Sony KV-27FV300 FD Trinitron Wega 27" TV
Great sound, great color, but major flicker
This TV (the Sony KV-27FV300) gets great reviews from Consumer Reports and other www.Amazon.com customers, but I couldn't get along with it.  In the end, after a week of trying to live with it, I returned it and bought the Philips 27PT8320 (which also handles progressive scan input from my DVD player and copes pretty well with PAL input from playing PAL DVDs in their native format).<br />If you're someone who is sensitive to screen flicker, you won't like this Sony. Yes, it has a nice flat Trinitron screen, but it seems like they used a short-persistence phosphor (the kind used for computer monitors).  TVs aren't like computer monitors; CRT monitors refresh faster (75 Hz usually) and without interlacing.  NTSC is interlaced, which means every 60th of a second, only half the screen lines are updated.  Unfortunately it seems like the phosphor for this screen fades within about 1/60th of a second, and so by the time it draws the second set of lines, the first set has faded.  When looking at the screen dead on, it looked fine, but if I looked away, just for a moment I could see that every other line was black.  And if I saw it out of the corner of my eye, it looked very flickery.<br />Ultimately, I decided the flicker was too distracting.  I checked to make sure it wasn't some kind of weird fault with that particular set, but once I knew what to look for, the same flicker was perceptible on this TV in store displays, and not in evidence for other brands.<br />Yes, the on-screen menus are nice, the sound is great (plenty of bass, thanks to the subwoofer), the color is good.  But ultimately, I need something that doesn't drive me crazy when I'm looking at it.