Sony Grand WEGA KDF-42WE655 42-Inch LCD Projection Television with Integrated HDTV Tuner
Major Leap Forward in TV Tech
After 23 years with a conventional NTSC t.v. we decided to  jump to HD digital. We started reviewing sets about three years ago and found the technology immature, outlandishly priced and dealer information usually wrong. While DLP works well for video presentation projectors, you need a two or three chip set to do away with picture lag, and pictures look pixellated. Hitachi has already announced they are dropping DLP technology. Plasmas STILL suffer problems with burn-in even with picture-shift technology, they often die in 3 or 4 years, can be noisy especially above 4,000' altitude, and are fragile. Gas is gas and it leaks, degrades, has a half-life and despite urban legend gas in plasma tvs cannot be replaced. Dealers lie constantly--one told us that Plasmas now last 16 years!  <br /> <br />On to the Sony 42we655. Settling on Sony was a leap of faith. Our last experience with Sony equipment, an amp, was not a good one; quality control dropped since the 1970s when Sony was king and we had been buying Panasonic.  However, the built in featurs on this LCD TV especially the integrated NTSC and ATSC tuners and cable card slot cinched it. Prices vary wildly on the Net, but once you factor in shipping they all come out to about $2,100 to $2,500. The competing units are cheaper, but have no tuners,so add $300. <br /> <br />We elected to buy it from Circuit City to avoid shipping costs and drop-kicks by shippers. CC is having financial difficulties, so we declined the extended CC-backed warranty in case they crater in competition with Best Buy.  <br /> <br />The unit took all of 20 mnutes to set up with no technical knowledge necessary. Don't let the CC delivery crew cable it to amps and DVDs because they don't know your equipment. Reading the manual first is a must because the unit is technologically advanced, but well worth it. Plan to spend several nights learning how to operate it and refining the adjustments. If you don't want to do this, turn it over to a spouse, geek friend or teenager. <br /> <br />The picture quality is outstanding, and we get amazing HD signals with a set of rabbit ears in a rural area! Don't fret about the bulb, changing it is about 5 minutes work --no harder than an LCD projector bulb. A word about DVD connections, don't try to run a one-cable composite video feed from a DVD---spend the $40 and get component cables which give a much better picture. DVD quality differs wildly, so don't judge the set until you look at several different DVDs. Some writers have remarked about blacks. Yes, high CGI (computer graphic) special effects movies are dark, even in the theaters. CGI looks bad in sunlight which is why the movis are set at night. Video tape signals are amazingly bad because of the quality, so don't blame the set---just get rid of or transfer your old tapes and go to DVD.  <br /> <br />A great tv that you will enjoy exploring.