Sony KDL-32V4000 - 32" Widescreen HD Ready Bravia LCD TV

Excellent picture; pretty good sound; very easy for this LCD TV newbie to set up and to operate, both TV reception and DVD / video recorders. I don't know enough about the market to make subtle comparisons with the competition but this gives much better results than most other TVs I've watched. Highly recommended.

Our ancient 24" CRT TV finally gave up the ghost and, as pensioners, we were forced to enter a whole new world of TV technology with much apprehension. Fortunately we seem to have made a great choice with this TV. In spite of choosing the free delivery option it arrived only 2 days after ordering. With the help of our son-in-law it was quickly assembled, connected up to our other equipment and ready to use. What a revelation! We cannot beleive the difference between the sharp, clear and colourful picture we now receive compared to the old set. The instruction book is very easy to understand and all the special features easy to access and genuinely useful. A great TV at an almost unbelievable price. Thank you Amazon.

When you first set this TV up at home it looks stunning. If you have a decent freeview signal then the inbuilt receiver can pick up all the extra channels like BBC News, Sky 3, Film 4 etc etc. It works far better than my old digital set top box. It also picks up standard terrestrial channels and when I set it up I had to manually switch back to digital. Just something to be aware of if you think you've only been left with the basic channels, you may still be in analogue mode (there's a button on the remote to select analogue or digital).

I was worried about how standard TV broadcasts would look on this as am aware that freeview through an aerial isn't HD. I can say that on the majority of programmes, at a reasonable viewing distance it looks great. The set also has a feature called "Smart" where it takes an old full screen show and converts it to fill the whole screen. This loses a little from the top and bottom of the image in order to make it wider without stretching it. You can use the up and down arrows to re-position the image when in smart mode but usually it works fine. If you want to see an older show in it's original aspect ratio, you can select 4:3 mode and it gives the full image with gaps to the left and right.

Out of the box, it's an awesome picture with so much depth it almost has a 3D feel to it. After a bit of tinkering with the settings, the eye straining glare is reduced and you should be able to find a comfortable setting. I kept the contrast quite high to preserve some of the depth effect but lowered the backlight and brightness a little. Some people may be happy with the default settings but they were too much of a strain on the eyes for me.

You may want to change the settings when using a DVD etc and happily the set will remember what you selected for each input so if you change the settings on a scart connected DVD, TV will stay the same. The set also has 3 HDMI socets for connecting things like Blu Ray players and games consoles and again each of these can keep it's own settings. Finally, there is an orange button on the remote which switches to Sony's recommended theatre mode which is supposed to help keep films looking cinema like. This takes the vividness off the image at the touch of a button but you can also change this slightly if you find the image too dull or simply stick with standard settings when watching films.

Now some negatives:

The remote control is not very user friendly and will take a while to get used to. Some of the buttons you may wish to use a lot eg the TV guide are tiny and you can barely read the symbol on them. You need to remember where they are on the remote. Also selecting an input from TV, Scart, HDMI etc isn't as quick as it could be and requires more than a few button presses on the remote. I'd have liked one button for each of the connections, although I suppose this may have cluttered it and it already has a lot of buttons. The remote will take a while to get used to and it's worth studying the instructions so you know where all the features are.

Not unexpectedly the TV performs best with a High Definition input. I've played Blu Ray discs and these look crisp and detailed. Also up scaling DVDS (which most Blu Ray players and some newer DVD players can do) really make DVDS look better and in some cases make them close to Blu Ray quality. Haven't noticed any motion blur on Blu Ray yet but sometimes there is definite banding around bright objects with an even dark background eg a moon in the sky will have slight banded halos around it. This seems common to most LCDs I've seen and isn't overly distracting.

Games are slightly disappoiting. I've played a few PS3 games and on some there is some definite motion blur. Moving images have a shadow that hangs behind them (particularly very dark images) and once you start to notice it, it becomes irritating on certain games. This seems to be a common problem on most LCDs though and personally I think games are best played sitting closer to a smaller screen (I have fewer games problems on a 19" LCD monitor). I haven't noticed much motion blur on TV / DVD but it possibly is there and to be fair I don't watch much sport so can't comment on things like tennis and football.

Overall this is a fine TV which is excellent for under £400. For a small front room this is ideal and gives a large vivid picture full of life-like colours and depth.