Sony BRAVIA KDL-32V2000 32" LCD HDTV

Introduction

As nearly every review magazine or site is quick to point out, Sony were late at getting into the flat-panel TV business. While rivals began to dip their feet into plasma, and later LCD technology, Sony were trying to create the next Trinitron (their revolutionary picture tube from days gone by) and come up with their own technology which combined the best bits of both. Unfortunately, this alternative technology was scrapped, leaving Sony with some red faces and some catching up to do.

The company's earlier LCDs were released under the "LCD WEGA" name and although they looked the part, few were enthusiastic about them despite their usually excellent picture quality - least of all because on these shores, all of the "LCD WEGA" TVs had no HDTV-ready DVI or HDMI inputs like the American market got! Although I have no access to official sales figures, I gather that the response to this blunder was less than stellar.

Things are a little different now, luckily. It seems that Sony of Europe are slowly learning their lesson after launching the first "BRAVIA" TVs in Europe in versions that, when compared to what the rest of the world again got, were ridiculously under-specified. These new V-Series BRAVIAs (that's the black and silver kind, to the uninitiated) may look similar to the versions released last Summer, but they actually have many key differences. For a start, Sony of Europe have finally given us the WCG-CCFL Wide Colour Gamut backlight, which is capable of producing an even wider range of colours than what PAL and NTSC TV systems are capable of (now that's progress), the PC input is no longer shorn from the European V-Series models (nor is the automatic Brightness Sensor), and to round things off, even the new style on-screen menus are present. The last isn't too thrilling, but it's a nice sign that in Europe, we're finally getting up-to-date models instead of ones fumbled together from older parts.

First looks

In all honesty, I don't think that looks are a very good reason to buy a TV - you watch the screen, not the frame. But that's not an issue here either way, because with the same dark-grey plus silver surround looks as last year's models, almost everyone will agree that the V-Series BRAVIAs look pretty gorgeous.

On pulling my 32" version out of the box, I was surprised (and relieved) to note that it weighed substantially less than my old 26" LCD WEGA from two years ago. I also unpacked the usual manuals, batteries, power cord, RF cable, and remote that are supplied.

Remote Control

For whatever reason, Sony has taken it upon themselves to completely redesign the remote control over last year's versions. That's a shame, because the old version (pictured right) was a nifty little device with easily accessible features. The new version is fatter and silver, but to be fair, it is lighter and benefits from a grooved back, so you won't drop it during the sweaty summer nights. The new remote control also misses some functionality which I was sad to see the back of - on the old versions, the button to cycle through the Picture Presets was assigned to the red button. On the new remote, you have to go through a "Tools" menu to access the same function, which isn't really worth complaining about - but even still, Sony had a real winner. They should put it back for the next models!

Picture Tweaks

And now down to the actual TV itself. Sony is typically really good to us when it comes to giving us control over our TVs, and the new KDL-32V2000 doesn't disappoint. This TV has per-input settings. In other words, for each individual video input (as well as the built-in digital tuner), you have the option of storing picture settings unique to that input, or if you wish, to apply one set of settings to all the inputs. Although the "Vivid", "Standard" and "Custom" modes all give the appearance of being tweakable, this isn't quite true - the "Advanced" video options are only tweakble on the Custom mode, so Vivid and Standard still force some of their unwanted picture-modifying tweaks on the viewer. I suppose Sony think this makes things easier to use, but really, it's just a wasted opportunity.

Nevertheless, despite this strange annoyance, the picture tweaks offered are very nice. Let's go through them:

As I said, the Backlight is fully adjustable. You can use this in conjunction with the "Power Saving" mode from the Features menu turned on to let your BRAVIA produce astonishingly deep blacks, and a controlled brightness that looks much more like a Plasma or CRT TV than the blown-out, lit up messes that many other LCD TVs produce. This is a very important, but much-ignored tweak. It's all well and good having a high contrast ratio (which this TV does have), which means that all of the detail in dark areas will be reproduced by the panel - but that would be put to waste if the said dark areas are being lit up like a Christmas tree by the backlight lamp. Some manufacturers have the utter nerve to not even let the user adjust the backlight themselves which is all well and good in the dazzingly bright store, but take any LCD TV home and turn out the lights and you'll soon see why toning down the overall light output of the panel is a feature you definitely want.

