Sony BRAVIA KDL-40W2000 40" LCD 1080p HDTV

It seems that everyone knows Sony BRAVIA now. Thanks probably to favourable reviews and some widely discussed TV advertising, it seems that Sony are making up for lost time and are well and truly on the way to dominating the market after getting into the game late.

Although most of Sony's LCDs have been of a very good standard, this W-Series BRAVIA deserves special praise for the simple reason that the panel is 1920x1080p - that's "Full HD" in Sony marketing speak - and that the TV is still affordable. In fact, if you look hard enough, it can be had for around £1500. This is the same price that the 32" 720p-centric V-Series BRAVIA debuted at only seven months ago! The 40" (101cm) model is the smallest in the W-Series, which also includes a 46" model. I'll refer to the 40" version reviewed here from now as the "40W".

There's been a lot of praise for this TV and reviewers so far have claimed it's the first time that a large-screen LCD has finally outperformed equivalent Plasma screens. Unfortunately, I can't comment on this because Plasma isn't a technology I've spent a lot of time with. Some people love the "flat CRT" like image it can produce, but my eyes have never got on with the technology and I've honestly always preferred the look of a good LCD. In addition to this, there's no affordable 1920x1080 plasma that I know of, so as such, don't be surprised that this review won't elaborate on the Plasma-beating claim any further.

With that out of the way, let's get on with examining the 40W.

First Looks and Build Quality

Whilst unpacking the screen, I needed some help in getting it out of the box. Unlike the 32" V-Series model which I last unpacked, the 40W comes packaged without its stand attached. Unless you plan on wall-mounting the TV, this means that you'll need to remove the stand from the packaging and lower the screen onto it, then screw it into place with the four supplied screws, so get someone to help!

After this was done, I stood back and took a look. Looks-wise, the black-and-grey W-Series looks very good indeed, better than the lower-end S Series BRAVIA range, but not quite as pretty as the mid-range V-Series (it actually feels like a combination of the two designs). Whether this is down to economics, I'm not sure, but I think the V-Series is always going to be a TV design classic. You can be rest assured in knowing that this W-Series looks very nearly as good as it, which is still a huge compliment and means that it's still a looker for sure. It's nice to note that Sony's designers have employed common sense and have not placed any reflective materials around the screen (the only slightly reflective part of the TV is a very small strip at the bottom which doesn't distract).

Lowering the TV onto the stand gave me a good idea of the construction quality of both the 40W and the stand. Both are excellent and I have absolutely zero complaints about either of them. After screwing it in, the TV rests firmly on the stand without wobbling around.

Remote Control

I noted with surprise that Sony have given their remote a slight update. In May when the first 2nd-generation BRAVIAs appeared, I mentioned how much I preferred the old 2004/2005 thin remote controls, but I've now gotten used to the larger 2006 version with its soft buttons. The remote control's buttons are now flat-topped, with bolder printing, and the back of the control is now Silver instead of Grey. It's a good remote and fits comfortably in your hand, and the grooved back is a welcome addition. All of the buttons are in easy to memorise, logical positions, and the 5, Audio Channel and Channel Up buttons make use of the tactile dot.

Picture Tweaks

The 40W holds few surprises here, with the usual excellent range of options as the other Sony ranges (excluding the premium X-Series, which has a few more tweaks). The standard Brightness, Contrast and Colour settings are obviously tweakable, as is the Backlight. In May when I reviewed the 32" V-Series, I discussed how important this adjustment is, so if you'd like to read that again, scroll to the Picture Tweaks section of that review. All you need to know that the backlight adjustment is extremely important for getting a pleasing picture because it lets you control the Light Output of the screen itself, rather than just the colours of the pixels (that's what the Brightness control is for) and that some LCD manufacturers don't include it on their screens (Philips). Sony have always offered this adjustment, which is excellent.


One of my gripes with the rest of the Sony range is still here, and that is that only the "Custom" picture preset is fully editable. "Vivid" and "Standard" allow for most of the tweaks, but still force some features such as "Contrast Enhancer" on the viewer, which is a minor annoyance. You can of course turn it off on the "Custom" mode, which is actually a step above some other LCD TVs. Fortunately, the 40W allows you to store individual picture settings for each video input (as well as the built-in Digital TV tuner), which is a welcome touch and one that is thankfully becoming standard for LCD TVs. It simply means that each input - such as HDMI 1, HDMI 2, Component etc., will remember unique picture settings, which lets you get the best settings for each connected device, rather than having one set of settings that's applied to everything you watch.


