200hz, Believe the hype! (Sony KDL-40Z4500)

Member Name: Namek_Assasin

Product:	Sony KDL-40Z4500
Date:	07/03/09 (236 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: New techology, great sound, great build quality

Disadvantages: Standard definition not a good as plasma

Believe the hype; 200hz is worth the money!

I've had a gift voucher for Comet for a long time now and I've been studying all types of TV's most weekends. I've searched on internet reviews, read magazines like what hifi and stuff asked friends and finally came to the decision of buying a Sony W4500...Until last week when they had this beauty turn up.


What is 200hz?
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Now this is the UK's first 200hz set to be available to the public. That means that a 200hz telly shows 200 image's per second. Standard TV's without this label use 50hz technology, meaning your eyes see just 50 frames per second. It works by intelligently creating its own images between the standard 50 frames by guessing the next movement. Thus your pictures are replayed with minimal flicker.


Why does this benefit me?
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Think of it like a flip book, with an image of footballer kicking a ball over there head, someone makes one with 50 pictures and roll's it back for you. Seem's good? - Now take the same image and multiply the amount of frames by four! - Your overall experience will be a lot smoother.

200hz will be at its best when thing's are moving very quickly on screen. A boat race is a good example. In the store they had a demo film running with two boat's speeding along, the same demo was being relayed on a 50hz TV and also on a 200hz TV. Now at first glance I could see minimal difference, they both looked sharp and colourful. If you then look closer it is a huge difference, on the 200h you could see the faces of the rower's on the boat, the sponsorship text on the side of the boat and even clearly recognise face's in the audience deep in the background. The 50hz set had none of this; it was hard to watch for a period of time, giving me motion sickness in the process trying to focus in on these points.


The TV's main competitors
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At the moment I haven't seen another 200hz available in the UK at this moment in time. I'm sure it won't be long until other manufacturers jump on the 200hz boat.

Here are a couple of TV's I looked at for similar money in the store and online...

Philips 47PFL9632D - The TV itself is seven inches larger than the Sony and does have 100hz technology. It's a plasma set, now plasma handle's standard definition material better upon first glance i.e. freeview and analogue television, there's not as much noise as you would usually get from an LCD TV. The one thing that all plasma television's lack is attention to detail. For high levels of detail it has to be LCD.

How did the demo look? - Great colours, all the image's are a lot more rounded, the detail though was terrible, I cold barely make out any face's, considering this is a 100hz model I thought it looked worse than the 50hz LCD.

Samsung LE46A756 - Again this one is larger than the Sony at 46". Like the Z4500, this set has DLNA technology. A feature that let's you stream movie's and music from your home PC. I think this set defiantly outperformed the Panasonic on many levels. It has a good sharpness to it and again handles standard DVD's and freeview well. The main issue with this set is its colour levels, the white is never truly white and the black looks more darkish grey to me, something that was evident when playing back Batman: Dark Knight. As a final note the sound quality was terrible on this model and seem's to be a common trend throughout Samsung TV's, you would need to invest in a home theatre system whether you wanted to or not. A solid set, but still no match for the Z4500 on motion or sharpness.

How did the demo look? - Handled motion very well considering it's only a 50hz set. Still no detail to speak of though a high speed's. The colour's really let this one down. They try to make up for it by having a bright screen.


Features of the Z4500
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Full HD 1080p - Great for blu-ray movies and XBOX 360/PS3

Motionflow200hz - Fantastic for fan's of sport and action movies

S-Force front surround - If you don't want a home theatre system or don't have the room, this TV still sounds the business.

HDMI - 3 ports available, used for connecting your HD equipment

USB input - Hook up your USB memory stick and playback your photographs and music on big screen.

Changeable speaker bezel's - Don't like the colour of the speaker grille, you can buy different coloured one's to match your room

DLNA - Stream content from your computer or laptop to the TV and play it
back through the television.


Overall
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So yeah, a great set or all of the above, I'm not going to go back over any points I have mentioned previous. I've had the TV in the house for 4 day's now and I love it, wouldn't change it for a 70" Samsung or Panasonic!

Freeview - Pictures are detailed and sharp, it has a bit of noise but nothing to distract from the overall picture.

Virgin media - Picture has been upscaled and looks sharer still, a lot less noise on screen.

Playstation 3 - This is where it shines, the games look unreal, smooth, sharp, colourful. The blu-ray films look stunning, better than cinema, just stunning!!!

All in all I would rate the TV a 9/10, the only place it lacks is on standard definition broadcasts, but now that everything's going to go HD this is no issue in the long run.

Summary: The best 40" I can find

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