Yes, Sony prove exactly how the backlight should be done. Not only can the user adjust the backlight to their liking (and/or lighting conditions), as well as enable the "Power Saving" mode to drop it to levels that produce the most realistic blacks I've ever seen from an LCD display (they seriously are astonishing), the Brightness Sensor - which senses the lighting conditions and dims or brightens the backlight accordingly - is also an option for people that want easy, no-tweaking viewing. A huge thumbs-up to Sony for having the common sense to offer this flexible set-up. This will please absolutely everyone.


The UK PAL DVD of Monsters, Inc running on the new BRAVIA.

Contrast, Brightness and Colour should be self explanitory. At first I thought that setting the Contrast to full was suitable, but I later found that this was "over-cooking" details on some shades of white and I lowered it into the mid-80s.

With Colour Temperature, Sony gives us four different options to make the colours on the TV look weird. "Warm1" and "Warm2" give your pictures that Summery fake tan (Warm2 looks especially ridiculous), and either "Neutral" or "Cool" give more realistic colours. That said, I've noted a slight orange tint to shades of red which can apparently, be refined by a professional calibration. If you don't have that sort of money, don't worry - it's nothing that will ruin your viewing.

Next up, the often misunderstood Sharpness control. Sharpness does NOT add more detail to your pictures like some people think - instead it actually obscures detail with false outlines around objects (people with knowledge of DVD image quality will already know this as "edge enhancement"). The good news is that on 720p mode, this TV has almost no edge enhancement at all when the Sharpness is set correctly. Sadly, on some types of standard definition video, and on 1080i, slight horizontal halos - that is, a slight "glowing" to the left and right of objects - are visible. It doesn't stop the TV's image quality from being fantastic, but nevertheless, I'm in discussions with Sony about a potential fix for the problem (after being largely dismissed by Sony's UK Service Line. Hmmm.)

If you connect a DVD player over the Component video jacks, you'll be getting standard definition video from it, so may run into this slight problem. The good news is that lowering the Sharpness control on my DVD player let me defeat the edge enhancement problem without any loss of detail.

Back to the options. The final one on the list is Noise Reduction. This type of Noise Reduction is Temporal Noise Reduction which simply means that it compares frames as a sequence to try and sniff out noise, rather than erasing defects from single frames. That means that if you have it set too high, the frames will become blurred together and you'll get motion blur, so be careful. I found that for watching older, noisy analogue video sources, like LaserDiscs (yes, I own a LaserDisc player), turning this on to Low helped. I was impressed at how non-destructive this setting was.

For those of you wanting to fine-tune the colours, the hidden service menu gives the usual Sony colour adjustments. If you look carefully you can see my reflection in the screen (kidding).


And now, the Advanced Video Options, previously shorn from the European models, now present. So, are they any use?


Not always, but it's nice to not be denied them all the same. "Contrast Enhancer" does the usual on-the-fly adjustments to the Contrast - as well as the backlight, oddly - to try and make a "richer" picture. Black Corrector tries for the same "false-richness" effect by crushing the blacks (for example, dark brown objects would turn black). Of course, you should stay away from these options most of the time, but they could be useful for problematic material. But for usual viewing, this TV's black levels are so good that you shouldn't have to resort to these sort of tactics to kid yourself. Moving on, Gamma is a useful option to have, but I haven't needed it just yet. Clear White gives the white tones in the picture a slightly more neutral tint instead of the usual warmer look.

"Live Colour" is the most confusingly named option on this TV. From what I gather, it has absolutely nothing to do with the "Live Colour Creation" technology Sony are promoting, because the exact same option is also included in the menus of the cheaper S-Series range (which doesn't have the Live Colour Creation extras). It's only available if you have the next option enabled.

That next option is "Colour Space" which at first really puzzled me. You get to toggle between "Normal" and "Wide" for this setting. Notice in the example below, the strong reds and greens from "The Incredibles" become far deeper. Whether or not this is the director's intended look, of course, depends on the material and the way it was mastered so you should use this setting carefully - in the wrong places, seemingly ones that originate from composite NTSC or PAL sources (old TV shows) it can simply give the colours an unnatural purple tint that becomes especially apparent on flesh-tones - altering the colour range, rather than enhancing it.