The Advanced Video options act largely the same as they did on the KDL-32V2000, which means that most of them, with the exception of "Gamma", are rarely worthwhile (but still nice options to have). The biggest difference I noticed was in the way that the Wide Colour Gamut Cold Cathode Fluorescent (WCG-CCFL) backlight was set up. Under the Advanced Menu, the 40W lets you flip between two different Colour Spaces, "Normal" and "Wide", the latter of which lets you take advantage of the improved colour gamut.

The May 2006 V-Series TVs debuted this new type of backlight (in Europe, anyway), and Sony grouped it together with some other minor features and dubbed it "Live Colour Creation". Reactions to this feature seemed fairly mixed. Although most people were fairly pleased with the colours on the TV, there was a lot of disagreement about whether or not they were "right" (or whatever "right" colours means in the world of uncalibrated, inexact consumer TVs, anyway). Certainly, "Standard" mode on the old 32V model presented Reds that looked a little bit too Orangey/brown, and "Wide" showed Reds that looked a touch too purple for most people's tastes.

Interestingly, it looks like Sony has taken these criticisms on board. On the 40W, the colours on both modes look closer to how they do on most other LCD TVs and the Reds look distinctly red - albeit in different ways - no matter what the setting. In fact, I've so far found myself using "Standard" more, but I may change my mind on this. The small debate on the "correct" setting is sure to continue, but until I have my TV professionally calibrated by a colour expert, I can't really say for sure.

Finally, more control over the picture is given to us in the "Screen" menu. Most notably, this menu lets us tone down the amount of Overscan (zooming to remove the edges of the picture, which are sometimes unused by broadcasters). The best feature of the 40W is that, like the premium X-Series, 1080i and 1080p images can have the overscan completely disabled. Sony calls this option "Full Pixel", which is an odd name, but rest assured this is exactly what the option does. This means that you can hook up a 1080-line device like an HD DVD player, Sky HD box, or a computer (although Sony don't officially support this) up to the HDMI input and see the pixels from the video signal represented exactly on your screen - one pixel from the video signal will correspond to one pixel on the screen grid for the ultimate clarity, and a remarkably untampered-with image. I'm extremely glad that Sony have allowed W-Series owners to have this option, rather than keeping it as a Premium feature on the X-Series. Great job! For those of you with deeper pockets than mine, this also means that the 40W can be hooked up to an external video processor and accept native 1080p video at either 50 or 60hz from it.

If you're wondering why I'm about to conclude the picture tweaks section but haven't discussed "Sharpness", don't worry, because I'll talk more about that in the Video Performance section (it's good news, don't worry).

In-depth Video Performance Analysis

As usual, the TV comes pre-configured to look, well, not very good, and the usual picture adjustments are necessary to get an undistorted picture without any details being thrown away by the video processing.

Like last time with the 32" model, I turned the Power Saving function on to "High" to fix the Backlight at its lowest brightness, to save power, prolong the life of the backlight (although I've never seen one fail yet), and most importantly, to get the best possible black level performance. At first I found this much too dark, but after a few hours of usage, this setting looked correct. I'm assuming that the Backlight needs a few hours after the set is first turned on to warm up.

Next, I started testing the various devices I'd connected to the TV.

Video Analysis: 1080i and 1080p

As this is a 1080p TV, and one of the first that's been relatively affordable, it would seem that 1080p "Full HD" is a feature Sony plans to exploit more and more in the upcoming years to help their PS3 and Blu-ray Disc plans. So, naturally, the first thing I did was connect my Toshiba HD DVD Player for the ultimate in 1080-line movies!

