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110 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An awesome HD ready TV that looks great with DVD too, 21 Aug 2008
I've just bought the KDL40V4000 as part of a (slow) move to HD across my ageing home cinema system, and I'm absolutely delighted with it. I'm glad I finally decided to buy just after the V4000 replaced the Sony V3000 and V3500 models I've been looking at all year. I tend to be a Sony fan for TVs, having had a long history of reliable models over the years, although I've also bought Panasonic, JVC Toshiba and even Samsung in the past. I looked at all of the available models, and although it was close the Sony picture kept looking the best in the various showrooms. Then a favourable, 5 star What Hifi review pushed me over the edge. For me, this 40 inch LCD TV replaces a JVC 32inch widescreen TV, which looks and feels like a monster alongside the latest LCD technology (not looking forward to carrying that up to the bedroom where it's going next!). The new slim TV, when fitted on an Alphason ST600 90 stand takes up pretty much the same footprint as the JVC, sitting between the two stacks of my hifi/av system. The simple and elegant piano black styling is a definite improvement over the earlier models, and it looks very stylish (except for that big mess of cables to my particular hifi configuration that are now in view - have to think of a solution for that). I couldn't stretch my budget to the W or higher models which have some extra bells, whistles and processing, but this TV has all of the things I wanted - 1920x1080 resolution / 1080p, 24p for true cinema, enough HDMI inputs (3), PC connectivity (just in case), and Freeview.
Eventually I'll upgrade to BluRay and Sky HD, but for the moment my main sources are a Sky Plus box, a veteran Sony DVP-S725D DVD player, a Sony VCR/DVD recorder, and a Canon HD camcorder. I haven't bothered to listen to the sound, as I use my surround system (which for the record has a Yamaha DSP-E800 processor, Roksan and Rotel power amps and Monitor Audio and Boston Acoustics speakers). The TV only has 2 SCART sockets, so I switched the DVD player to component input with a QED Qunex cable. Setup was easy, and the remote and menus are good. The performance of the TV is everything I hoped for, and a bit more. The colours are natural, there is a real sense of depth, with great contrast and blacks that are really black. Of course with standard satellite material, you can see more of the imperfections of the medium, or more detail on a newscaster's face than you'd really like to see, but putting that aside my favourite shows, or the current coverage of the Olympics look great. With DVD I was blown away. Tested with LOTR The Return of the King special edition DVD, the detail, depth and sharp edges are just excellent, the landscapes awesome - I started to watch the movie and forget what I was doing, a sure sign that a test is going well. Whereas I was expecting to be pushed in to buying a BluRay player very quickly, I'll be more than happy to use this with my current DVD player and material for a long time. Overall I think this is an excellent LCD TV, and at this price is fantastic value for money.
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