Product Description

THE NEW BRAVIA LCD TELEVISION CONTAINS PICTURE ENHANCEMNET TECHNOLOGY AND VIRTUAL DOLBY CREATING A FULL SURROUND EFFECT FROM JUST TWO FRONT SPEAKERS. WITH THERE SLIMLINE NEW LOOK FINISH THEY ARE SUITABLE FOR ANYWHERE IN THE HOME.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62742 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: KDL40W3000U
• Released on: 2007-09-12
• Dimensions: 48.50 pounds

Features

• SONY 40" LCD TELEVISION IN BLACK
• 3 X HDMI INPUTS
• 1920 X 1080 PIXEL RESOLUTION
• 1800:1 CONTRAST RATIO
• IN BLACK

Manufacturer's Description

BRAVIA W3000 Series LCD TV

Available in 40, 46 & 52" Screen Sizes For consumers wanting a technology packed HD1080 LCD and that have access to HD1080 content such as Sky Sports (BRAVIA Engine EX). The BRAVIA W-Series LCD TVs are HD1080 and come fully loaded with technology. featuring ultra high dynamic contrast up to 16000:1 ensuring you don’t miss any of the details. BRAVIA Engine EX works to maximise the potential from any signal, including HD. Whilst S-Force Surround Sound gives you the closest experience to surround sound without a 5.1 speaker setup giving the best sound you can get from a TV without using a Home Cinema system

HD1080p HD 1080p offers you very high resolution to generate it's picture. The 'p' stands for 'progressive scan', which scans all the lines at once to add stability & smoothness to fast-moving images. This makes 1080p TV's excellent for sport broadcast & games.

Integrated Digital Tuner / Freeview Having an integrated Digital Freeview Tuner means that your TV has a built in receiver that will give you access to many more channels without the need to have any additional hardware, such as a Freeview box. In 2007, the government will begin switching UK broadcasting to digital, so if your TV doesn’t have an integrated digital tuner feature you wont be able to view any channel without buying the additional hardware.

HDMI Sockets The W3000 series comes with 3 X HDMI Sockets – 2 to the rear of the set and 1 at the side. Your HDMI socket provides a connection point on your TV that is able to deliver a high definition picture. Quite simply, the more HDMI sockets that you have on your BRAVIA LCD TV, the more components you are able to link up to for HD picture quality, for instance, a Blu-ray player, your camcorder and your gaming console. Having the socket located in the front of the TV means that you no longer have to get into awkward positions or move the unit in order to gain access to the connection point, great if you’re viewing your photos on your TV via your digital camera.

S Force Front Surround / Dolby Digital Unique surround sound technology that gives you 5.1 channel virtual surround sound from just 2 speakers. Using precise variations in timing and volume projection S-Force fools the brain into thinking the sound is coming from different directions. This gives your BRAVIA LCD TV enhanced sound quality and the impression of 5.1 channel virtual surround sound without the need for extra speakers.

Live Colour Creation Live Colour Creation is a backlight system which produces a wider colour gamut, seen particularly with the red and green areas of the spectrum. So your TV picture will have more lifelike and natural colours with no smudging or dulling of the image.

BRAVIA Engine EX This picture enhancement technology ensures that the image produced on screen represents perfection. It reduces colour distortion by decreasing ‘cross colour’, ‘dot crawl’ and ‘moire’ the sort of distortion that you get on patterns such as a checked shirt. It cleans up the haze that you often see around lettering such as titles or text so that they appear perfectly sharp on screen. It enhances specific areas of low contrast within the image giving an overall crisp picture. It smoothes the motion, preventing jagged edges and bleeding colours on fast moving objects, ideal for sports & action sequences. It matches colours, which ensures the final image is reproduced exactly as the original source intended meaning that you see incredibly natural colours.

Dynamic Contrast Contrast ratio is improved and all shades between the brightest white and the darkest blacks are maintained, so the picture has more depth and detail. This is achieved as the backlight brightness adjusts according to the brightness of the scene. Sony’s unique dynamic contrast system features ACE (advanced contrast enhancer) which ensures all of the subtle shades of grey are maintained.

24P True Cinema '24p True Cinema' mode, is a perfect match for movies. Film is shot at 24 frames per second, but UK televisions operate at 25 frames per second. This means that when you watch a movie on DVD, you are seeing it sped up by 4 per cent. '24p True Cinema' enables the panel to display films at their intended 24fps (frames per second).