You can see in the top image - the out of the box "Normal" setting - has colours that look more like what we'd normally expect to see on a TV. "Wide", in conjunction with the Live Colour Creation processing, produces some really, really nice looking deep colours. Just look at Mr Incredible's suit and the green leaves. The difference is by far more noticeable when you see the two modes one after the other, in real life.

Finally, MPEG Noise Reduction. The name should explain it - this option attempts to tone down the ugly blocking noise we see all too often on over-compressed Digital TV broadcasts. Don't expect miracles because MPEG artefacts are nigh-on impossible to remove. Turning it to its highest setting will of course erode any detail from the picture and look more unpleasant than the MPEG blocking itself, so if you're jealous at how pretty everyone on TV looks, then you can turn the MPEG NR on to and make it look like their faces have been melted. I found though, that setting it to "Low" gave pretty good results for Digital TV pictures - the reason for that being that most digital TV broadcasts don't have much detail to start with so there's not a lot to lose!

To conclude for the Picture Tweaks section, this TV has just about all of the tweaking options you'll ever need - and some you won't! There's also an option to adjust the Overscan hidden away in the "Screen" menu. You can't completely defeat the overscan on this TV, but there doesn't seem to be very much of it. You can, however, choose to zoom the picture in further. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do this.

Video Performance

Like just about every LCD on the market, the KDL-32V2000 looks pretty ghastly with its default settings. Fortunately enough, this is just a false alarm because this is honestly the most impressive LCD TV I've ever seen in terms of picture quality. On a certain hardware forum I frequent, I receive a lot of private messages from buyers who have up until now been reluctant to give up their old CRT TVs, telling me that this has finally turned their opinions of LCD around.

My first port of call after turning the power on was to enter the Features menu, and turn the Power Saving feature on. A lot of people won't think of this, but not only does this feature save power (hence the name), it also dramatically improves the black level performance of the screen by dimming the backlight to a more realistic level. Once this was done, I corrected the aspect ratio (out of the box, it defaults to "Smart" mode which distorts the edges of 4:3 video to try and fake a widescreen picture) and toned down the Sharpness. Wow - what a difference!

DVD pictures from my upscaling Panasonic DVD-S97 turned out really well. On the 720p HDTV mode, there is no edge enhancement or any other hidden surprises forced on the viewer. The screen did a great job of faithfully reproducing the player's output - discs lacking in detail (as many DVDs from Hollywood studios sadly are) looked as good as they possibly could, but discs with minimal or no filtering - such as The Incredibles, Blade, Monsters Inc., The Rock, and Se7en, looked phenomenally good. Intentionally grainy films like Thirteen preserved their intended look, so there is no obnoxious noise reduction going on (unless you choose to enable it). Needless to say, I couldn't wait for my HD DVD player to arrive when I was first reviewing this TV!

The Component video jacks - the next best input choice for Progressive Scan and HD video - gave similarly great results to HDMI, with, unsurprisingly, a light sprinkle of noise (Component is analogue whereas HDMI is all digital), but this is nothing unusual and you'd be very hard pressed to see it. Unless you have the colour jacked up high, pictures from Component, and all other inputs for that matter, are spectacularly free of electronic video noise. I did notice when I was briefly demo'ing the latest JVC LCD TVs that when I paused a video game I was playing over the Component jacks, there was some light jittering visible up close, as if some noise on the signal was confusing the TV's image processing. On this BRAVIA there's no such light jittering.

RGB SCART performance was similarly excellent, should you be wanting to hook up, say, a satellite or cable decoder, or an older games console. Or if you are one of the heathens who owns an older DVD player, of course. On the default "Vivid" mode, RGB SCART had the usual terrible "bleached-out nuclear glow" look, but lowering the settings to more realistic levels gave as brilliantly natural, detailed, and un-interefered-with RGB SCART image you're likely to get.

What's fantastic though, is how this TV handles Composite video (that's the kind of signal you get from an old LaserDisc player, or analogue TV). Of course, if you're not using one of these older sources, then it won't mean much to you. But the reason I'm mentioning it is because I think this is a sign of attention to detail and a solid TV. The Comb Filtering - that's the part that removes dot crawl commonly seen on Composite pictures - is astonishing - seriously. The comb filtering on this TV is better than what most TV studios seem to be using in their professional equipment. Almost no dot crawl gets through and no detail is thrown away during the process. Don't believe me? Well here's the Ren & Stimpy Show laser disc, hooked up via Composite video. Look at the nice, bright colours - exactly the sort of things that would be covered in dot crawl - none in sight! Only on very fast moving scenes does any trace of dot crawl remain. The fact that Sony have gone to the bother of cleaning up an old fashioned video format that a lot of people might not use, to me is very reassuring that this is a class act from start to finish.

