Sony KV-32FQ75(S) 32" 100Hz Widescreen TV

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.

The first thing that you will notice is the style. Once again, Sony have opted to go for good looks with their equipment. The stand (which can be bought separately) finishes off the look quite nicely.

Performance wise, it is amazing (with a decent signal-- possibly worth investing in a digital tv receiver if you haven't already) and the picture in picture feature comes in really useful for when you want to watch the match, but the missus wants Corrie (or vice versa-- we'll have no stereotypes here). Although you obviously can't have the sound for both channels. This wonder of wonders is bought to you by the FQ's twin tuners, and both pictures can be shrunk or enlarged as you wish.

For anyone who still uses Teletext or Ceefax, you will find that there will be no more missing the last line of text, as you the FQ allows you to change sub-pages using the remote. So your are able to read at your leisure.

Connectivity wise, you have three scart sockets at the back (one of which is RGB enabled for all the gamers out there-- I recommend investing in an RGB cable if you plan to use it with one of the next gen consoles.) not to mention S-video and Video inputs at the front.

Set up is simple; the autosetup feature searches and stores the strongest channels, and if you have a smartlink compatible VCR with a decent scart connection, it is easy to copy the channels direct to your VCR.

Unfortunately, there is a major downside; the size of the unit. Be not mistaken; this TV is huge. When delivered, the box stated a weight of 78 Kilos, and it does not lie. Choose your tv positioning carefully, for once you have unwrapped it, you will not be able to move it (without the risk of some serious damage- to the TV or yourself- and you don't want that). This, I guess, is one of the advantages of Plasma screens over the Standard TV.

Overall, worth every penny.