“Sony’s Bravia KDL52XBR5 Rocks!!!”
Reviewed By ‘Stu Ater’
Review of Sony Bravia KDL52XBR5 from Amazon.com
This TV is the best! The clarity on local broadcasts with an antenna is excellent. The 120 hz 1080p KDL-52XBR5 TV works especially well with the new BDP-S500 Blu-Ray Player. The two products were really made for each other. It also works very well with my Sony Laptop that has Blu-Ray capability and an HDMI connection. This TV has an optical-out audio connection that makes it possible to send the Dolby Digital broadcast signal to my older, but still excellent Rotel surround-sound receiver. American Idol and PBS broadcast programs sound great!
The TV’s digital tuner works very well with the Antenna on my roof that I have used for over a decade. After researching this issue, I learned that I can actually get the best signal free without even changing my antenna! It turns out that the digital broadcast towers are located in the same area of town as the analog ones, so I did not need to reorient the antenna (see www.antennaweb.org for details about this issue). My old antenna continues to supply the old analog TVs in the house (at least until next year when they will need converter digital to analog tuners) as well as the new XBR with built-in digital tuner. Set-up was easy. I simply needed to choose the antenna option instead of cable on the TV menu. The automatic channel search discovered several digital stations in my area that were new to me.
I looked at nearly 100 TV stands and chose the Icon 9429 Stand (www.bdiusa.com) that was a perfect choice for this TV. The stand has architectural features that match the TV well and it allowed me to place my Center speaker and receiver under the TV.
I had carefully researched this TV and I would definitely choose it again. It seems that the features/price/value ratios for HD TVs have hit a sweet spot and this was a good time to buy my first high-definition TV after waiting for the price to come down and the technology to fully mature. The 120 hz rate was a selling point in addition to the picture clarity of the Sony XBR series. This TV is really able to display all kinds of signals with a superb picture quality and very clean action shots. It is bright enough to be placed in front of a large, south-facing tinted picture window with a lot of light in the room. In fact, I usually turn the picture setting down from the vivid to the standard picture mode. The LCD gives good clarity from all the viewing angles in the room.
Amazon’s price was much better than list price and reasonably better than local retailers that turned out to also be running their own sales the week before the Superbowl. It took about one week to get the TV after I placed the order despite the fact that the order included “expedited shipping speed.” One or two days of that delay occurred when my credit card company put a hold on the order pending my call to confirm that I really had ordered this item that was atypical of my spending habits. Chase is very careful about avoiding fraudulent purchases by putting a hold on atypical charges. Confirming this charge with them immediately would have improved the delivery time.
The delivery man was very helpful and he actually brought the large TV inside my door, despite the contract that only required him to leave it at my front door. This was a potential concern: a TV that would be too large for a single person to easily move, left outside according to the the “portal to portal” delivery contract. It would be helpful if Amazon would correct this potential problem. I suspect that most customers could talk their delivery man into bringing the large TV inside, especially during a rainy week. Customers should be prepared to get someone to help them lift the TV onto its final resting place. It takes at least two strong people to safely move this TV. It’s important to get the position right the first day. After couple of weeks, the pads underneath the TV had adhered to the glass stand under it and it could not be easily repositioned.
The TV arrived in excellent condition. I would definitely choose this model again. I would probably order this from Amazon again with the above recommendations.
Discount Sales & Prices Until Dec. 23rd