Since my initial review of the Samsung and Panasonic, I have now managed to see two Sony LCD TV’s. These are nearly identical. Both are 26inch LCD, with in built Freeview and analogue tuning. Both are High Def ready (by adding a High Def box to the HDMI socket). Both have a single HDMI socket, and two Scart sockets. The difference is that the more expensive of the pair has Sony’s Bravia chip inside and comes with a black surround. Both help to improve picture quality slightly. The cheaper model retails for £650, while the more expensive model is £799. I saw both side by side in the Sony Centre. The assistant immediately agreed that it would be difficult to match a recent Sony regular (CRT) tv picture (with excellent signal quality) with the pictures produced by an LCD tv - even their own Sony range! This is due to the way LCD works. LCD screens tend to need a higher quality input, such as DVD or even High Def to get the most out of them. The LCD screen is capable of greater detail than CRT, so this is why it can more often show up limitations in the picture being used. This is of particular concern for Freeview, Digital Satellite, and Digital Cable viewers who (unless they have High Def) have compressed digital signals. The flaws created by this are difficult to see on a lower quality CRT screen, but the sharper LCD technology will make it more obvious. Some TV’s, including the more expensive of this Sony pair have a chip inside to help reduce this effect. I have to say that overall, both of these Sony’s do offer better pictures than that seen on the Samsung or Panasonic. The Sony Centre has Freeview distributed in the shop so a side by side comparison was easy. Both of the Sony’s were 99% free of any blocking. On “Ready Steady Cook” (via Freeview, BBC), the cheaper of the pair showed up some spider foot prints on the studio shots, although this was not evident on all pictures. The bright studio shots also tended to appear slightly over sharpened. The more expensive of the pair features the technology to reduce these effects and it was more or less totally free of this, looking more or less like a CRT picture with virtually no spider foot print effects and a more natural finish to the image (not the slightly over sharpened picture of the lesser model). The badly shimmering text on the Sky News ticker tape (via Freeview) was much improved on both sets, although close up the effect was still visible but to a lesser extent than with the Samsung or Panasonic. Sony have worked hard to improve their LCD pictures, especially when using lower quality images, and this has made a difference. It should also be noted that while the viewing angle (how far to the side you can stand without picture distortion) on the Samsung and Panasonic are quite good, both the Sony’s provide an even better viewing angle. With the both the Sony’s, and in particular the more expensive model, the picture quality is improved sufficiently over the Samsung or Panasonic, that if you stand 3M or more away from the screen, the picture is on a par with a modern similar size CRT tv - even the Sky News ticker tape appears sharp.
In summary.
By far the Sony’s offer the best picture seen so far. Even the lesser model while not perfect offers a picture on Freeview which is around 20-25% better than that of the Panasonic (depending on how far away you are). With the more expensive Sony, the picture is even better still. This would around 35% better than the Panasonic (depending how what is on the screen, and how far you are). What would be nice to see however, is two HDMI sockets on these TV’s - as per the Panasonic offering.
Dave