Although HD DVD movies are, like Blu-ray ones, in 1080p format, the first American players (review) output this as a 1080i signal. What a lot of people don't know is that for Films, 1080i should be identical in quality to 1080p. Why? Because the frame rate of a film is 24 frames per second, which fits comfortably into the 1080i video signal using a technique called 3-2 Pulldown, which I won't go into here (Google it if you're interested in the technicalities). All you need to know is that all film content that's been transferred to 60hz video (that means American/Japanese DVDs, and all HD DVD and Blu-ray discs worldwide) is encoded using this 3-2 Pulldown pattern, which the best video processors should be able to lock onto and reverse, so that none of the quality is lost and clear, jaggy-free film frames can be shown on the screen. Unfortunately, this doesn't always seem to be the case on the 40W. The high resolution nature of 1080i pictures can make it at times difficult to tell, but the 40W would at times lose track of the pattern and begin showing very slight jaggedness on moving objects. This will be remedied by connecting a 1080p HD DVD (or Blu-ray, if you prefer) player to the TV, but as these are a little more expensive, it's a pity that the TV doesn't always manage this as successfully as it could. 1080i Films still look great, though, make no mistake.

One of the discs that stunned me the most was Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. It's one of the best looking titles on the format (shame the film was so average), and was shot digitally in 1080p. Although I have absolutely no gripes with a nice, grainy, filmic image, the pleasing look of all-digital films in HD is something I can't deny. After turning on Full Pixel (no overscan) mode, I sat back and admired the jaw-dropping quality. There's a sequence in the film where the main character first arrives in the Land of the Dead, which is full of neon green, purple and orange colours. The Full HD resolution of the panel, the quality of the video transfer using the VC1 codec (which has become the de facto standard for HD DVD discs), 1:1 mapping and lack of overscan, as well as the WCG-CCFL backlight, all add up to make this scene look utterly amazing on the 40W. It's a shame it's so difficult to photograph, as I've had to use a different picture below.


(Click the image for a larger version, but please note that taking pictures of a TV that has this many active pixels can be incredibly difficult, and the results "in the flesh" are better).
I confirmed with a disc of 1080p test patterns that when the Sharpness control is set to 0, there is only a tiny, tiny trace of additional sharpening being applied. It's so small that from only a few feet away it becomes completely unnoticeable, and on a TV of this size, that to me is a hair-line away from being as good as no Sharpening being applied at all. Just to confirm this, I connected my computer using a DVI to HDMI cable and brought up some fine text, exactly the sort of thing that would be an eyesore with anything but a trace Sharpening going on. The text was, as expected, completely readable.

Since I've discussed 1080i Film content, what about 1080i Video? Although it's possible for a video processor to reconstruct completely clear frames if the originating source was Film, 1080i pictures from a video camera (or video games, for that matter) will always show some quality loss, simply because the TV will have to "guess" information that simply wasn't there to start with. The 40W held up well here and only allowed interlacing artefacts to slip through on very fast flashing patterns (such as those occasionally found in video games).

Video Analysis: 720p

Up until now, 720p was the highest resolution of HDTV I'd used for any great length of time - you have no idea how weird it feels to be writing about how a TV "upscales 720p"! This is actually the mode I've spent the least amount of time with for one simple reason - I don't own an Xbox 360. With a Nintendo Wii (480p) and HD DVD player (1080i/p), I have the lowest and highest resolutions covered, but 720p falls right in the middle of my requirements. As such, I used a computer to output 1280x720 (720p) over both an analogue Component video connection as well as HDMI. The results were excellent, with no additional etching or Sharpening around objects. The only slight "glow" around fine text is simply a by-product of the scaling process and is completely acceptable. As such, if you plan to use this TV to play Xbox 360 games, I think you'll be very pleased indeed.

Video Analysis: Standard Definition NTSC (480i/480p)

This is where things get tricky. Some quick maths lets us see that to get a 720x480 (480p) signal up to the 1920x1080 (1080p) of the display, a LOT of scaling work has to be done by the TV - 600 lines of picture have to come seemingly out of nowhere.

It is both delightful and also a little disturbing then, that the 480-line pictures I tested on this TV actually look better than they did on the 1366x768 resolution 32" model I owned previously. In my review of the KDL-32V2000 BRAVIA, I mentioned that although it was (and still is) a fantastic TV, the video processing had a slight glitch which meant that the majority of video types (480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, and 1080i) input to the TV would have a slight "etched" effect to the left and right of high contrast objects. For example, black text on a grey background would display with a slight white glow to the left and right of the text. It's important to note that this was a separate issue to simply having the Sharpness on the TV set too high, as the etching effect was permanently present regardless of the control and couldn't be removed.

