Sony KDF-E55A20 55-Inch LCD Rear Projection Television
bright and sharp HD images
I've had this TV for about a week now.  It is my first non CRT TV (first HD TV as well), so I had high expectations as well as quite a bit of uncertainties.  When the TV arrived, my wife was worried that the size of the TV was too big for our family room, and she said she got motion sickness when she watched the TV.  But after about a week, she had no such complaints. <br /> <br />I chose this TV after an extensive search, but the main reason for me was the picture quality that I saw at Best Buy and Circuit City, etc.  I think when buying a TV this expensive, you should check out the TV image for yourself.  The online reviews can be helpful, but seeing the TV with your own eyes should be the main factor for your decision. <br /> <br />For me, the brightness and the sharpness of this TV was very impressive.  I didn't even consider plasma TVs by the way, because of my budget.  But after seeing this TV in my house for a week, I am glad that I didn't even consider plasma TVs.   The reason?  I am a movie buff, and the projection TV image is so close to the movie theatre experience.  It's rather smoky, and not too sharp, and I think that kinda mimics cinema film projections.  Plasmas are way too sharp and bright to have that kind of retro experience.  So if I was to buy another TV, I think I will prefer the projection TVs over plasma TVs. <br /> <br />I bought the Sony TV stand made for this particular model, and I am okay with that.  I don't like the fact that the back of this TV stand is wide open.  All the messy wires are in plain view in the back of the TV stand.  So I put white inkjet papers taped in the backside of the stand, and my wife loves it.   <br /> <br />You get the best view of the image in the front of the TV (at least 5 feet away).  The image looks dark from the top or from the sides.  When there is bright sunlight directly in front of the TV, It's really hard to see the image, but I am sure that's the case with all the TVs.  The important thing is that you get almost no reflections whatsoever. <br /> <br />Image quality is great with HD broadcast, and DVDs are ok.  I warned my wife before I turned on the TV for the first time that our regular analog channels will look terrible, but after watching several regular channels, my wife said that it looks just fine.  And I do agree with her.  Later on I found out that her motion sickness was caused by the choice of image wide option.  We had the TV on wide zoom, and that distorted images in a strange way that made some people dizzy.  Now we keep it in Full mode, so everything looks the way they are broadcast.  I don't mind black bars in the sides of the regular broadcasts. <br /> <br />The worst thing about this TV is the remote control.  I like to use the sleep mode at night, but I have to press way too many buttons to get to that mode.  Same with closed caption mode.  Sony put all the settings options into this circular chunk of buttons instead of giving dedicated buttons for some popular options.  But I can control my Sony DVD player and Sony video player with the same remote, and I do like that. <br /> <br />One other bad thing is that there is no PC input for this TV.  I knew about it when I bought the TV, but maybe other people want the PC input so they can use the TV as their computer monitor, which is unnescessary since I only use laptops. <br /> <br />The last problem is that I am hooked on this TV, and I just watch and watch HD broadcasts, because I am just amazed with the big, crisp moving images that fill my room.  It's like having a theatre in your living room.