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Date: 2008-12-12 Whoa! Nice picture! I'm very happy with this purchase. I've read other owners' responses on various web sites, and I think that people don't realize the many issues that affect picture quality including inconsistent broadcasts and many picture settings. The Sony Bravia KDL-40Z4100 comes with several picture modes: Standard, Vivid, Cinema, and Custom. Each of these can be customized with settings for contrast, brightness, color saturation, color temperature, backlight adjustment, noise reduction, and some advanced settings which amongst other things include options to use the wide gamut color space to take advantage of the 10-bit color. I recommend leaving all of these picture modes at the factory settings except the Custom mode which you can experiment with. Each mode has a Reset option so you can restore the factory defaults if you've mucked anything up. The commentators at cnet.com and others pretty much parrot each other that the manufacturers deliberately deliver the TV's with gaudy color settings so that we morons will go gah-gah when we see them on the wall at a brightly lit Bestbuy. I think its a little more complex than that. In the case of the Sony Bravias, they are typically displayed in the Vivid mode to accommodate the brightly lit showrooms. However, even that picture mode is pretty good... in bright lighting. After all, the manufacturers want these things to look good on display, and they know people shelling out thousands of dollars for a set will tend to be very discriminating. I think the Sony engineers are a little smarter than the pundits give them credit for. I purchased the "Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics" disk on Blu-ray to calibrate the picture. I carefully went through the explanations and the test patterns. However, I still get the best picture from the factory settings for the Standard picture mode. I've also tried a number of recommended settings downloaded from the Internet. Still, Standard picture mode is the best. My main criteria for judging the picture is how close it is to reality, and I have several Blu-rays, DVD's and some broadcast stuff that I know what they are supposed to look like. I have been really appreciating seeing dark scenes clearly on the new KDL-40Z4100. Again, I'm using the default settings for contrast, brightness, and backlight. I know there is controversy about contrast ratios, but I can't imagine any better than deep black, bright clear white, and excellent detail in every shade in between. Motion is also excellent. I watched ape-men fighting scenes and ballet-like spacecraft movements in 2001 A Space Odyssey on Blu-ray, a really fast action sequence in Casino Royale on HBO/HD, and a few Celtics games in HD on cable. All motion was completely smooth, and I saw zero artifacts. It has been quite a relief after seeing so much choppy motion on other sets in the showroom. Now for the negatives: I bought a Sony Blu-ray player and a Sony Soundbar receiver/speaker system. There is a feature called Bravia Synch which is supposed to make Sony products more compatible with each other allowing you to turn things on and off with one button and a few other capabilities. I have meticulously gone through the manuals and tried various connection configurations, but I can't get the Bravia Synch to work--yet. This negative is somewhat offset by the fact that the remote is a universal remote that can easily be programmed to operate the other devices. Another irritation is that I can't get closed captioning to work correctly. The options are Off, On, and On with Muting. Nothing works. I emailed Sony support, and to their credit they quickly responded, but the bad news is that you can't get closed captioning when using a cable set top box with an HDMI connection. Any closed captioning has to come from the STB itself. I got that to work, but it takes several steps through menus with the STB remote each time I want to turn closed captioning on or off. A minor nuisance. However, there's more good stuff: - 120 Hz - 10-bit color; xvYCC; wide color gamut; deep color. - Plug in a USB flash drive and listen to MP3's and view digital photos. - Connect your laptop with an RGB cable and stereo audio connector. - Optical digital connection for great digital sound. - Really good programmable universal remote. - Slim, modern design--best looking set on the wall. BTW, Amazon has the best price for the KDL-40Z4100. UPDATE 1/2/09: I've been reading other reviews about "sparkles" on the V-Series. There is a free software upgrade on sony.com that addresses that. Though I haven't