Deinterlacer Torture Test

Simply put, the deinterlacer is that part of the TV that fakes progressive scan pictures out of non-progressive scan (interlaced) ones. Interlaced video is what you typically get from any video device that isn't connected via Component video or HDMI, as well as from analogue and digital TV broadcasts. The 1080i HDTV format is also interlaced. Although interlaced video - which works by drawing half-frames rather than whole ones, to save bandwidth - is native to most of the old CRT TVs on the market, LCD panels are progressive. That means that the Deinterlacer in the TV needs to convert any interlaced video into Progressive to turn what would otherwise display as a mess of jagged patterns into a natural, visible picture with full motion fluidity.

My favourite test for any TV's deinterlacer is to play a fast (60 frames per second) video game in interlaced mode. My weapon of choice today was Sonic Adventure DX on the American NTSC Nintendo GameCube. After playing through the first half of the first level, I was satisfied that the deinterlacer in the TV is up to par. Only once on a very fast moving sequence did it let through some combing artefacts. There also weren't too many jagged diagonal lines. In short, the deinterlacing is exactly what I expected from a high quality consumer TV.

The deinterlacing circuitry was also adept at recreating the original FILM frames from 24 and 25fps movie sources (because Film material needs to be treated differently to Video camera material in order to avoid jaggies). The old LCD WEGA from 2004 that I've been used to featured astonishingly good 3:2 Pulldown Detection which meant that it did a good job of showing interlaced NTSC movies (for example, NTSC DVDs played from an older, Interlaced only player, or NTSC Laser Discs). The improvement is even greater on this new BRAVIA - NTSC DVDs look incredible played from an Interlaced player, with almost no jagged patterns whatsoever.

On the next page, I discuss the KDL-32V2000's always-important HDTV performance, PC input, connectivity, and more.

How does it handle HDTV?

A Windows Media HD sample test running on the KDL-32V2000.

You might think that HDTV will look excellent no matter what, but of course in the world of electronics, it's not that simple! Luckily, HDTV looks astonishingly good on the new BRAVIA. Although I don't have a SKY HD subscription, I have managed to create similar conditions using a computer and a Microsoft Xbox.

Although this is "only" a 1366x768 resolution TV, 1080-line HD pictures are handled far better than the previous BRAVIA models. Last year's models applied what looked like a cheaper/easier deinterlacing method, which meant that the entire screen had a slight jitter to it when watching 1080i material. That's gone now - the new BRAVIAs have motion adaptive deinterlacing for 1080i so the entire screen doesn't judder constantly - instead you'll only see a slight flickering on very fine details when things move. This surprised me a lot on a TV with a resolution closer to the 720p format. It means that no matter what HD device you use this TV with, it will look as good as the technology allows.

Note that there is an even cheaper, nastier way of handling 1080i video on a 1366x768 panel than the old BRAVIAs used. Certain LCD TVs on the market simply slice out every second line of the 1080i signal, creating a 540p one. They then scale this half-resolution image up to fit the panel again, which means that 1080i actually ends up looking worse than 720p if it's done on the cheap. For that reason, it's good to see that Sony have handled it properly.

Standard definition Digital TV and "Freeview"

It's all well and good having great HD performance, but how is this TV at upscaling old standard def? Well, no surprises here - it's excellent and once again gives the best results I've seen yet on an LCD TV. The video performance from digital TV channels is very good, all things considered. Watching video content that isn't too busy and blocky such as talk and news shows, even sitting up close to the TV, can look genuinely amazing. Of course, the quality of broadcast pictures greatly relies on the broadcaster's video equipment - and competency, which sadly appears to be lacking a lot of the time. SKY News' new facilities for example, look incredibly good, as does ITV1 News. BBC News 24's grotty old noisy equipment gets off as well as could be expected. Careful tweaking and some very light MPEG Noise Reduction can clean digital TV pictures up a lot. I'm very impressed, particularly with the video quality from the likes of Channel 4 and Five. If only BBC could put as much effort in.

