Product Description

Sony KDL40W3000U 40 inch HD Ready LCD TV 1800:1 1920 x 1080 with Digital TV Tuner.Main Features:40 inch LCD TVHD ReadyContrast ratio: 1800:1Brightness 500 cd/m2Native resolution: 1920x1080Turbo Boost safety feature - built in protection function which defaults CD speed to 40x as a defence against poor media quality (Can be changed to maximum speed at the touch of a button)FREEVIEW3 x HDMI (2xRear, 1xSide)Force Front Surround Sound / Digital DolbyLive Colour CreationBRAVIA Engine EXBRAVIA Theatre Sync2 x SC...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27279 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.

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

Fantastic Picture, let down by extremely poor EPG
I'm sure you've noticed that the majority of reviews for the Sony Bravia KDL-40W3000 LCD TV are favourable, and it is true to say that the picture on the Bravia was the key selling point when I bought the TV, and this was after spending many hours in Sony/Panasonic shops to find the best 40".

I'm only giving the TV 3 stars because this is the lowest rating anyone should give for the TV as the picture is amazing. It's not the picture I have a problem with though, but the EPG (electronic programme guide).

I'll have to say that although text is displayed in hi-res, the EPG is awful. I've had freeview for years now, and even the most basic box I've owned can let a user browse through the information of other channels whilst watching the current TV broadcast on-screen. You can then switch to the channel you want via this on-screen info if you find a channel you like the sound of.
You can't do this type of on-screen browsing with the Sony Bravia KDL-40W3000 at all.

Another problem is that you can bring up the Sony's EPG in full, but programmes display their title only and not their information so you can't view their content. The only way you can bring up a programme's information is by pressing the i+ button on the remote and this will fully close down the EPG and display the channel you're interested in with your current broadcast in the background every time.

This is a useless and time-consuming procedure if you use a programme's infomation/content to choose your channels.
Sure, you can go buy a copy of the Radio Times for this info, but this defeats the object of having an EPG in the first place.

I have no idea why Sony have implemented such a useless EPG in their Bravia W3000 series.
I own a Sony Freeview box (VTX-D800U) and have that connected to my Bravia now so that I can use a better EPG. Unfortunately this means that the picture I get isn't as good (as the freeview tuner that comes inside the Bravia is far superior), but I simply can't do without a decent EPG.

Another feature lacking in the KDL-40W3000 is the fact that the UK model doesn't have Picture in Picture (PiP), and instead has a feature called Picture AND Picture (PAP), where you have two unsizable (apparently the American model of the Sony will let you size both pictures equally) screens next to each other.
In practice this is pretty useless, as you can only have a large AV picture in the left-hand part of the screen, and in comparison a really tiny picture in the right-hand part, (which is usually the freeview broadcast) and you can't swap them over. In fact I don't think you can even have the Sony freeview picture in the larger portion of the Picture and Picture mode at all. A great feature of Picture in Picture on a lot of other televisions is that you can switch the source screens around with each other, but you can't do this with the Sony's freeview picture and any other AV source (like a console game, DVD or SKY+). How frustrating!

My advice is to go to a Sony store and get given a demonstration of their EPG and PAP mode before you buy. If you're like me, then you're going to be pretty disappointed with it.

So far so good
After many years of holding out for the Next Big Thing in TV hardware, I finally caved and spent a small fortune on this "reassuringly expensive" TV and a companion HD recorder. I'm sure they'll get cheaper, but I (hope) don't think they'll get much better.

The worst thing you could say about it is "it's big ... REALLY big", but oddly on a clear glass stand it doesn't dominate the room any more than our bulky old 28 inch CRT.

Setup was a doddle. Channel auto-search was quick and the digital EPG loaded up almost instantly. It's true the picture needs to be tweaked to taste, but for immediate purposes switching from "vivid" to "standard" and notching the backlight down a couple of points took the searchlight brilliance out of Channel 4's on-air showing of "The Fifth Element".

It's a joy to watch. I have no HDMI sources but everything from off-air to DVD and Divx playback looks great. Saturday's C4 movie looked as detailed as any disc-based playback. Upscaled DVD images from a HDMI connected player are spectacular - amazing depth and detail in season 2 Doctor Who story "The Impossible Planet". The images from a SCART connected player set to RGB are softer but a lot of people probably wouldn't notice, and until I buy an external surround decoder I'm happy to live with it.

The only real demerits are learning to navigate the remote and the slightly clunky mechanism for switching between inputs. Get the connections right and these seem to be automatic for switching on but don't always revert after switching off. A minor nuisance.

Audiophiles will quibble, I'm sure, but the built in sound is strong and clear.

Buy one while they're still out there!

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.