Excellent - well worth it

We bought this tv at the turn of the new year from a sony centre (sorry amazon!) to replace a phillips tv that had gone wrong not even 4 weeks after we bought it - phillips were fantatsic about it and even gave us a number to take to the dealer so they would give us the money back for it, Not wanting to risk it happening again we opted for a sony as our last tv we were replacing was a sony trinitron 10 years old and still going strong; it was just starting to show its age being a big and bulky (not to mention VERY heavy) corner piece. The sony shows far sharper and clearer pictures than any other (or at least the same spec phillips we had before) Hi-Def tv, the bravia brand is worth the claims it makes 10/10, teamed up with blu-ray it blows you away. sony is a brand you can trust to deliver time and time again, theyve worked hard to get to the top, they definately deserve to stay there

A very pleasant TV

To be totally honest I needed a new TV and this being my first is a great vocal point in my room. It was very easy to install and is great to view. The pictures bursts with colour and this isn't even in HD. So far I haven't bought a PS3 or a have a Sky HD box yet so I still have to wait to get the full potential of this TV. But honestly so far so good, and definitely great for the NEWER, LOWER price.
Freeview signal was easy to get just by using a conventional TV aerial, but remember to set the TV on the adequate TV settings according to your taste.
All in all Sony has adapted to the future extremely well!

Sony Bravia

Having used Sony products for many years and never been disappointed this television was an easy choice to make. It was a replacement for another Sony still working well after many years. The purpose was to upgrade to HD. It arrived before the HD box was due to be installed and I had no difficulty in setting it up using the old Sky box and the television on- screen instructions. The quality of the picture is excellent and now that the HD is installed I look forward to many years of great viewing.

CRT TVs Still Keep Delivering The Goods

This is, I think, the fourth Sony TV I have bought. I like them a lot. They and Toshiba are the only manufacturers that make their own tubes and as always this TV features a Trinitron tube. I think the quality of their image is the best. I think their case designs are the trendiest.

When my TV was delivered it was a bit of a shock. The box is massive! If you have a narrow front door you might want to check the dimensions so that your swanky new TV doesn’t get left out in the rain while you get the builders to remove a window! I suggest you get two or three strong friends over to help you set this beast up. Just getting it out of the box is a little nerve racking. The stand that comes included in the box needs to be assembled. The stand has two very nice glass shelves. (NB. when assembling the stand, ensure you slot in the glass shelves the right way round. This reviewer didn’t and, as such, the bevel on the leading edge of the glass shelves is the wrong way up. Doh!)

Putting the TV in position needs care. I suggest that you have one person on each side of the TV and have one person manoeuvre the stand. You will most likely want to put this TV in a corner as the tube extends along way out of the back of the TV. I won’t go into the connection of other devices as there are an infinite amount of configurations, just to say that I have Sky+, DVD and video all linked using SCART leads. Rig all this lot up before you finally position the TV.

The first thing you notice when switching on is the shear size of the picture; its BIG. I found the characteristics of the picture a tiny bit disconcerting for a few minutes. Was it as good a picture as my old Sony 25�? After living with this TV for a while I can say the picture is marvellous!! With a terrestrial signal its great. Feed it a digital signal (in my case Sky) its superb. Whack in a DVD and, oh my, you really do have your own cinema.

The remote gives you access to the Menu and the pre-set picture modes are Live, Movie and Game. Selecting one of these and the contrast, colour etc are automatically set to what Sony thinks are optimum. I have my mode set to Personal where you can set the picture up the way you like. Below these settings is where an important part of this TV’s spec can be set: the 100hz capability. Options are Normal, 50hz and 100hz. Why you would choose any setting other than 100hz, I don’t know.

The sound is good and enhanced by placing it in a corner. The remote give you access to the ‘Sound’ settings and you can choose between the pre-set equaliser modes (Vocal, Jazz, Rock, Pop, Flat) or adjust the equaliser manually and save it as your ‘Personal’ setting. Other sound settings are for Balance, Loudness, Space (spatial sound) etc. The volume of this TV is easily loud enough for cranking up MTV; anywhere past halfway on the on-screen volume bar and things are getting serious. The bass isn’t deep by hi-fi standards, but you can easily rig it up to your hi-fi using the standard phono jacks around the rear.

The remote lets you choose what Wide Mode you want. Wide, Zoom, 14:9, 4:3 and Smart are available. These should be more than enough to keep you viewing to perfection. I leave my setting on Smart and the TV adjusts to suit what is being broadcast. It does chop off a little off Sky News and it sometimes deprives you of the subtitles of DVDs. However, a quick tap of the relevant remote button sorts this out. Smart mode stops widescreen TVs habit of making people look short and fat unnecessarily.

