Sony KV-36FS120 36-Inch FD Trinitron WEGA TV
Best Value in a Big-Screen TV
I wanted to buy a big screen tv to replace my Sony 27\\" trinitron tv (the older, black one with the vertical flat but horizontally curved screen), which I now have in another room. I like the LCD and DLP projection tv's but they are still a few generations away from having a really smooth, grainfree picture to make it worth the several thousand dollars. On the other hand, tube tv's are a mature technology and give more screen for the money than other technologies. The tube takes a long, long time to burn out compared with projection tv's, so I don't have to worry about buying a new light bulb every few years. <br /> <br />So I decided to buy the KV36FS120. The unit weighs some 190 pounds, so if your house gets broken into, your expensive DVD and CD collection may get stolen but your tv will remain. You cannot lift the tv out of the box to save the box because it's too big and heavy so you must slice the box apart. The matching stand (which you buy separately) is straightforward to build, just remember to follow the instructions to the letter and resist the temptation to use Charles Atlas force in torquing the screws and fasteners, and the cutouts in the stand provide ample room for cabling purposes. The tv stand has plastic probes sticking out of the top to align and stabilize the tv on the stand and there is a strap to secure the back of the tv to the stand. <br /> <br />There are, if memory serves, four video inputs (one front composite input, a back component video input, S-video input and composite input) and an RF input. Sound quality is ok for built-in tv speakers but note that since BBE sound enhancement is used (it phase-aligns the sound so that it is clearer, benefitting voice intelligibility the most), the treble is brighter than usual and therefore it sounds a little bass-light even if the user base control is maxed out. I went into the service menu and increased its bass setting to the max setting to help balance the sound out. The user contrast control provides useful range, going from too low to too high control so you have enough range to work with. However, I felt the brightness control (remember that brightness controls the black level) at its highest setting was ever so slightly too low for my taste (I like the brightness control set so that blacks are shone as very dark gray, as this makes the picture less dark and forboding. So I went into the service menu and increased the SBRT). The sound balance is fine (i.e. the left and right channels are balanced with mono material) and the picture quality is very fine, but note that this set will not have as bright a picture as smaller Sonys. I have a satellite receiver hooked up to the S-video input and a Sony DVD player to the component input and the picture quality I get in both cases is very nice. On a scale of 1 to 10 for picture quality, I'd rate it a 7.5, and when you take price into account, I'd give it a 9. The LCD projection tv's will give a brighter image, to be sure, but then you're paying double there. As far a sreeen geometry goes, I don't really notice much distortion, as vertical lines look straight and likewise horizontal. There is a tilt control and I had to rotate the image one notch to get it perfectly horizontally aligned, though. The remote control features are quite standard for all the Sony tv's.  <br /> <br />What don't I like about this unit? For one thing, I prefer black to silver for tv's since silver puts the room emphasis on the tv over the rest of the room and black is far less obtrusive in this regard. I wish the screen was brighter (but I suppose you'd need a super powerful tube to blast enough electrons to get a bright image). I wish the tv speakers were a bit bigger (but then Sony et al wouldn't be able to sell you a nice home theatre system).  I wish the remote control could directly activate and de-activate the closed captioning (you have to go into the user menu to do this). <br /> <br />User tip: to help avoid a trip to the tv repairman, I would suggest a power bar with good line filtration to reduce voltage spikes and line noise. Remember that the power supply is the most important part of any electronic device, and the guts of any machine require good clean power to do their job reliably.  <br />