This TV also features a card slot on the back so you can add a Top-Up TV card to it.

PC Input

Finally, the old faithful "VGA" connector. This connection passes most common resolutions (although interestingly not 1280x720) so if you're planning to use a PC or Sega Dreamcast, you're in luck. This TV does accept 1:1 video over this input, which means that a 1360x768 resolution picture will be mapped with pixel-perfection to the the matching resolution of the panel without a trace of the blurring that occurs with scaling images.

PC games, such as Unreal Tournament 2004 (pictured below), look absolutely astonishing connected via this method - provided your computer is up to spec, of course! As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Sony removed the VGA input from the previous European BRAVIAs (causing me to cancel my pre-order). It was absolutely worth the 9 month wait for Sony to get their act together and release this TV in Europe "uncut" and with PC input capability.



All of the PC resolutions give you 3 display options. You can see the pixels 1:1 mapped without any scaling - even on resolutions as low as 640x480, which gives you a tiny box in the middle of the screen with big borders all around. The second option scales to fit the panel, but preserves the aspect ratio (this is what I use to play 4:3 Sega Dreamcast games at 640x480). The final option scales to fit every available pixel and distorts the aspect ratio (eugh!)

The PC input lets you adjust the Backlight, unlike Samsung's LCD TVs. Brightness, Contrast and Colour Temperature are also adjustable. The other picture options are predictably greyed-out for this input.

The LCD panel itself

It's all very well having great picture processing technology going on behind the scenes - but the panel itself is of course equally important. The 8ms panel is excellent and if you're watching films, I think it's safe to say that you won't see any motion-blurred images whatsoever - blur on the new BRAVIA is reduced to a trace. If you play a fast 60fps video game, you might notice some very slight blurring in very dark areas of the picture, but that's neither unbearable nor unexpected. In this regard it's much better than the 2004 LCD WEGA I've been used to - a huge improvement in a short space of time. Perhaps in another 2 years we'll have 100% ghost-free panels?

I should add that my panel came with one dead (constantly black) pixel in the bottom right of the screen. Luckily, the store I bought it from agreed to swap out the TV and my second panel was pixel-perfect (as it should be at this price)! In addition, there is NO backlight bleeding or "hot-spots", where the lamp behind the screen has distracting uneven brightness. The panel was uniformly black from the second it was switched on.

Digital tuner usability

Pressing the "Book" icon on the remote brings up the Electronic Programme Guide, so you can peruse through all the, erm, fine entertainment available over the air. People that owned Sony's separate Freeview set-top box will recognise the similar interface. It's the same thing, but now the screen is slightly more crowded and the colours have been changed to match the rest of the new BRAVIA menus. Thankfully, the vomit-yellow EPG menus they had on the last BRAVIAs haven't returned. There's nothing out of the ordinary in here, although there are a few steps backward in the design department compared to the separate Freeview box and the image quality is almost identical.

All of the features you'll need are here - you can sort the EPG by programme category and set reminders for shows, so that the TV will turn on (so long as it's left in standby, that is) when your favourite programme is about to start.

All in all, the implementation of the DVB tuner is no worse than on any other "big brand" LCD TV I've used. But, it's clear that it's been designed by different people and has been added in for the European market. That sounds obvious, since DVB isn't used for digital broadcasting outside Europe and Australasia, but stay with me. Selecting "Digital Set Up" from the settings menu takes you to a separate menu with slightly different aesthetics. Compare this to the the American models which had their digital TV setup menus included as part as the standard TV menus. It's not a big deal, but it is a little messier and it's obvious that Europe is still, to some extent, an afterthought.

Other convenient features

Pressing the button in the middle of the directional pad on the remote control will bring up a menu that lets you quickly jump to the video input of your choice (or to the Digital TV tuner). It's a great feature and it's a big step up from the WEGA models where you had to keep pressing the Video Input button to slowly cycle through all of the inputs until you reached the one you wanted. Of course, if you do want to do that, you can still press the Video Input button, now located at the top left of the remote control.