The remaining tabs of the Menu are Features (Sleep Timer, Parental Lock etc), Set Up (Auto Tuning etc) and Teletex settings.

So all-in-all an excellent CRT TV. Buy this and you need not feel envious of LCD Plasma TVs for a while yet. It looks great in the living room and you soon get used to the size. It has superb picture quality and connectivity should not be a problem. Buy.

Great as long as you have a good signal in

Like any LCD TV - performance depends on the input signal. A strong detailed signal such as that from blu-ray will show this TV off to its best. A weak, poor signal (such as that of the Freeview music channels) & you'll be wondering whats wrong with it. But you cant blame Sony for that.

It has plenty of connections - the 3 HDMI sockets are particularly useful.

Although only 1080i (not the ultimate 1080p) it really does display high def really well. At this size you would probably be hard pressed to notice the difference in display modes. Blu-rays are astonishing to watch on this TV - the detail and colours are amazing.

It's not without its faults. When I first received it I was underwhelmed by the picture to say the least - it really was rather poor. However over several weeks it appeared to settle down & improve. I suspect that LCD TVs need a period of burning in before they reach optimum performance - something that may/should normally be done in the factory.

There is also occasional motion blur & colour bleed & dark scenes can somteimes be a little grainy.

Give it a quality input (ie blu-ray or HD TV) & this TV will shine.

Fantastic Picture, let down by extremely poor EPG

I'm sure you've noticed that the majority of reviews for the Sony Bravia KDL-40W3000 LCD TV are favourable, and it is true to say that the picture on the Bravia was the key selling point when I bought the TV, and this was after spending many hours in Sony/Panasonic shops to find the best 40".

I'm only giving the TV 3 stars because this is the lowest rating anyone should give for the TV as the picture is amazing. It's not the picture I have a problem with though, but the EPG (electronic programme guide).

I'll have to say that although text is displayed in hi-res, the EPG is awful. I've had freeview for years now, and even the most basic box I've owned can let a user browse through the information of other channels whilst watching the current TV broadcast on-screen. You can then switch to the channel you want via this on-screen info if you find a channel you like the sound of.
You can't do this type of on-screen browsing with the Sony Bravia KDL-40W3000 at all.

Another problem is that you can bring up the Sony's EPG in full, but programmes display their title only and not their information so you can't view their content. The only way you can bring up a programme's information is by pressing the i+ button on the remote and this will fully close down the EPG and display the channel you're interested in with your current broadcast in the background every time.

This is a useless and time-consuming procedure if you use a programme's infomation/content to choose your channels.
Sure, you can go buy a copy of the Radio Times for this info, but this defeats the object of having an EPG in the first place.

I have no idea why Sony have implemented such a useless EPG in their Bravia W3000 series.
I own a Sony Freeview box (VTX-D800U) and have that connected to my Bravia now so that I can use a better EPG. Unfortunately this means that the picture I get isn't as good (as the freeview tuner that comes inside the Bravia is far superior), but I simply can't do without a decent EPG.

Another feature lacking in the KDL-40W3000 is the fact that the UK model doesn't have Picture in Picture (PiP), and instead has a feature called Picture AND Picture (PAP), where you have two unsizable (apparently the American model of the Sony will let you size both pictures equally) screens next to each other.
In practice this is pretty useless, as you can only have a large AV picture in the left-hand part of the screen, and in comparison a really tiny picture in the right-hand part, (which is usually the freeview broadcast) and you can't swap them over. In fact I don't think you can even have the Sony freeview picture in the larger portion of the Picture and Picture mode at all. A great feature of Picture in Picture on a lot of other televisions is that you can switch the source screens around with each other, but you can't do this with the Sony's freeview picture and any other AV source (like a console game, DVD or SKY+). How frustrating!

My advice is to go to a Sony store and get given a demonstration of their EPG and PAP mode before you buy. If you're like me, then you're going to be pretty disappointed with it.

Mis-tagged HD set yet again

As is common on this site, this set has been tagged as 1080p by two separate people, yet it is only a 1080i/720p set. You're not going to get 1080p at this price range (and probably won't see much difference on a 32" anyway.) Interesting to note that most reviewers have got it from a"large supermarket chain" rather than from Amazon - I just saw it in a certain orangey-style supermarket, which prompted me to come here and check specs!

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.

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.