Product Description

Sony KDL-46W3000 - 46'' Widescreen Bravia 1080P Full HD LCD TV - With Freeview

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98862 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: KDL46W3000U
• Released on: 2007-09-12
• Dimensions: 63.93 pounds

Features

• Full HD 1080P LCD Television
• Screen Size:46
• Tuner Type:Analogue with Freeview
• Teletext:Smartext with EPG
• Nicam sound system

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.

Box Contents

• Remote control
• Batteries
• AC power cord
• Coaxial cable
• Instructions
• HD cable
• Support belt and screws
• Quick set up guide
• Warranty card
• On-line registration card

Customer Reviews

46w3000
Hiya everyone,

I'm lucky enough that my parents decided to shell out for one of these this Christmas. Well, we have been living in the stone age of CRT for the last 10 years!

First thing I'll talk about is the SD picture. Before it arrived, I knew that the SD picture wouldn't be beautiful, but when you're getting a TV like this, you kind of expect it to be, despite knowing that it can't be. I would just like to warn people now that the SD picture is fairly imprecise. I would say that it is fairly similar, or even worse than the picture I used to get on our old CRT. It is susceptible to motion blur, especially when the picture is very bright or vivid. I've been fiddling about with the settings, and the more soft and dark I make the picture, the less motion blur there is. I don't think we're going to get Sky HD, so we're living with a compromise between slight motion blur and a dark picture for the moment, with Sky +.

A couple of tips for people using it with an SD picture.
1) Immediately go to the settings menu and turn the picture type from "Vivid" to "Standard" or "Cinema". Vivid looks horrible with an SD picture, so do this before you start to get too worried.
2)For me, the motion blur seemed to burn out a little with time, so give it a little time

However, I've used a couple of HDMI inputs with this, and this is what this TV is about. Really, when you're buying a TV like this, you should factor in getting a couple of HD inputs. An HD-DVD or Blu-ray player will look STUNNING with this TV.

The HDMI inputs I used were
1)My XBOX 360. The picture on PGR4 was so, so good. The intro video was just awesome. I was so impressed by the picture. However, on Halo 3, there was a bit of motion blur. I'm going to fiddle about a bit and hopefully I can eliminate this. The TV is not 100hz, which is the only let-down on the Technology front. But at this price, you should be getting it. This may be part of the reason for the motion blur.

2)A Sony DVD upscaler, which we got with the TV. Despite the fact that it's upscaling ordinary 420p DVDs, the picture is brilliant. That quality surprised me, I wasn't expecting it. I watched Black Hawk Down. Colour is very rich and when using this on an HDMI input, there is NO motion blur. Obviously not quite the quality you'd get from a proper HD-DVD player, but very good. I'd recommend one of those upscalers if you're going to get this. I watched a DVD on our old player, and I think the upscaler improves the picture by about 5 times, by eliminating Motion Blur, and delivering a picture that is about 4 times crisper.

Basically, what I'd say about this TV is that you should not get it if you don't have any HDMI inputs, and are not going to get any. You'll just be disappointed with the SD picture. However if you've got kit capable of being HDMI inputs, then it's great. I mean really, really great. Stunning. The difference between an SD picture and an HD picture on it is huge. That's because the TV is geared towards delivering you an excellent HD picture. There's no point in having all this expensive HD technology in the TV if you're not going to use any of it, and are thinking of sticking with the old SD kit for a while. I'm saying this seemed to be the view of my parents. Apart from the DVD upscaler, they don't want to get any HD inputs. I might get one of those HD-DVD player add-ons for my 360, because I now realise that the TV is for HD, so use it for HD! Not to do so just makes the whole purchase pointless.

So when you buy this, factor in how much the HD-DVD player/Sky HD etc is going to cost.

All of this was written from my perspective, i.e moving from a 26" CRT to this. I can't really compare between the different HD LCD models, as I havn't really experienced this TVs competitors. I'm just talking about what you gain/don't gain from making that move.

I gave this 5 stars because I've seen what this TV can do with an HD input and it's awesome. In the Sony shop, I saw this hooked up to a Blu-ray player (well, it would be blu-ray in a Sony shop wouldn't it), and WOW. So that's why it gets 5 stars. I almost knocked off a star for the SD picture and the lack of 100hz. The lack of 100hz is bad at this price. But the SD picture is bad on all these TVs from what I've seen, so it would be silly to knock off a star for that.

And the TV does have lots of good technology in it. It's got 24P. That's cool. When films are shot, 24 frames are taken every second. However, in Britain, the TVs normally output at 25 frames every second. So the film is sped up by 4%. 24P gets the film back to its original fps, so you see it how the director intended to see it. So your favorite film of all time is now 4% longer. How's that for a service. Donnie Darko is 4% longer, that justifies the price in itself. It's also obviously 1080P, the latest HD format to come out, so it's up to date.

Oh and lastly, one thing I forgot to mention is that the first thing I noticed with this TV was the sound quality! You never really think of sound quality as being important when you're watching TV, but it's so crisp. I'm hearing things I never heard before. And it's got this virtual surround sound system which kind of works. For me there is now NO reason to get a seperate surround sound system.

So to sum up, the pros and cons that I noticed

Pros
Awesome Sound Quality
Stunning HD picture when used with HD inputs
Good technology in there, e.g 24p
Quite future proof, with 1080P and 3 HDMI sockets
Stylish with brushed Aluminium frame
Large size
Lots of Adjustment in the settings menu

Cons
SD picture no better than on old CRTs
Lack of 100hz technology
Motion Blur with SD picture and on some HD pictures (XBOX 360 for me)

Yeh think that's about it

SDS

Great Customer Service & Fab 1080p TV
Hiya,

I ordered one of these from amazon, the 1080p / 24 picture from bluray on PS3 is crystal. Watched a few blurays and tried dvd upscaler / call of duty on ps3 with great results. As mentioned in the other reviews, the SD picture is not an option here. Freeview picture is up to a good standard. The out of box setting are good but worth playing round to get an idea. The sound from the tv itself you can enjoy, but a 5.1 surround will do it justice.

One important thing to note is, i recieved this LCD with a dead pixel, returned and received a replacement in a matter of days. Well done Amazon for making this a painless experience.

Cheers

Sony technology at it's best
In the early stages of changing to LCD TV's I had researched countless manufacturers but settled on Sony.There are many manufacturers around at much lower prices. Yes the screen resolution might be the same but there is a lot more to producing a high quality picture - such as the processor. At the time Panasonic were focusing on Plasma but of course that has now changed and they also produce excellent LCD TV's but not yet in the larger screen sizes.
I have moved from the Sony U series to V then to W. They now produce even more advanced ranges. Of all the TV's ( and there is a huge difference in price adross th 46" range) I found the W an excellent product. The picture is as good as I guess you can get on SD but on HD ( via Blu ray DVD or Sky) the picture is stunning.It is a feature packed TV with all the inputs you will need , very simple to set up and use and backed by proven the Sony Bravia engine . Reliability on LCD TV's has yet to be proven of course but as CRT TV's have now virtually disappeared we have no further buying choice - except Plasma - which generally also consume more power.Whether you buy an extended warranty ( or better still get one free) is debatable. All I can say is that if an LCD screen fails it is very expensive. Technology is moving fast so nothing is future proof but with this Sony I believe you are getting excellent quality from a reputable brand.