The time has come to replace my good old 10+ year old Sony Nicam 25” CRT.

Our lounge is small so I think anything bigger than 32 inch would be too big so I’ve been looking at the Sony KDL-32V4000 as I don’t want to spend much more than £500 and the positive posts here, and £440 price tag at Amazon make it look very tempting.

I have a few issues that I need to ask for advice on please.

I don’t have (or want) Sky but may consider Freesat for future HD or just wait for Freeview. I don’t play gaming consoles.

Our main viewing is Freeview via a Sony RDR-HXD710 160GB HDD/DVD PVR which doesn’t have HDMI output (but does have Scart, S-Vid and Component Video out). We watch a fair few DVD’s from stuff we own or have recorded on the PVR DVD burner. I don’t really want to replace my PVR as it’s only 2 years old or bother with Blu-ray as I don’t want to replace my DVD collection.

I have also been looking at 1080 HD LCD’s such as the 32W4000 but read that 1080 is not really worth the effort (or the huge price difference!) on such a small screen. Is this the case?

Will using the Scart or S video out from my PVR (as it doesn’t have HDMI out ) make any difference if I did go for a 1080 TV?

I do own a Nikon D80 digital SLR and wonder if I really need 1080 to view images on screen or will a normal HD ready suffice? It would be nice to show family pictures on the TV rather than on my Dell Inspiron 6400 15.4 inch laptop (which does have S-Vid out). I believe the KDL-32V4500 has USB Photo Input (Picture Framemode) but is a lot more expensive and is still not 1080, so I’m a little confused as to why it costs so much more.

I have been looking mainly at Sony as I read that they are particularly good especially for their strong Black colours. I do wonder though if I should consider other manufacturers such as Toshiba or Panasonic given my circumstances.

Any help and advice would be appreciated… Thanks.

You can actually get it from Amazon marketplace for slightly lower than £440, for £434.99

Every little helps!

Our Panasonic TX-32LZD85 has a slot to insert an SD card and display photos.

On a 32" screen, given what you plan to use it for, I wouldn't fall over myself trying to get a 1080p set.

I've used my 720p 40" Sony LCD to display photos before and they look excellent.

Even with a 1080p set, it's maximum resultion is still going to be way below the resolution of photos taken on a dSLR anyway so I doubt you'd see a hughe benefit. A small amount of extra sharpness if you looked carefully, but not sure it'd be enough to justify the extra expense.

May be worth looking into a 37" or 40" panel though. It's not *that* much bigger and remember, they're so much thinner and lighter than a CRT set. ....

Oh ... and if you're going to be sticking with SCART, use decent SCART cables (individually shielded .... it DOES make a difference) and make sure you're outputting an RGB SCART signal. S-video is lower quality. Stick with RGB SCART.

Having got the 32W4000 myself, I can't say that the full HD really is worth the expense ...it's a great TV and gives superb results but is it worth the extra £250? - it's hard to say for sure.

I've always had this terrible affliction of buying the best spec I can afford (and sometimes can't afford!) and I got the 32W4000 as it seemed to be among the best 32" around....and I am very pleased with it and I'm one of those who loved his CRT and disliked most LCD/Plasmas I saw.

It performs very well with SD and HD.... but I doubt the full HD over 720p HD is worth the big increase in price.

I think for the case of karr999 the V model would be more than adequate.

It is a stunning TV, but I don't know if that's because it's full HD or not? - perhaps it's just a good TV?.


Almost no HD sets are 720P, anything not full HD is most likely 768 pixels, not 720.

As for 768 or 1080, try them both and see which YOU prefer, personally I think the difference is only very slight.

yeah yeah I knew you'd pick me up on the 720/768 thing




As for the W4000 being a good tv, well it is and I suppose you could say that it's well designed and happens to be full HD.... so they might put more effort into getting it to give good results as it's a higher priced and higher spec TV.

Certainly cheaper products might mean not only less pixels (720 or otherwise ) but also cheaper processing, lower grade panels, less features and such like.

Not sure if the 'V' version Sony has the same general innards with a few things left off like USB or full hd panel.

They are completely different inside - W's are far more complicated - it's not just a few "extra's" left off, it's a completely different TV.