sony bravia 26s

This review combines my feelings as regards Amazon's service and also the Sony wide screen LCD Tele'.

Amazon I can not fault, three days from order to delivery for both the stand and television coming from different suppliers, keep this up Amazon!!.

I know we as customers pay a little more for Sony because of the name, but in my wife's and my opinion, this is justified because of the visual and audio quality simply screems out from the set, with small adjustments to the colour temperature and contrast, the result is truly fantastic, far far better than any CRT I have ever seen.

Panned movement in films is also much more natural even at 50Khz timing, and the contrast adjustment through the menu system is so easy, I have my Tele. set to contrast 'vivid', and colour temperature 'cool', even with old B/W and colour films.

HD DLP Projector for home cinema

I find this a very good value for money projector. Bright with good detail and colour. Easy to use and change settings if required. Only thing I can think negative about it is the occasional rainbow effect. I am not sure of the colour wheel speed, it must just be a 2x or 4x as the rainbow is more noticeable compared to my old 6x speed optoma projector. Anyway still a good projector and a good buy if on a budget. You don't want to spend too much on HD just now with tech moving so fast. You will probably want to upgrade to 1080p for the same money in a couple of years! I would recommend this HD7200x over the HD720 or HD720x.

dont buy

if you are hoping to buy this for your ps3 or xbox, dont!
it wont hold up to the consoles power, leaving text unsharp (and i have changed setting) it cant handle black and goes all fuzzy, the built in freeview can pick up a single channel (i have freeview in diffent room).

the only good thing to say is there is lots of colour in the picture which is nice. This is my second model of this tv and has same problems.

dont expect anything from this tv, all looks no power.

great tv!!!

i bought this tv 4 months ago and havnt had a single problem yet. it looks great, the picture is great and so is the sound quality. it makes a bit of noise whilst loading but is virtually silent during the dvd. all in all its great value and an awesome buy!

fantastic lcd tv

ive read loads of reviews on-line and visited plenty of electrical out-lets for 1080p lcd tv;s opted for this tv it looks fantastic with its glossy black frame which is alot thinner than all the other lcd tv;s the freeview picture is brilliant the sound quality is great to there's so many settings for everything so you can play about as much as you like we got a black glass stand and samsung blue-ray player to the blue-ray picture and sound is outstanding just watched the blue-ray the day after tomorrow breath taking most of the people i know have gone for samsung lcd tv's but this edges it it looks fantastic in our lounge even when its turned of defo a 5 star lcd tv

everything I need!

works brilliantly through Hdmi when connected with my playstation. Most impressed, my mate has the samsung pebble which is lovely, except this TV is light and can be carried around with little effort! Very happy with my purchase and have no regrets, although being in front of the screen does make a difference!

Gorgeous telly with great performance

Great looking LCD with performance to match. Has to be the best 40 inch LCD on the market just now. Looks loads better than the equivalent chunky Sony models. If you want a big screen but don't have lots of room this unit is roughly the same size as a 32 inch CRT(including surround). Sound is amazing considering the small size of the speakers. Worth the extra, you wont be disappointed.

Not bad

For £259 good value. Looks good for the price. Excellent in daylight, but loses 1 star for me, because it is our bedroom TV and when the lights are off, the picture has a weird picture quality as the surface it is on is higher than the bed, however if you are looking straight on the picture's fine.

LG 20" LCD HD TV

I to read the reviews for the smaller version of this HD TV. I opted for the bigger screen.Must say i was quite impressed with the graphics no problem with the viewing angles.I think the only only thing that lets this tv down is the volume meaning it sounds a bit"tinny".Use it for the nintendo wii an sky in the kids room.Found it to be a good buy.

Some picture problems

This is our second LCD TV - we've also got a 26 inch Sony LCD - so partly this is a comparison to that. We don't have any true HD sources yet so bear that in mind when reading.

The DVD looks great when playing DVDs, even when sitting quite close, or off to one side. Colours are vivid and blacks are good, and the TV itself looks great even when turned off.

The motion smoothing technology actually works pretty well. Rival systems can smooth too much, making film look like cheap video, but this works fine. The smoothing system does get caught out though by patterns such as building facades, blinds or fences, and when it does trip up there are tiny flashing squares of corruption on the picture. It happens rarely, mostly during fast pans, but it can be distracting.

The built-in Freeview tuner gives a terrible picture. We have a Sky SD box connected via RGB scart which is vastly better. The Freeview picture seems to be excessively filtered. MPEG noise is reduced admirably but the remaining picture is unbearably soft. Panasonic have a sharpening filter that attempts to compensate, but the result is extremely artificial and unpleasant like some dubious Photoshop filter. The only control available to the viewer is to turn off the sharpening, which gives the most natural result but is quite distractingly blurry. The Sky picture, by comparison looks fine - sharp and colourful.

We also have a Nintendo Wii connected via component cables. Although the Wii only gives out 576i or 480i pictures the component cables should ensure a nice crisp image. Inexplicably this is not the case. Again the picture is overly filtered, with strange blurring AND sharpening effects distorting the picture. In particular text suffers badly, in some cases (The Nintendo Shopping Channel being a good example) the text melts into some strange blurry double-image effect to such a degree its almost illegible. It's actually harder to read the text on this 37" HD TV than it was on the 25" 4:3 CRT that used to sit in it's place! This isn't the fault of the source, which I've checked, it's nasty overzealous filtering of the image which, again, can't be turned off through the TV's menus.

There are some other minor niggles. Firstly, settings like aspect ratio are global, rather than particular to each input, so when switching between a games console and freeview/sky I'm forever having to reset the aspect ratio. Despite owning many different TV's and picture sources I've barely touched an aspect ratio button in years so I thought this particular hassle went out with the 20th century. There is an 'Auto' feature but it just stretches 4:3 sources to 'better fit your screen' - ie fat-head syndrome which I personally hate. Finally, the TV doesn't seem to respond to our Sky remote like it should. I've reprogrammed the remote from Sony to Panasonic but to no effect. Not a crisis, but pretty irritating.

Overall a great TV for watching movies, so-so for digital TV, and quite poor if you're a Wii user. I'm content with it, but only just. I'll be wary of Panasonic TV's in future, due mainly to the lack of control over picture features.

(We have a call in with Panasonic support just to rule out a fault with the TV. I suspect there isn't but I'll update the review if there is.)

Best TV on the market bar none !!

Had my Sony Bravia X3500 now for about 6 weeks and I have loved every minute of it.
It really is a beautiful piece of kit with the brushed metal edging and the glorious 1080p HD screen which presents anything and everything spectacularly.
Watching fast moving sports like football is just amazing with the 100Hz motion flow in action.
The speakers and audio set up are great, although a surround sound system would obviously be a improvement, I don't have one hooked up at the moment and am more than happy so far.
The fans which have been mentioned below and in other reviews for this TV have now been fixed on newer models, I can't hear anything on my TV even with the sound down and my ear up close to the screen.
It is an expensive option but definatly the best TV you can buy.
Highly recommended.