Top of the line big-tube HDTV
Written: Jan 07 '05
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Pros: great picture in HD; very good sound; all the connectors and settings one might want
Cons: bulky and heavy; needs HD tuner
The Bottom Line: If you want to spend $1500 on a TV, you might as well get one of the best in its class.
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| gw0143's Full Review: Sony KV-34HS420 34 inch TV |
It's BIG
The first thing to be aware of about this set is that it's very big, bulky and heavy. It weighs around 200 pounds, and it is over 23 inches deep. Compared to an old-style TV it may seem even deeper because it has a rather thin front frame (a side effect of which is that you can't place anything on the top of the set - not even a remote control and certainly no picture frame!). In spite of its size, I personally think that it looks pretty good.
The box in which it comes has handles and can be carried or pushed by two moderately strong people over short distances without too much effort. A pictorial on the box recommends cutting the box apart in order to remove the TV - you may not be able to lift the TV out of the box (with the box intact) because it is so bulky. (But then, in the unlikely event that the TV doesn't work after taking the box apart, you may have a lot of fun trying to get it back to the store...) After getting it out of the box it's still quite a challenge to get it up on a TV stand. If you don't have someone deliver it, wear gloves and get three or four people, if you can (but two can do it, too). Also make sure that the TV stand supports a TV of this size and weight.
Inputs
This TV has a lot of different inputs. If you want to keep as much as possible of the incoming picture quality, you'll probably hook them up like this:
Video 1 (composite): VCR
Video 5 (component): DVD player
Video 6 (component) or 7 (HDMI): cable box or DVR
Video 7 requires a special cable that can cost over $100 and may not fit every cable box or DVR (so if you ever switch, you may need a new cable or an adapter).
You should also expect to spend about $20 on the cable to hook up the VCR, $40 on the cable to hook up the DVD player and $80 on the cable to hook up a DVR (to the component video), if you want optimal results (whether the price tags for these cables are worth the incremental increase in picture quality is certainly debatable).
The TV/Video buttons on the remote control and on the TV cycle through the seven video inputs. The unused video settings can be programmed to be skipped (in the Setup menu), which is very useful.
Settings
There are quite a lot of settings to play around with. The most interesting one, if you are planning to watch videos or analog TVs, may be the display size setting. Any video signal that's in 4:3 format can be displayed in that format with black bars on the sides; it can be stretched wide to fill the 16:9 screen, but this makes people look unnaturally fat; or it can be proportionally zoomed to fill the whole screen, but cutting off the top and bottom parts of the picture.
I actually found the last setting to be the most satisfactory one. Yes, sometimes the top of someone's head is cut off, but that doesn't actually happen very often. Just consider that before DVDs everybody's been watching movies with the left and right sides cut off (which sometimes made people disappear entirely, not just their heads!), and for quite some time few people seemed to care.
There are other special settings for video effects which can enhance the picture quality, especially of non-HD programs, such as the "Vivid" mode. Different settings may be more suitable for different occasions. But most people probably won't want to change them back and forth too much. A minor usability issue I noticed: if you push one of the settings buttons on the remote control (outside of the menu), it changes the setting to the next one right away rather than first displaying the current setting. I think it would be better to first display the current setting because sometimes you may not remember which setting the TV is in right now.
Picture Quality
I have seen lots of reviews of HDTVs that just reported that the picture quality was oh so amazing. Well, unless you are very easy to please, it's not quite so simple.
First off, I personally think that a so-called big-tube TV like this one delivers the best overall picture quality of all the currently available technologies. LCD, Plasma and various rear-projection TVs all have different issues such as poor viewing quality from certain angles and poor display of text on the screen whereas the only real downside of a big-tube TV is that it's bulky and heavy. (And the really good Plasma screens are still very expensive - easily three times the price of this big-tube Sony.)
However, the picture quality varies for different video sources. Specifically, in decreasing order of picture quality:
True high-definition TV programs, recorded with HD equipment and transmitted via HD channels: Best quality, very crisp picture, no flaws at all.
DVDs: Pretty close to true HD TV programs. But at least in theory a true HD TV program is better quality than a DVD since it's higher resolution. Make sure to get the widescreen version of a DVD, if there are two versions available. Some movies are wider than 16:9 - they will still have black stripes at the top and bottom.
Fake HD TV programs (they come on the HD channels, but weren't shot using HD cameras): Pretty good, but not nearly as good as true HDTV. Also, often they are shown in 4:3, not in 16:9, but contrary to the analog channels, the TV can't blow them up to fill the whole screen, because the station transmits the left and right frame as part of the picture.
VHS Tapes: Pretty good quality, if the tape doesn't have problems. Main issue is the 4:3 aspect ratio.
Other digital TV channels: Depending on your cable feed, these can be disappointingly mediocre; hardly better (and potentially quite a bit worse) than a very good regular TV channel. They are also generally (all?) 4:3, not widescreen.
Analog TV channels: Well, these can be a problem, especially if you don't have a very good cable feed. But even with a good feed, you may find the picture quality to have decreased rather than increased compared to a regular TV. This is at least partly because the HDTV does a really good job emphasizing all the normal flaws in a standard NTSC picture.
I think it's very hard to make any comparisons in terms of picture quality between different HDTV sets. One would basically have to own two HDTV sets and connect them to the same cable outlet (or antenna or satellite receiver) to have a fair comparison. In a store, it all depends on the store's video feed - often it's not even an HDTV feed that they have; sometimes they show a true HDTV feed on the most expensive Plasma and LCD models, but a crappy feed on the less expensive big-tube TVs.
You can buy an expensive TV and have a bad video feed at home and be quite unhappy. If you are planning to mostly watch analog TV channels and just get the HDTV because you have money to spend, you may end up extremely unhappy. So check first what's available in your area and which channels you can actually receive in HD.
Sound quality
I'm really not a good judge for sound quality. An elaborate speaker system would be wasted on me. I'm very happy with the sound of this TV, and I do think that it has better sound than our previous Sony, which had the particularly annoying habit of going from a setting of not loud enough to a setting of too loud in one step (and that was really its only problem).
Our new Sony offers a few sound effect enhancements to choose from. Experiment with the settings and see which one you like best. It may also depend on what you are watching. I liked the sound effect called "Wow" pretty well, more so than "TruSurround". (This is all with the built-in speakers.)
Price
I paid $1499 plus tax at Circuit City. This TV doesn't seem to be available for much less right now when taking shipping costs from some of the discount places into account. (On Amazon it's $1299 plus over $200 shipping at the moment.)
Both Sony and my cable company (Comcast) will give me a $100 rebate (each) for getting HD or digital cable. I had a DVR installed so that I can actually record HD programs in HD rather than having to watch them "live" with commercials or tape them (on VHS tapes) and suffer a substantial loss in quality (which would kind of defeat the purpose of the HDTV...).
Compared to other big-tube TVs, this one is on the expensive side. You can probably get a 34-inch TV from a different manufacturer for a couple hundred dollars less. You can also get a 30-inch widescreen Sony (that looks the same other than being a bit smaller) for quite a lot less (I saw it for $899 at Circuit City). You can even get a 36-inch Sony for less, but that's not a widescreen model. Finally, if you feel like spending even more money, there is an advanced (?) version of this TV with built-in tuners and a cable-card slot for yet a few hundred dollars more.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1499
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Epinions.com ID:
gw0143
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Reviews written: 28
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