Sony Grand WEGA KDS-60A2000 60-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV
Excellent picture in all modes, but...
...you have to calibrate the display (as you should with ANY television), and because of the incredible detail possible with a 1080p picture, the \\"garbage in, garbage out\\" tenet of picture quality really holds here.    I can't stress those two points enough. If you cannot afford a full calibration by an ISF technician, you should at least purchase Digital Video Essentials or Avia Guide to Home Theater (both available at Amazon) and calibrate the brightness, contrast, color, and grayscale tracking of the display. It is not fair to gauge the picture quality of the display when using factory settings, which are set to \\"torch\\" mode (super-bright, super-contrast) to attract ignorant buyers at Best Circuit Buy City. You MUST calibrate the TV for your viewing environment. Note that the A2000 remembers calibration settings PER INPUT and PER RESOLUTION. That means if you have an HD cable box that is in \\"pass-through\\" mode - meaning it might send 480i, 720p, or 1080i, depending on the source - for best results you will want to calibrate using the same input as the cable box, and at all resolutions. If you can't do that, you should at least calibrate at one of the resolutions, then copy the settings to other resolutions and tweak for best picture.    After doing a basic calibration, evaluate picture quality using high-quality sources (OTA high-definition, progressive-scan DVD, HTPC, etc.) and the best connection you can (HDMI or component). Most standard definition cable content is crap, and blowing crap up to 60\\" and (comparitively) ultra-high-resolution will result in big, high-resolution crap. In my opinion, after proper calibration and judicious use of the noise-reducing/picture-enhancing features of the A2000, standard-definition content looks pretty good. It'll never look as good as your old 27\\" CRT, due mostly to being blown up to 4x the size. Compared to other 60\\"-class HDTVs, the SD quality is excellent. Check your cable signal strength, and compare several SD channels - some have better overall picture than others.    OK, rant over. Here are my thoughts on high and low points:    High Points  - Amazing HD picture quality  - Good SD picture quality, keeping in mind GIGO  - Quite bright enough to be usable in a well-lit room  - Accepts 1080p natively (hello HD-DVD)  - Low-reflectivity screen  - Blacks are very deep  - Plenty of inputs  - Plenty of calibration/configuration options (even without going into the service menu)  - Immune to \\"rainbow effect\\" of DLP sets  - Immune to burn-in (CRT, plasma)  - Good viewing angles  - User-replaceable bulb    Low Points  - No picture-in-picture or picture-and-picture (has \\"freeze\\" feature, which seems of dubious usefulness)  - Silver bezel (this is strictly a matter of opinion; I prefer an all-matte-black bezel)  - No bulb timer (to gauge lifespan of bulb)    To add some context to my opinions: I watch 60% SD content and 40% HD content, plus Xbox 360 gaming and the occasional DVD. I am not a 'videophile', but I do have enough skill to calibrate the display including service-menu adjustments. My viewing environment has a WNW-facing window shaded by trees. During the afternoon/early evening, the room is pretty well lit, but without direct sunlight hitting the TV. At night, I watch TV with some lights on in the room. The A2000 is more than bright enough for all viewing conditions I encounter, and has very low reflectivity (the old Tosh was like a mirror when dark). If you have a light-controlled home theater and bias lighting, I expect you will have even better results than I.    For more information on the A2000 (buyers' experiences, calibration, tweaks, etc.) see these AVS Forum threads:    [...]