I have it set up in a room that so that the TV is appromatly 13 feet away from me, which is nice. The sony specs say that the minimum distance is 8 feet, but you want between 10 and 15 feet to be between you and the TV for optimum viewing.
The back has 3 composite, 2 component and a special HDTV input for lots of connectivity. There is also another (seperate) input on the front. When I say seperate, I mean this is a whole other input. Its not just a front version of one of the back inputs. That makes 4 total composite inputs. 3 out of 4 of them have s-video as well. The speaker are pretty good too.
They have this "TruSurround Sound" built in. It sounded pretty nice, but I use a reciever and 5.1 digital surround sound so I just turn the built in speakers off. Sony is nice in that it gives you the option to turn the speakers off, and change the output of its sound to either fixed or variable, meaning you can either control your sound from your TV or your reciever. But if you are using optical or digital coax (like me), you don't want to do this.
Finally, and I think this is the coolest feature, is the Picture in Picture. Now with widescreen TVs, the PiP is not just some stupid box in the lower right corner of the screen. The screen is actually split in two giving you two 27-ince like, 4:3 pictures on each side. You can even have a widescreen HDTV signal on one side, and 4:3 on the other. This helps if you have something like TIVO. You can be watching sports on one side with sound, and be searching through stuff you want to record on the other without interrupting your TV watching experience.
Now for the Cons.
The remote is kind of weak. There is a VERY limited number of things you can control with it. For my system, I have a VCR, DVD player, TIVO, Reciever and Cable Box. The sony remote can only be programmed to control the VCR and Cable Box. Thats only 2/5, 40%. I think thats pretty weak. The Tivo I can understand because you need a special remote for that. But I have a samsung dvd player, and there was not even a remote code in the Sony manual for that player. And there were no codes for the reciever.
The options for the video inputs were both good and bad. It was good in that you can label a video input "skip" and you wouldn't have to cycle through all the 7 inputs just to get to your VCR or DVD player. But was was poor about the inputs was the labelling system. They had a preset number of labels like "Game", "VCR", and "DVD". Things like that. Most companies allow you to label the input with any thing you want from the 26 letters of the alphabet. I have a Tivo, and there is no "TIVO" label. I had to settle with "DTV" which is close, but not as close as this nit-picky guys would like.
I also saw on some other TV's, which were a bit more expensive, a PC monitor hook up. Just like the 15-pin VGA port your would hook up to a video card on the back of your computer. This TV did not have that. Of course I can get a converter which goes from VGA to S-Video, but thats another $200 down the road.
Conclusion:
I've had the TV for a couple of months and I like it over all. I would give it an 8 out of 10. The remote was weak and pretty much useless other than the basic menu functions and brightness etc, and the video labels were weak. But I would definately suggest you buy this TV if your are an enthusiest and like Sony products. Sony definately lives up to its name in this case.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2300
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Epinions.com ID:
leopard850
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Reviews written: 5
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