First impression: just got the Sony KDL-52W400A

[admin_exported]

so I finally threw in the towel and bought the new 52inch W400A. This is the Middle East market so the TV is called 400A instead of 4000. It is not even on display yet since they have to first sell out the old W300 model. But I pleaded so much that they finally agreed to send me one piece from their store. talk about exclusivity Price is the same as that of the W300 i.e. 2000 pounds. they promised that if the price goes down when this comes on display then they will refund me the difference. but what if the price goes up .... : - )

initial comments after one night of playing:

1. Looks fabulous. Everyone who said that this looked ugly is just plain wrong!

2. It is made in Malaysia (at least the one that I own). Do I care? ... NO

3. Took the advice of the good folks at WhatHiFi and tweaked the TV with the THX optimiser on the "Empire Strikes Back" DVD. Turned off most of the picture auto optimisations. Result : Just plain AWESOME! If the pioneer plasma is even better than this then I really can't imagine what it looks like. I saw many LCDs and Plasma tvs in the shop but this beats all of them. Black levels on this baby are to die for. SD is also nice and clean as per my expectations.

4. Colours are beautiful, skin tones look natural, "Band of Brothers" dvd looks out of this world. My jaw dropped when I put on the "Fellowship of the rings" extended edition... and my dvd player is an el-cheapo sony running from plain vanilla AV cables. no fancy hdmi here. I just cant wait to get a bluray player with an hdmi cable.

5. surprise... no menus ala PS3 as per some reviews. The menu is pretty nice but still not PS3 so i guess that might be in the European model?

6. the speaker sounds really nice. its like a sound bar at the bottom.

Overall, I love this TV. Sony really hit a home-run with this one.

only problem so far, this weighs around 48 KG and my ikea tv table is getting bent from the weight. I will call Sony tomorrow and ask them to put it up on the wall but this would make it difficult to reach the AV connections on the back. However, I have got an onkyo so only one cable ought to go into the tv and then everything else can go into the onkyo.

 

[Anonymous]

Great to hear - glad you're having fun with it. Before you go buy a bluray - make sure to check out the Panasonic DMR-BW500 - bluray reader/writer + twin HD tuners and 500GB HD - I'm just waiting for them to arrive in Australia to grab one.
I've been looking at this set too (actually the older one as this not yet available in Aus) and am going tomorrow to see it in a theatre room up against the Pana and Pioneer plasmas.

 

[D.J.KRIME]

[quote user="Damien Buckley"]Great to hear - glad you're having fun with it. Before you go buy a bluray - make sure to check out the Panasonic DMR-BW500 - bluray reader/writer + twin HD tuners and 500GB HD - I'm just waiting for them to arrive in Australia to grab one. I've been looking at this set too (actually the older one as this not yet available in Aus) and am going tomorrow to see it in a theatre room up against the Pana and Pioneer plasmas.[/quote] Personally I would go with a Plasma at this screen size.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="D.J.KRIME"][quote user="Damien Buckley"]Great to hear - glad you're having fun with it. Before you go buy a bluray - make sure to check out the Panasonic DMR-BW500 - bluray reader/writer + twin HD tuners and 500GB HD - I'm just waiting for them to arrive in Australia to grab one. I've been looking at this set too (actually the older one as this not yet available in Aus) and am going tomorrow to see it in a theatre room up against the Pana and Pioneer plasmas.[/quote] Personally I would go with a Plasma at this screen size.[/quote]
I'm waiting til' later in the year for Pioneer to bring the LX509 to Oz but given he's already bought the Sony set I was being encouraging - it is a great tv set.