Well, the problem isn't on the 40W. Lower resolution pictures do indeed have very, very small halos visible, but they're far less intense and as such are just a normal side-effect of scaling lower resolution images up to a high-resolution panel. As a result, 480i and 480p pictures, depending on the source of course, have the capability to look very pretty indeed. Have a look for yourself at the improvement:


This results in excellent quality and means that the scaler in the TV in many cases actually outperforms the scalers in upscaling DVD players. I tested the standard definition NTSC DVD of "The Rock" (Criterion Collection version) in the Toshiba HD-A1 player and found that I preferred to set the player to output in 480p, leaving the rest of the scaling to the TV (which does a very good job). However, for some other material - mainly animation - I favoured the player doing the upscaling, because I found that it did a very slightly better job of concealing aliased lines. The results, either way, look wonderful with a good disc (although well mastered DVDs are few and far between).


I did say "very pretty indeed", but there is one slight hiccup along the way. Yep, there's always one: on both 480i and 480p, there is a slight Y/C Delay issue, which means that Red parts of the picture are shifted out of the lines, just a little too far to the right. On 480p, the error is very slight and is only about 1-2 pixels out of place. In 480i, it's a little more noticeable. Have a look at the image below which is the more severe 480i variant, NOT the 480p one:


This is a Nintendo GameCube game (playing on my American Nintendo Wii console) called Super Smash Bros Melee that outputs fantastic quality video, because it lets the user turn off any kind of Flicker Filtering, which means that the video is incredibly crisp without being oversharpened. Although the US release (which I'm using) of this game runs in 480p, I'm running it in 480i in this picture to show the error. Notice how the blue sky is bleeding into the red cap to turn the edge slightly green, and again on the other side, the red from the cap is bleeding into the sky and turning a small part of it purple. Now, I've actually used this same game to pinpoint colour shift issues on an HDTV before, but to assure you that the TV is the culprit, remember that I'm now playing it on a Nintendo Wii using the GameCube backwards compatibility feature, with a different Component cable. I've also confirmed that the problem appears from other sources, too.

Fortunately enough, 480i is probably one of the video types people will use on this TV the least, so although I'm astonished that this has slipped through and I'd like to see it fixed, I'm not going to call this a huge issue. It's 100 times better than the halos that V-Series owners are stuck with and much of the time isn't even visible, and I'm willing to bet that nobody has noticed it (Sony included) until now. Interestingly, an HDTV I've reviewed previously had a similar issue with shifted colours, but it affected a much wider range of modes so was harder to escape. Even with this error, the 40W actually produces the most clear 480-line images I've ever seen on an HDTV.

Now, I mentioned 3-2 Pulldown detection earlier when discussing HDTV signals. The same theory is here for NTSC Films as well, a device can, in theory, properly reconstruct clear film frames from an Interlaced NTSC film. The 40W does a brilliant job here, with no jaggies whatsoever making it onto the screen. That means if you watch films from NTSC DVDs connected through SCART, S-Video or Composite (yeuch!) then you'll see very smooth motion with no jaggies. Of course, more important to most people here in the UK is how PAL is handled, so...

Video Analysis: Standard Definition PAL (576i/576p)

Now that you know about 3-2 Pulldown, meet the European 50hz equivalent: 2-2 Pulldown. Why would a TV's ability to detect 2-2 Pulldown interest you? It will be a feature you'd like if you're still using a DVD player that isn't Progressive Scan capable (if you've got your player connected through SCART, S-Video or Composite, you're not getting Progressive Scan so you'll be relying on the TV's capabilities to detect the pattern). If you're one of these people, you'll be largely out of luck, because I'm yet to see an LCD TV that detects 2-2 properly (it's a lot harder to do than the American-centric 3-2). Although it does manage to lock onto the pattern at times, it was common for the TV to lose its grip and fall back to the jaggy Video deinterlacing, which means that the 40W is no different to most LCD TVs. That means that although connecting a DVD player through RGB SCART gave good results, I suggest that you get ahold of a good Progressive Scan player and hook it up through Component or one of the two HDMIs to make the absolute most of this TV. This is a challenge in itself, because a lot of Progressive Scan DVD players aren't very good at detecting the 2-2 pattern either!

