We'd lived with our 27-inch TV for a long time, but the motivation to upgrade came when we bought a DVD player. We're real movie buffs, and we love the letter-box DVD presentation because of its faithfulness to the original movie, but a letter box movie on a 27-inch screen, even in a small living room, is way too small. We knew we had to get a large screen TV.

Decisions, Decisions!

We realized right away that we had to make two important decisions: what size and what aspect ratio? Bigger may be better, but when price is a limiting factor, you have to make the right tradeoff. The first thing we realized was that, in a TV store, you naturally gravitate toward the larger TVs because the scale of the store is much larger than the scale of your home.

Furthermore, at first we thought we should go for a 16-by-9 aspect ratio model because of our interest in watching movies with the correct aspect ratio. At this aspect ratio, a 51-inch diagonal was more than adequate. But we realized right away that most programming is compatible with the 4-by-3 ratio, and that such material would be "letterboxed" from the sides or else stretch to fit, for an effectively smaller presentation.

After a while, we decided to just go home and make some cardboard cutouts of various sized screens and aspect ratios and put them where the TV would be in our living room. This made it clear to us that a 53-inch TV with the traditional 4-by-3 aspect ratio would best meet our needs despite the fact that we had been leaning toward a 57-inch model in the store. On a 53-inch TV, letterboxed material would appear about the size of a 49-inch 16-by-9 TV, not much smaller than the 51-inch 16-by-9 TV we felt was more than adequate. So that's how we ended up with a 53-inch 4-by-3 projection TV.

What We Like About the Sony TV

Other reviews give a lot of technical specs, so I won't repeat them here. I'll just tell you what we like about the TV now that we've had it for about six months.

First, it was very easy to set up. We simply plugged all of our video equipment into the TV, which has six sets of audio/video inputs including various combinations of standard, S-video and component video connectors. We then routed the audio out back to our stereo system. This setup minimizes the hassle of switching between program sources. You just select your source on the TV but you don't have to change anything on your stereo.

Second, the picture is excellent when presenting material from a high quality source such as DVD, digital cable, satellite TV, etc. This TV is classified as "HDTV-ready," meaning it can present material at HDTV quality, although it does not have its own HDTV tuners.

Third, the basic features are very useful and easy to use.

-- The TV can present programs from two sources simultaneously. It presents them side-by-side and you can vary their size. As one gets smaller, the other gets larger. The dual display is not limited to TV signals: you can choose any source for either display, for example a TV channel and the program from your DVD player.

-- You can also get a preview of up to 12 channels at a time presented as small pictures around that outside of the screen while the channel you have chosen is shown live at four times the size in the middle of the screen. The TV automatically cycles through the preview channels, showing each one live for a brief moment.

-- You can freeze frame a program in order to copy down a phone number or study an especially interesting shot. When you do, the TV goes into two-pictures mode with the frozen frame on one side and the live program continuing on the other. You can vary the relative size of the two sides.

-- It's also very easy to optimize the presentation of various kinds of material (normal TV programs, movies, video games) by selecting certain preprogrammed combinations of color, brightness, and sharpness as well as presentation modes tailored toward TV, still images and text, or 24 frame per second films. These settings really make a difference.

-- All of these features are easily controlled with the remote control that includes a thumb operated "joystick" and separate controls for compatible stereo equipment, CD, DVD, etc.

A Few (Potential) Negatives

Overall, we're very happy with this TV, but we have noticed a few things that will disappoint some people.

First, the protective coating on the screen makes it more reflective than the average TV screen. Reflections of bright light can obscure the picture, a big problem if you can't control the lighting in your viewing room. In a light-controlled viewing room, this is not a consideration.

Second, even a high quality tuner cannot compensate for the poor signal often delivered by the average cable provider. Watching a poor signal on a huge screen is even more annoying. If your cable company isn't that good, and you don't intend to convert to digital cable or satellite TV, you should think twice before getting a large screen TV.

Third, the TV allows you to enter names for your channels. Unfortunately, it only has enough memory for about 15 channels. Strange for such a high quality system.

Fourth, the sound quality using the internal speakers is no match for the quality of the picture. You should hook up this TV to a good quality stereo or surround sound system.

Summary

Overall, we love this TV. It has especially enhanced our enjoyment of movies and sporting events. We're also completely satisfied with the size, which is perfectly matched to the scale of our viewing room. Best of all, we took advantage of a financing deal witch deferred payments for a year.

Note: the price we paid, $2,309 plus sales tax, included delivery and setup.

Related Links

We're very happy with the DVD player we use with this TV. To see my review, just click Sony DVP-S550D DVD Player .

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2309