experienced the so-called sparkles, I upgraded the software anyway. It's pretty easy. Just copy the file to a USB flash drive, plug it in to the TV, and follow simple instructions. Also, in my review I mentioned using default factory settings for Standard picture mode. I now find myself more and more using the Vivid picture mode. Colors look really natural but a little brighter, and the contrast ratio is visibly better. I am very discriminating and usually quite critical when it comes to consumer technologies. I wouldn't have written this rave review if this wasn't an amazing TV. I've looked closely at the pictures on many HDTV sets, and this one is really more advanced. I have nothing to gain in saying this except to tip off people that this is a really good set. Date: 2008-12-02 sony z series lcd Great flat panel for size limited cabinet. Fab picture and clarity. Very cool looking set. Typical Sony quality. Great price on Amazon and great delivery. They even came in and set it up. A+++ Date: 2008-11-30 Excellent picture quality. I purchased this TV and have been using it for about 2 weeks now. I've done extensive (some would label it obsessive) research on this and other models. What swayed my decision to purchase this model was: 1. The features offered with the Z series are almost identical to the XBR6 series. The only difference is the styling. 2. Many sources state that Sony's overall reliability exceeds Samsung's by a significant margin. 3. 10 bit panel. 4. Price. 4. Small footprint / dimensions compared to other 40 inch models. Pros: Setup was very easy. Very attractive design. Incredible HD picture quality. Very good Standard Definition picture quality. Menu very intuitive and easy to navigate. Great motion flow technology. Viewing sporting events is absolutely amazing. Color is much more accurate and realistic than most other TV's I've seen Black levels are more than adequate. In fact, they are better overall than my old Sony Trinitron CRT. I'm able to notice detail like I never though possible. I can actually see dust floating through sunlight and lint on peoples clothing....not to mention every line and wrinkle in people's faces. Cons: As with ALL LCD screens I've owned and viewed, there will always be some noticeable light bleed from the illuminating lamp. But overall, this is not noticeable during normal viewing. It can only seen when there is no signal. Viewing angle on this, and many other LCDs suffers PQ loss when the angle approaches 50-60 degrees. Not a big minus, but there are other brands that don't suffer as much loss with that angle. The infamous sparkle issue: If you've done your research, you will come across complaints regarding random 'sparkles' that flash for a few milliseconds. Depending on the source, they may be as frequent as 1 every few minutes. This is only noticeable if you are aware of the issue and are watching for them. These sparkles are no larger than 1 pixel in size....not at all distracting. I noticed that they only occur when viewing standard definition material that is being shown on an HD channel. I have never noticed it on SD channels nor when watching DVD's. Sony has released a firmware update that can be VERY EASILY APPLIED if you own a USB drive. You download the new firmware from their site, save it to the drive, plug the drive into the TV and the reset is automatic. After the update, issue was resolved. No more sparkles! [..] Overall I am very pleased with the TV. I chose this over the equivalent Samsung model mainly because I feel the Samsung frame is ugly and unnecessarily bulky. Also, the Samsung's picture looks too saturated...colors are not 'realistic'. Date: 2008-11-26 Totally not worth the hype Totally regret getting this. The A650 smokes it. Plus I have sparkles everywhere. Save your money for the A650 and a home theater system. Date: 2008-11-25 Amazing Picture! Bought the Sony 40" 1080P Z LCD running with PS3 over Monster 1000M HDMI. Verdict, Amazing Picture! Go ahead buy Wall-E BluRay and turn on the TVs Motion Enhancer on Standard or High. This is as close to 3D as you can get. Absolutey breath taking during the SpaceWalk scene. LCD pix looks very good with HD TV and digital cable even looks better then regular 1080I TVs. Amazon is currently offering this TV at a huge discount. Buy this TV or its 46" sister, and you will be happy. The TV on Vivid setting is very bright so you will need to have a very bright roon or manually tweak the custom setting. Also, TV comes with no cables, so you will need to buy high end cables for your HDTV and Blu Ray to get the perfect picture.
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