Similarly to the results with NTSC standard-def material, 50hz "PAL" also suffers from the colour shift issue, although not if you're connected through RGB SCART. Composite, S-Video and Component at 576i are affected to a very small degree (nothing like as much as 480i was), and 576p is almost totally free of the issue.

Digital tuner usability

(As the digital tuner on the KDL-40W2000 is functionally indentical to that of the previously reviewed KDL-32V2000, the following section is mostly copied from the earlier review).


Pressing the "Book" icon on the remote brings up the Electronic Programme Guide, and people that owned Sony's separate Freeview set-top box (the VTX-D800U) 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. There's nothing out of the ordinary in here, although there are a few minor steps backward in the design department compared to the separate Freeview box.

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) or switch channels when your favourite programme is about to start. I should also point out that a widely-discussed annoyance with past Sony models is not present on the 40W: turning on the TV does not automatically take you to its own tuner, unless you power it on by pressing one of the remote's number buttons. This means that if you have an external decoder (satellite or cable) connected, you won't have to manually switch to it each time you turn on.

Digital Tuner quality

And now, we enter the gruesome territory of overcompressed standard-def digital TV on a large-screen, high-resolution panel. The 40W's results aren't actually that bad, but of course it has a lot to do with the quality of the source material and the competenacy of the channel. Five, Channel 4 and E4+1 shows seem to be the best looking, and BBC's as usual have a fairly grotty look more often than not, which I can only assume is due to the use of older equipment. Compare the quality of BBC News 24 and Sky News' studio shots, for example, and also pay attention to the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen on both channels - BBC's show far more compression problems. Even when the BBC are showing programming derived from a high quality source, the nature of their MPEG encoding seems to give what a sort of "salty" look to compression artefacts. Either way, that's not the fault of the TV.

(If I may go off on a tangent for a second, isn't it utterly astonishing that broadcasting regulator OFCOM claim they're acting in our interests, yet have recently given the thumbs-down to HDTV on Freeview, whilst allowing the 4 or 5 shopping and quiz channels to suck up valuable bandwidth? Why not kick a few of them off to make room for some legitimate HD programming?)

What is a definite flaw of the TV, however, is that the clarity of the integrated DVB tuner isn't what it could be. The first thing I thought upon seeing the results were, "This should look better", and it turns out I was completely right. Connecting a separate Freeview decoder over one of the RGB SCART inputs showed a definite advance in clarity to the built-in tuner, especially visible on the BBC's "Interactive" menus, which confirmed that the problem lies not with the MPEG decoder but with the way in which the Tuner is "rigged up" internally. To my eye, the integrated tuner's output to the panel looks a little closer to the quality of S-Video, rather than the RGB/Component quality we should be getting. If you look on Amazon.co.uk, a few customer reviews note that the Digital TV pictures don't look quite as clear as they should, and it's quite likely that this is the reason. It's confusing, because especially on a large screen size and a high-res panel, you'd think Sony would have things set up to give the best quality possible, but the results are bettered by connecting a separate decoder.

Nevertheless, here's some of the internal decoder's results, which are still capable of good quality.


As is required by European legislation, the 40W features a card slot on the back so you can subscribe to pay-TV services (such as TopUp TV).

PC Input

Last up on the connectivity flying circus, it's time for the analogue PC input, also commonly referred to as the "VGA input" (although it's capable of far higher resolutions than the VGA standard). This is a funny one, because Sony officially only supports a resolution of up to 1360x768 through this input. I found the results of this to still give fantastic results for games, but previous users have discovered that it's actually possible to go all the way up to full 1920x1080 by using the Windows program Powerstrip. This is actually a bit of a pain to get working, but I did manage eventually and can confirm that 1080p over the PC input is possible on the 40W (I need to buy a better quality cable to avoid ringing, however). Users have reported the Xbox 360's VGA cable can actually send 1080p to this TV straight out of the box, which is excellent news.