X.V. Colour X.V colour offers a colour palette of 100% of the colour spectrum giving more depth, detail and natural images and is closer to the colour spectrum seen by the human eye.

BRAVIA Theatre Sync A one touch control over your whole Home theatre set up. Simply press the Theatre button on the TV’s remote control, the TV’s sound turns off & the picture settings configure automatically to an optimal movie watching mode. BRAVIA Theatre Sync cuts out the complexity so that you can concentrate on enjoying your movie.

VESA Hole Spacing VESA-Standard or Video Electronics Standards Association is a perfect template for hole spacing (screw holes) in flat screens. So providing your wall bracket is also VESA standard, hanging your TV on the wall, for example, is a simple process without the frustration of drilling the holes incorrectly and in the wrong place.

Customer Reviews

Sony KDLW3000 pros and cons I am sort of happy!
Hi Folks

Just took delivery 3/12 of this TV and as my title say's I am sort of happy! My old 28" JVC gave a stunning picture and great service for 8 years but was being tempremental so it had to go. I have lusted after a 40W2000 for many months, so when I was told it was effectively replaced by this I had to take a look. In store it is jaw droppingly good at home well it takes a lot of work to get what you want out of it and involves setting up different parameters for each input. Not all brands allow this so well done Sony! You can have the right settings to match Off Air FREEVIEW, SKY, DVD, PS3/XBOX/Wii etc.

Mkae no mistake this is a superb panel but there are pros and cons so rather than get technical heres a list which I hope you find useful!

Pros:

Colour is simply stunning
Contrast is awesome, incredible deep blacks and detail held in the shadows
Great Menus with a superb amount of customisation available to those who like to tweak.
Build quality is 1st class sits on its base sure footed and firm nothing is loose or flimsy this is top kit.
Sound is great the virtual attempt at surround sound from two front speakers is amazing and will be fine till I can afford a full set up its that acceptable I may not bother!
Tons of connections 3xHDMI 2xSCART RGB Composite, S Video and PC etc.
Looks the business even when swithched off!
Blue ray is as different to DVD as DVD was to VHS tape honest!
PS3 and Wii look absolutely awesome.
Current production material programmes and movies off Sky + are excellent (once you have adjusted the factory settings)

Cons
Out of the box settings are AAAARRRRGH what have I bought! Several hours of internet searching and then tweaking to get the best picture is worth it but a pain none the less. (The wifes "is that it then? Its not as good as the old set" did not help while I was trying to set up!)

Manual is not very detailed could be better if it was set up "Quick start" then some "reccomended settings for DVD SKY etc" it would be much better.

You need to be at least 8 or 9 feet away from this set you can get a little closer if viewing 1080P full high def material but make no mistake in your average lounge this will dominate the room when set at eye level to mid screen on a three shelf stand.

Old material on sky plus can look WORSE than on your old CRT TV make no mistake this incredible TV will repay you many times over with DVD Blue RAY HDDVD and Sky playing recent material!

I really feel I have to buy Sky HD now :0( £299 and £10 a month apparently sky HD upscales the standard def programmes and gives you an improved picture even on non HD material mmmm we'll see!

In short this is a quality product which can be King or Pauper depending on what source material you feed it. Please do not panic when you first switch on things can only get better. It is capable of so much if you treat it right. if you do that it is SIMPLY STUNNING!

I have deducted one star for the amount of time needed to get the right result and the poor manual! Come on Sony put some custom settings in so you can dial in a number of different combinations till you hit one that works for you.

Excellent TV
This will be a non-technical review. The Sony KDL40W3000 is a simply outstanding TV. We are running upscaled DVD's, PS3 Blu Ray, PS 2 games and SD Sky through it.

There is a great deal on the web about settings out of the box for this TV and I would agree that for standard TV or even high quality TV DVD's (eg Sopranos, upscaled) then the 'VIVID' setting that the TV arrives in is not ideal. Colours look OTT and certainly not what you dreamed about when you ordered the TV. There are plenty of sites you can google for that come up with settings for the TV to get the best out of it. This TV has an incredible range of parameters that you can change which is great if you know what you are doing so be prepared for some playing around. If you prefer not to touch them then I would recommend switching from 'VIVID' to 'NORMAL' which at first will make colours look relatively muddy but will, over a few hours, look a lot better as you get used to them.

