Pioneer Elite series killer at 1/3 the price
Written: Dec 23 '03 (Updated Jan 12 '04)
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Pros: Fantastic pin sharp bright picture, beats even the Pioneer Elite!
Cons: Does not break into small components for easy maintenance, pricier than Mitsubishi
The Bottom Line: The best picture for the price (or double the price), probably worth the $200 premium over an equivalent Mitsubishi or Hitachi
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| rhall's Full Review: Sony KP-57WS510 57 in. HDTV CRT TV |
We just received our Sony 57" projection TV - wow what a purchase. I did a great deal of research about HD, the most useful info coming from a review in a magazine called "The Perfect Vision" where this TV beats competition including the Pioneer Elite series which comes in at around three times the price! This is mainly based on picture quality drawn from a diverse set of signals. Their consensus was this consistently gave the best picture against a Pioneer Elite, a Mitsubishi and a couple of other units.
The unit is a sleek looking piece of furniture - the silver unit looks slicker in design than many other manufacturer's black units.
Picture Quality
First things first - the picture is very sharp and sufficiently bright across the entire screen. I've seen many projection units where brightness tapers off at the corners but the Sony does not suffer from this.
We do not yet have HD so reading this review I cannot pass judgement on 1080 resolution images. At DVD quality Apocalypse Now was pin sharp! I was surprised that a movie from 1979 was an entirely new experience. The wide screen transformed moments such as the Ride of the Valkries helicopter attack and other military movie moments such as in the movie Gladiator where we see the ranks of the Roman army confront the goths.
Standard TV was more than watchable. We had feared that the wide-screen stretch might adversely affect standard 4:3 images. The unit provides several different modes for widescreen viewing of standard 4:3 pictures. The default stretches the edges more than the center. This appeared to provide a much more watchable picture than a uniform "stretch" (or full mode) since things in the middle of the screen don't get stretched much.
Sound
I used the sound a little using the TV by itself - the speaker system seemed more than adequate and better than any regular TV speaker system I've heard before. The amplifier certainly wasn't lacking. Most readers will probably be plugging this into a Dolby Digital/DTS receiver so won't care much here.
Features
A nice feature is the TV guide index. If you've seen Back to the Future 2 where you can watch multiple channels at once it's fairly close to that. The left side of the screen shows your current channel in 4:3 mode, the right quarter then shows a vertically scrolling set of images from 5 "rolling" channels. You can configure the system to show your favorite channels. The images are not constantly updated but sequentially refresh giving an idea of what is on each channel.
There is also a split screen feature where you can have two channel images up side by side, and select one for the sound. I haven't used this yet and don't foresee needing to, but in a household containing fans of teams that might be playing different games simultaneously this otherwise extravagant feature may be of use.
Where We Bought From
I did a great deal of research on where to buy the unit. At first I looked online at places like Yahoo stores and Ebay (they do have merchants selling new items). Prices started at $1800. A lot of these places appeared to be regular stores that had opened up web operations. I did a lot of research, Googling for complaints and checking out business rating sites and discovered quite a few of these merchants didn't deliver, or had hidden charges or had a string of disgruntled customers. I highly suggest Googling the vendor's name for complaints.
For around $1,700-1,900 I found very high risk online outlets. I did look into one online vendor, Panwebi, at $1,900, which had consistently good reviews. I emailed them to find out more only to discover but found they charged a great deal for shipping, and yet more to get the TV down one set of stairs to our basement. So while that price on Yahoo shopping looked amazing once the extras were slapped on it was easily over $2,000. Also the fear of receiving a defective TV weighing 250lbs+, costing at least $50 to ship back anywhere (and a 3-4 week turnaround) was a motivating factor to buy from a local store.
In the end we found for $2,100 we could buy the set at a local store called Vanns that delivered for $30 at two days notice. They also gauranteed that if the unit dropped in price at Superbowl weekend they'd give us the cheaper price. Best Buy also sold the unit for $2,200 with free delivery but I've been put off by their hard sell warranty practices offered by over-eager sales staff. They also didn't have a floor unit and it would take over a week to deliver.
Update - Vanns had a special 10% off sale dropping the price from RRP $2,200 to $2,000. I called up and they honored the difference so we ended up getting the TV for $2,000 + $35 delivery. I now have no regrets using a regular (not an online) vendor.
Maintainability
One drawback of this unit is that it does not break down into subcomponents. Some big screen TVs have detachable chassis. This means when your unit breaks you don't have to send the behemoth via mail to be fixed costing you an arm and a leg. The vendor informed me that this Sony unfortunately does not have this feature, so when it breaks down you are lumbered with shipping the entire unit.
Conclusion
For such a large piece of furniture the choice of silver or black may play a role in your decision. We preferred silver and the unit looks good in this color.
Onto the real stuff and with the reservation that I did not have an HD signal the picture of this unit is truly amazing. DVDs I'd seen before were utterly transformed. I would waste no time considering a 4:3 big screen - you want widescreen, the drawbacks are so minor. Also remember that HD signals are in widescreen so the future will be that by 2006 all TV programmes will be filmed for widescreen TVs.
We also looked at Mitsubishis and Hitachi's but I have to admit a little of a penchant for the Sony brand (which wavered a little last year after a bad experience with a Sony DVD player wearing out after 13 months of use). The bottom line is who cares about sound, the picture really delivers. Your DVD collection will never look the same.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2035
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Epinions.com ID:
rhall
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Location: Returned to Northern California
Reviews written: 36
Trusted by: 4 members
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