Stunning picture for the price

I received this 5 days ago and I still cannot get over the"ooooogh" factor when watching a 1080p picture -"I Am Legend" just looks stunning.The SD picture is good and motion blurring is minimal.One warning though - you will have to get stocked up on snacks as once your Sony is turned on and GTA IV is running, you will not want to be parted.Ever.(Tip - get the supermarket to deliver and then you won't have to do the pesky shopping.)

Awesome!

Mulled over which bravia to buy for months. This model is awesome. Looks fantastic switched off and the quality when switched on is unmistakable. Bravia PRO engine, 100Hz, 1080P, combine to give awesome picture quality with both SKY HD and PS3. Sound is through a 5:1 system so haven't really tried out the TVs own. No noise issues with the internal fan. Can't recommend this enough.

Bad connectivity

Whilst the picture quality is fantastic as you would expect this tv does not recognise my sky+ through box or PS3 through HDMI control. So we are back to having 2 clickers and manually switching to various AV inputs. Frustrating!

excellent product and excellent delivery etc

I recently purchased one of these tv's with a glass stand. It was delivered on time. All the products were in their respective boxes, (nothing was missing). I plugged the tv in, it worked first time . it was so easy to set up, can't fault it. Picture quality excellent, just the right size for my lounge, anything else would have been too large and overpowering. If you want a good tv you can't go wrong with this 32" Sony. The quality of the glass stand is excellent too. I looked at all the magazines, shops, and compared tvs till i was totally confused, save time just order this tv!!!!!

Class Kit

awsome piece of kit. picture excellent even without HD. easy set up and all componants easy to use. sound excellent thro external amp and connected by HDMI cable to enhanse quality

only prob is that we had to upgrade DVD recorder due to reduced quality! now have Sony DVD recorder an the systems work perfectly together.

Perfect!

Prior to buying this TV, I bought a TV/DVD combination for my bedroom, costing £135. The TV picture was just appalling, and the picture when playing DVDs was impossible to watch, despite any adjustments I made. For £149, I got this refurbished model with Freeview and the picture quality is superb. Plus, great EPG, easy to set up, and someone gave me their old DVD player, so I have the package I wanted. Delivery was excellent (too excellent actually - I wasn't at work that day!), and I received an e-mail from the seller instructing me to check it before signing for it. Was a bit apprehensive about"refurbished," but so far, so good....

46w3000

Hiya everyone,

I'm lucky enough that my parents decided to shell out for one of these this Christmas. Well, we have been living in the stone age of CRT for the last 10 years!

First thing I'll talk about is the SD picture. Before it arrived, I knew that the SD picture wouldn't be beautiful, but when you're getting a TV like this, you kind of expect it to be, despite knowing that it can't be. I would just like to warn people now that the SD picture is fairly imprecise. I would say that it is fairly similar, or even worse than the picture I used to get on our old CRT. It is susceptible to motion blur, especially when the picture is very bright or vivid. I've been fiddling about with the settings, and the more soft and dark I make the picture, the less motion blur there is. I don't think we're going to get Sky HD, so we're living with a compromise between slight motion blur and a dark picture for the moment, with Sky +.

A couple of tips for people using it with an SD picture.
1) Immediately go to the settings menu and turn the picture type from"Vivid" to"Standard" or"Cinema". Vivid looks horrible with an SD picture, so do this before you start to get too worried.
2)For me, the motion blur seemed to burn out a little with time, so give it a little time

However, I've used a couple of HDMI inputs with this, and this is what this TV is about. Really, when you're buying a TV like this, you should factor in getting a couple of HD inputs. An HD-DVD or Blu-ray player will look STUNNING with this TV.

The HDMI inputs I used were
1)My XBOX 360. The picture on PGR4 was so, so good. The intro video was just awesome. I was so impressed by the picture. However, on Halo 3, there was a bit of motion blur. I'm going to fiddle about a bit and hopefully I can eliminate this. The TV is not 100hz, which is the only let-down on the Technology front. But at this price, you should be getting it. This may be part of the reason for the motion blur.

2)A Sony DVD upscaler, which we got with the TV. Despite the fact that it's upscaling ordinary 420p DVDs, the picture is brilliant. That quality surprised me, I wasn't expecting it. I watched Black Hawk Down. Colour is very rich and when using this on an HDMI input, there is NO motion blur. Obviously not quite the quality you'd get from a proper HD-DVD player, but very good. I'd recommend one of those upscalers if you're going to get this. I watched a DVD on our old player, and I think the upscaler improves the picture by about 5 times, by eliminating Motion Blur, and delivering a picture that is about 4 times crisper.

