Good quality LCD at a reasonable price (Sony KDL-32V4000)

Member Name: ScottishWestie

Product:	Sony KDL-32V4000
Date:	25/08/09 (75 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to set up, looks good, features, quality of finish

Disadvantages: Miserable one year warranty from Sony

My old Mitsubishi TV was on its last legs, bought during the last recession in the early 1990s the colour display got so dull it was like watching colour TV through sunglasses. It was time for a replacement & I rather fancied one of those slim large screen TVs, I thought at first there were all plasma TVs until I dug a little deeper.

PLASMA OR LCD?

There is a difference & without getting too technical here are the differences:

Plasma Basic facts.
Plasma TVs offer superior pictures; they give the viewer more detail in dark picture areas. Response time is the amount of time which is measured in milliseconds; that it takes for a pixel to go from inactive to active and back again. Plasma TVs are considerably better than LCD TVs in this department, so its picture quality generally suffers less.

Size matters, it's still cheaper for manufacturers to use Plasma for really big screen sizes such as 42" and above. LCDs are not so good with bigger screens, however plasma TVs aren't really viable at sizes smaller than 32".

Viewing Angles on a Plasma TV is more superior to a LCD screen, they can retain their quality up to around 160 degrees, despite optimistic figures for LCD, Plasma wins here.

Colour Saturation is where Plasma traditionally scores high here where as with LCD there's always some stray light which adds a greying influence to colours.

LCD basic facts.

LCD technology has been around longer than plasma; screen life for LCD TVs can be as much as twice as long as plasma, around 40 years at 4hrs a day versus 20 years at 4hrs of use a day (That's an awful lot of Eastenders & Emmerdale Farms!).

Plasma screens are susceptible to something called screen burn, which can leave a permanent shadow of a bright image behind the screen. LCD TVs don't suffer this problem.

LCD TVs are usually slimmer and lighter than plasma TVs, also LCD technology can generally deliver brighter pictures than plasma.
LCD TVs generally use less power than plasma TVs because they don't need to power hundreds of electrodes to stimulate phosphors & they won't get hounded by EU politicians who are considering banning 'power hungry' Plasma TVs.

FINAL DECISION

The final decision for me was LCD & I rather took a fancy to Sony's Bravia 32" LCD TV a while ago when it first went on sale. However the thought of paying the best part of £700.00 wasn't so appealing.
With a TV war between big retailers before last Christmas the price of this TV had plummeted. I have a number of Sony products at home which have never given one single problem in all the time I have owned them. But Sony is very stingy when it comes to their warranties with a miserable one year cover on their products.

John Lewis (before Christmas) offered the TV for £469.00 with a free 5 year warranty; Amazon was £379.00 with a free 3 year warranty. Whilst Argos, Curry's, Sainsbury's & Makro priced it between £340.00 -£349.00 with the standard one year warranty, I decided on Amazon. It was ordered on the Thursday night with free delivery & arrived on the following Monday afternoon.

It took me longer to open the box than it did to set it up, once you get the TV out of the box you need to secure the central mounted swivel base to the TV. It's best done with two people, one to hold the TV whilst the other secures the base with the three supplied Phillips headed screws.

The rear of the TV has holes to allow the fitment of a wall mounted bracket if you wish to hang it on the wall, the bracket is extra. I don't fancy taking my Van Gough classic masterpiece off the wall & substitute it with a TV so I purchased a small glass table to hold the TV instead.
I plugged the aerial lead into the TV, plugged the Scart socket from my Sony DVD recorder & switched on.

First option is to select your language, I couldn't find Scottish so I had to choose the next best option...........English!! Then they ask which country you live in, I chose UK, & then the automatic tuning starts.

As the TV has a built in 'freeview' box it only took a couple of minutes to tune into around 88 channels. Once this was complete it then tunes into the 5 analogue channels, once this is complete your 'all set'.

Although there are some main controls on the top of the TV, they also supply a rather simple to use remote control unit. It has about 35 buttons on it but Sony has made it as simple as possible to operate.

You can select channels with three options, press the desired channel number, press up or down on the channel selector switch or use the index system which is very comprehensive.

Once you have chosen a channel you can make changes to colour contrast, brightness, screen width etc. One useful feature is being able to freeze the screen to get information while watching a smaller screen of the programme. It comes in handy if a telephone number or recipe comes on the screen, if you freeze it you can jot down the details but a smaller screen on the bottom left hand side continues the programme.

You can press another button to get info on the programme you are watching & there is a 'smart link' between the TV & my Sony DVD recorder which allows quick recording from the TV.

Most functions are controlled by the usual four arrows & a central OK button & as you would expect with Sony, the remote control unit has a quality feel about it.

The picture quality is excellent & the colours intense but if you view the TV from the side the colour fades slightly leaving you thinking everybody on the screen is badly needing a sun tan. In this situation you have no option but to swivel the TV slightly to correct it.

Sound quality is excellent & there is a theatre option if you want to upgrade.

ANY GRIPES?

Any of the adjustment functions such as adjusting colour, the order of the channel menu etc can mean scrolling through the index to find, you often have to refer to the instruction book to speed things up as it can be a bit tiresome.

My other major gripe is the programs on the TV!! I have spent all this money & have 88 channels but all I get is a load of repeats, reality TV or Eastenders!!

I would highly recommend this Sony 32" LCD TV but it does pay to shop around for the best deals.

Summary: Just need to find some decent programs to watch

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