Sky SD is watchable but clearly not as good as HD would be. Most channels apart from heavily compressed channels are clear enough to view, I would regard quality as watchable. Remember this is the fault of the input source, not the TV. Switching on noise reduction does remove some of the noise in the picture but does so at the expense of sharpness, you can play around in the menu and see the impact on the screen instantly so you can try the options out quite easily. I turned noise reduction off altogether but for Sky SD a bit of reduction does make an improvement.

With Blu Ray however the detail and colours are mindblowing. There are enough reviews on Blu Ray and the PS3 so I will not add to them here other than to continue to be amazed at the picture quality. Upscaled DVD's do not have the same impact but are certainly good enough to not require a major upgrade of DVDs to Blu Ray discs. I suspect that at larger screens than 40" this may be a different story.

The sound quality is 'very good' rather than excellent and I would probably disagree with statements that claim a separate sound system is not necesary. We run this with a reasonable quality 2.1 sound system that is without question superior to the speakers on the TV. Bass and channel separation are clearly going to be better with a separate system.

Blacks appear to be very good, not in the range of a high end Pioneer Plasma (twice the price) but simply outstanding for an LCD TV. Significant improvement on the KDL40W2000 previous model to this one. There is a backlight control that reduces the backlight in the TV when the screen is dark, this is fine until you get to end credits on a movie which are generally scrolling words on a black screen. This confuses the backlight control which then darkens, lightens and darkens the screen depending on how many lines of text (and I guess therefore average brightness of the image) are there. If you bother with end credits this may trouble you but I would not make it a deciding factor for the TV.

Another point - the Playstation 3 is an amazing piece of kit whcih will show the best on this TV, however at 40" this TV also allows you to play multiplayer (split screen) Playstation 2 games with ease. The TV is not so big that PS2 screens are blurred but it is big enough to ensure that on a split screen (Socom Navy Seals, Colin McCrae Rally or Killzone) you can actually see what you are doing when in multiplayer split screen mode.

Last point on the Amazon 'White Glove Delivery Service' which you have to pay for with Amazon. I paid an additional £29.99 for the 'white glove delivery service' which I understood meant that the item would be delivered, checked and unpacked with all packing materials removed. 'White glove delivery' also implies something about the level of care that would be taken too.

The TV did arrive on time (and after a phone call from the courier to confirm delivery within a 2 hour slot which is good), however when it arrived the delivery guy had it balanced on his shoulder which he then asked me to sign for. He was not expecting to unpack the item and, when asked about this, said 'I don't know anything about that and no one else asks about it'. I am sure if pressed he would have done it but clearly it was not in his expectations. On this basis I signed for the TV as 'unopened'.

I have no complaint about the delivery guy but I am not happy that I had to pay Amazon an additional £29.99 for a 'white glove delivery service' when in the end, what I got was a normal 'drop off' delivery just like any other from Amazon. Ran a Google search on this subject and I have since found out I am not alone.

5 stars for the TV but not entirely happy with Amazon for the delivery charge.

Colour Like No Other!! Simply stunning!!
I had been researching LCD panel TVs for a while before finally deciding that i should get this one. As a rule of thumb, i never leave any stone unturned.

It's predecessor the W2000 seemed to get brilliant reviews everywhere i looked, with an average rating of 9/10 in each magazine or online reviews. But as it was being discontinued, i initially thought that the picture and quality could not get better as it was simply stunning. But i went to a sony style store to compare the W2000 with the W3000 and it was truly breath-taking. There was a distinct improvement in sharpness and contrast, and there was no motion judder which you could get on the W2000 (I read and witnessed motion judder on the W2000 with a Blue Ray disc)

Sony have only improved. The W3000 you can get from other online stores with a free 5yr warranty included up until the 31st January 08.

Playstation 3 just looks amazing on the TV. With newer games now coming through with the 1080p resolution, I am now starting to see the benefits of this TV. Most games at the moment are 720p (HD Ready) and not 1080p (Full HD) but there is certainly a difference.

I also compared the screen side by side with Toshiba, Samsung and Philips. Philips is the closest match to the Sony in terms of quality build and picture quality, but they are expensive. That's not to say that Sony isn't, you are just getting more for your money with the Sony. Samsung pictures were vivid, but the only drawback is the tedious reflective screen. LG and Toshiba(which i have owned for years) in terms of picture quality were no match in terms of sharpness or picture quality.

For the extra £150-£200 you will pay for this sony, it is a worthy investment and you will NOT be disappointed.

And a free 5 yr warranty, surely it costs about £300 by itself.

I now understand what they mean by Colour Like No Other.