Basically, what I'd say about this TV is that you should not get it if you don't have any HDMI inputs, and are not going to get any. You'll just be disappointed with the SD picture. However if you've got kit capable of being HDMI inputs, then it's great. I mean really, really great. Stunning. The difference between an SD picture and an HD picture on it is huge. That's because the TV is geared towards delivering you an excellent HD picture. There's no point in having all this expensive HD technology in the TV if you're not going to use any of it, and are thinking of sticking with the old SD kit for a while. I'm saying this seemed to be the view of my parents. Apart from the DVD upscaler, they don't want to get any HD inputs. I might get one of those HD-DVD player add-ons for my 360, because I now realise that the TV is for HD, so use it for HD! Not to do so just makes the whole purchase pointless.

So when you buy this, factor in how much the HD-DVD player/Sky HD etc is going to cost.

All of this was written from my perspective, i.e moving from a 26" CRT to this. I can't really compare between the different HD LCD models, as I havn't really experienced this TVs competitors. I'm just talking about what you gain/don't gain from making that move.

I gave this 5 stars because I've seen what this TV can do with an HD input and it's awesome. In the Sony shop, I saw this hooked up to a Blu-ray player (well, it would be blu-ray in a Sony shop wouldn't it), and WOW. So that's why it gets 5 stars. I almost knocked off a star for the SD picture and the lack of 100hz. The lack of 100hz is bad at this price. But the SD picture is bad on all these TVs from what I've seen, so it would be silly to knock off a star for that.

And the TV does have lots of good technology in it. It's got 24P. That's cool. When films are shot, 24 frames are taken every second. However, in Britain, the TVs normally output at 25 frames every second. So the film is sped up by 4%. 24P gets the film back to its original fps, so you see it how the director intended to see it. So your favorite film of all time is now 4% longer. How's that for a service. Donnie Darko is 4% longer, that justifies the price in itself. It's also obviously 1080P, the latest HD format to come out, so it's up to date.

Oh and lastly, one thing I forgot to mention is that the first thing I noticed with this TV was the sound quality! You never really think of sound quality as being important when you're watching TV, but it's so crisp. I'm hearing things I never heard before. And it's got this virtual surround sound system which kind of works. For me there is now NO reason to get a seperate surround sound system.

So to sum up, the pros and cons that I noticed

Pros
Awesome Sound Quality
Stunning HD picture when used with HD inputs
Good technology in there, e.g 24p
Quite future proof, with 1080P and 3 HDMI sockets
Stylish with brushed Aluminium frame
Large size
Lots of Adjustment in the settings menu

Cons
SD picture no better than on old CRTs
Lack of 100hz technology
Motion Blur with SD picture and on some HD pictures (XBOX 360 for me)

Yeh think that's about it

SDS

A top of the line TV for a bit less

The only difference between this and the x3500 is that you can change the panelling on the front of the x3500. If you're happy with the black frame (as any film fan would be as it contrasts the best with the screen) than its better value for money than the x3500.

I got one just recently and it not only plays brilliant 1080p full bluray images, it makes lower res images liek broadcast and DVD look astounding too.

The price can't be right

Am I missing something? I have one of these (bought 3 years ago) and it cost UNDER £100. So how come one is for sale at DOUBLE that price? Has it become a collector's item?

5 star quality

In a crowded marketplace for small (bedroom and kitchen size) TVs the Sony 20S series really does stand out by virtue of both picture and sound quality. Other makes I have tried come no where in comparison to this which is our second small Sony LCD TV in the"KDL series". The picture is vibrant and sharp whilst the sound, although it won't shake the floorboards, is so much better than other simlar sized TVs by other brands.

If I had a criticism, and we are talking about a premium small TV, it is that Sony have not seen fit to produce a custom remote - the remote supplied is a full size one supplied with some of their bigger 32" plus sets and the light silver colour of the handset does not match the TV which is a dark metallic grey (not far off black) - to me, this is slighty lazy on the part of Sony but does not really affect the performance of this high quality, small but beautifully crafted product. In summary, this compact TV is unreservedly recommended and respresents an excellent price/performance ratio.