Built in speakers

The built in speakers in this TV are a little tinny and disappointing, but it's not to be unexpected because thankfully, they are well hidden at the bottom of the TV. You can of course connect your own external speakers to the TV via the analogue Audio Outputs, however these have the annoyance of being Fixed Volume and will constantly output sound at the same volume even if you adjust or mute it on the remote control. Fortunately, I did come up with a solution for this and simply connected the headphone output to my amp instead, which gave the control I was looking for. All I needed to do this was a 3.5mm jack to RCA/Phono adapter cable, and since the headphone output is mounted on the back of the TV but easily accessible from the side, this little workaround isn't visible.

Connectivity

The NTSC version of "Se7en" - look at the detail!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Sony need to learn that their customers value connectivity on their TVs. We have a lot of equipment to hook up and we don't appreciate having to mess around with switch-boxes! Sadly, although this TV's image quality is astonishingly good, it could do with an upgrade in the connectivity department. There's only one set of Component Video inputs and crucially, only one HDMI input - so if you plan to connect Sky HD as well as an upscaling DVD player or Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player, you're in for some cable swapping. Although switch boxes can sort these annoyances, we really shouldn't have to buy these for a TV this expensive and it also means that we'll have to manually tweak the picture settings every time we change inputs on the switch.

It's a real pain that Sony would waste space by including not one but two SCART inputs (which don't support HD, and don't even support Progressive Scan for that matter) on an expensive HDTV - space that could have been occupied by, say, another set of Component video inputs or a second HDMI terminal. Surely that'll affect them sales-wise, seeing as rivals such as JVC and Panasonic are now releasing LCD TVs with two HDMI inputs. Sony's entry-level S-Series has the exact same number of inputs as this higher-end offering, which doesn't seem to make sense at all. That said, at least this time, Sony of Europe didn't mess up and release a high-end TV with LESS inputs than the lower-end offering, like they did last Summer!

Come on though Sony, this is embarassing. All but the entry-level models in the American BRAVIA range feature 2 Component inputs compared to the 1 we get here - sure, it's a "different market", but the sad fact for you is that HD in Europe is now a reality and we're sick of getting second-rate TVs - enough with this multiple SCART nonsense. The only possible situation where SCART would be the best connection choice these days is when you're connecting a standard definition satellite/cable decoder to the TV, and I can't think why anyone would have more than one of these, especially when you consider that in a few years they'll be becoming less and less popular anyway. I don't doubt that people still have older SCART devices lying around, but this is an HDTV and more emphasis should be on HD connectivity.



Unlike last years' European V-Series (which input wise was an unmitigated disaster compared to what the rest of the world got), I'm happy to report that this display does contain at least one input of each useful type, so it's not a total input blunder. It's far from what we should have to put up with on a display this expensive, and it means you'll quite likely have to factor in the cost and annoyance of external switch-boxes (or get a good AV receiver), but all of the important functionality remains, and that's the main thing. That said, although their image quality isn't quite as good, you might want to look into Panasonic or Toshiba's new screens if you're really concerned about connectivity.

Closing thoughts

It took them enough time, but Sony of Europe eventually gave us a European version of a BRAVIA LCD that's worth cheering about. It's not perfect connectivity wise, but everything that's important is here (even if I will need to spend even more money on a switch box). Yes, it's ridiculous that on a TV this expensive, I still need to make use of a Component video switch, but the picture quality and black levels make up for it, so I'm very happy.

Although it can be tempting to go for a TV that costs £100-200 less - and there are some very good alternatives out there that DO include 2 HDMI inputs, such as the new JVC LCDs - I do recommend that people go for a BRAVIA instead. With developing technology, you do of course get what you pay for, and since Sony operate a number of fairly tempting cashback schemes - effective when buying other selected Sony electronics or a SKY HD subscription - the extra expense could soon be forgotten.

Before I got this new TV, I was honestly terrified because my last experience with a 32" LCD wasn't pleasant at all. To my utter amazement, I don't find myself having to sit too far back to watch standard definition video on this BRAVIA. The flaws that the KDL-32V2000 (and it's bigger 40" brother) have are all acceptable and the image quality is truly special. I can see this display being the eventual choice of many people getting into HDTV for the first time, as well as for video enthusiasts like myself. Now, when will I have enough money for the 40" 1080p version...

(For those interested, more pictures of the KDL-32V2000 in action can be had over at my own web site).