Sony KV-27FS13 27" Flat-Screen TV
Consistent distortion and uneven brightness, dissapointing
I got one of these 27\\" Wegas, as soon as I selected channel 35 to watch CNN I noticed a mild stretching and shrinking of the news tickers on the bottom left corner of the screen. There was also a mild vertical distortion (concavity) on the right border. Reading the reviews on audioreview.com I realized the ubiquitousness of the distortion issue with the Wegas. Before returning or exchanging I went back to the store ... just to inspect in excrutiating detail all their Wega units on display. Selected the CNN channel in all of them and fixed my eyes on the crawling words. 27\\", 32\\" as well as 36\\" Wegas, all had some degree of noticeable distortion. <br />Another test I applied was to choose an input without incoming signal (e.g. video 3), then to turn the brightness all the way up. The screen should appear evenly gray. On my Wega at home, as well as on most Wegas in the store, next to the left border there was a vertical stripe slightly brighter than the rest of the screen, not only brighter but bluer, looking similar to a computer monitor when adjusting the horizontal position of the image and you take it too much to the left, so that it seems to wrap around. <br />Incidentally, there was a 27\\" Wega on display right next to a 27\\" Panasonic Tau. Irregardless of brand, screen flatness really reduces lamp reflections greatly, something very convenient on both TVs. Channel switching is noticeably faster in the Sony though, the Sony has this 16:9 mode totally absent in the Tau, and Sony's menu and remote are way better than the Tau's. Actually, and contrary to many other people's opinion, I think the remote for this Wega is pretty good, but I have a learning AllForOne Cinema7+ at home anyway. The 27\\" Wega and Tau cost exactly the same price in [the store]. Overall, I preferred the features from the Sony, even though with the TV's turned off, the Panasonic box looks nicer to me. The images on both TVs are quite comparable I think.<br />I changed the 27\\" for a Wega 32\\" to seeif I got luckier with the bigger unit. This one actually had more problems than the 27\\". Same brightness/bluish tone all over the left border, but also bluish on the bottom right hand corner now. Take into account that the Wegas have automatic degaussing (demagnetization) everytime you turn them on. That's why there is this loud \\"cough\\" the TV makes when turning it on. In spite of that feature, these pigmentations never went away even after a couple of weeks. There was also a concavity on the middle-top of the image, and when choosing a no-signal input and turning brightness on, I saw this one also had very uneven brightness. It was brighter and bluer on the left border as I have previously pointed out, but also, if dividing the screen into three vertical sections of equal width, the left and right thirds were brighter than the middle one. <br />So I changed the 32\\" back for another 27\\". This third Wega ended up being slightly better than (or rather, slightly not as bad as) the other two, even though the left border still was brighter and slightly bluer than the rest of the screen, there is still some mild distortion present when reading news tickers, there is also vertical distortion near the top on both left and right border, and there is a conversion problem (reds and blues slightly out of alignment) on bottom right hand corner. I've read on the web (haven't verified it though) that the convergence adjustment options are NOT available on the Sony special \\"service menu\\" of the 27\\" Wegas, so any convergence issues are particularly bad on any 27\\" Wega. <br />In conclusion I'm very dissapointed with the annoying flaws that seem to appear so consistently in most Wega units, well in most flat screen CRT TV's after all. But unless you consider a good line doubler + a good computer monitor or a digital TV to watch regular broadcasts, you have to realize the image on this TV is acceptable, and hardly any other NTSC 27\\" TV will look any better. I actually considered the line doubler+computer screen option, but the DVDO line doubler alone is more expensive than this TV, and the computer screen would only reach 21\\" viewable area, as opposed to 27\\". On the other hand, the almost distortion-free quality, the richness of adjusment options, and the solution of flat screen CRT computer monitors (e.g. Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2020u, even some Sony computer monitors) are just so beyond the ridiculous and terrible image quality of current mass market analog TVs (yes, the market is that immature believe it or not). Image quality of NTSC is just ridiculously bad and low compared to what display technology has been capable of for decades. <br />By the way, watch out for the misconception of another reviewer: this TV does have component inputs, but only *normal* ntsc component inputs, which have nothing to do with the High Definition (HD) component inputs of digital TVs. So for any \\"Justin Case\\": THIS WEGA IS A PLAIN NTSC (ANALOG) TV, IT IS NOT A DIGITAL TV...