Whilst using 1080p over VGA, the TV will at first notify you that you're using an Unsupported resolution, but a quick double-press of the Menu or Info buttons will clear this Warning (this becomes instinctive after a while). For resolutions that are either not of the same aspect ratio as the widescreen panel, or not of the same number of pixels - in other words, most of them - the PC input will give you 3 display options. The first lets you see the pixels 1:1 mapped without any scaling, which means on low resolutions you'll see a large border around a small picture area. 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 (ew). It also lets you adjust the Backlight, unlike some other LCD TVs. Brightness, Contrast and Colour Temperature are also adjustable. The other picture options are predictably greyed-out for this input due to minimal video processing.

LCD Panel

The 40W uses one of the Sony/Samsung facility's SPVA (Super Patterned Vertical Alignment) panels. SPVA is a technology that splits each pixel into sub-sections to improve the viewing angle and contrast performance of the screen. This is the first 1920x1080 SPVA panel I've seen, and the results were as I expected. Motion is normally handled very well, although intense black objects can still cause some visible smearing, but this is nothing out of the ordinary as LCDs still have slight motion issues.

Curiously, the 40W seems to employ some sort of panel coating, which is incredibly non-reflective. What's interesting about this is that it actually seems to give the impression of a wider viewing angle. As usual, the colours do desaturate slightly when the panel is viewed from intense angles, but the slight shine which becomes visible acts as a welcome distraction. Neat trick!

There's been a lot of discussion about the panels used in the 40W, because many users are reporting that their screens have misty areas of brighter light scattered across the display. This is known as the "mura" defect ("mura" is Japanese for "blemish"). I can confirm that at the moment, the 40W I'm using for this review suffers from the problem, but only at its default Backlight settings. With the backlight reduced and the Power Saving mode on, it's unnoticeable. If the display is like other LCDs I've owned, the effect should eventually disappear completely (one specialist retailer has told me of the screens taking up to a month to fully "bed in"). I should also add that all of the screen's 2 million pixels were active and working correctly, with none dead or stuck.

UPDATE (January 14, 2007): I am now expecting my third KDL-40W2000 to be delivered from my retailer as the previous two have shown mura defects with no improvement over an extended period of usage time. An American forum has a very long thread dedicated to this problem (it affects the equivalent American 1080p Sony models, too). Here's hoping that my third TV will be free of problems, as other panel manufacturers are producing mura-free panels of this size and resolution.

UPDATE (April 15, 2007): User reports are indicating that the "cloudy" problem now seems to be affecting Sony LCD TVs of various sizes, and not just their 40" 1080p models. Sony do not regard the extreme blotchy patterns experienced by many customers as a fault which is exceptionally worrying. As such, DVD Times would find it difficult to recommend purchasing a TV likely to be affected from a retailer that was not aware of the issue and ready to assist in exchanges or refunds.

Connectivity

In the past, Sony have typically been behind their competitors on the Connectivity front. In 2004, they launched a series of HDTVs which they at first marketed as future-proof that didn't have any DVI or HDMI inputs, while rival brands already had this feature. And this year, the V2000 and S2000 series launched with only one HDMI input when most manufacturers were offering two. Fortunately, they seem to be beyond this now, as there's 2 HDMI inputs on this TV, and a PC input. This means you have 3 1080p capable inputs and another 1080i capable Component input.


My usual gripe with European HDTVs is here, and that is that there's only one Component input. Every other territory in the world now enjoys two, and there should be more than one on a TV of this size. Two Component inputs are very much needed, because 2 out of the 3 next-generation consoles (Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii) stil rely on analogue Component Video for optimal video output. Similarly, not everyone has a DVD player with an HDMI output. That's a potential THREE Component devices, all of which will be around for some time yet, fighting it out over one set of jacks. This means that European users have to resort to a switch-box, which is an added annoyance and space-consumer (it also means that all of the devices being input to the Component jacks need to share one set of picture settings, because the TV still sees them as one input). Come on Sony, give us two then I'll get off your back!

Usability 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). This is a nice, easy-to-use feature. If you like, you can still use the older method of cycling through the video inputs in order by pressing the Video Input button at the top left of the remote control.


It's interesting to note that Sony's TVs have, from what I gather, very rarely included a Picture in Picture function. This has never troubled me in the slightest because in all honesty, with any TV I've owned that did include PiP, I found myself very rarely using it. Interestingly, pressing the Picture Freeze button on the remote brings up a Picture AND Picture (PAP) display, where the frozen image is displayed on the left of the screen while live video continues in a smaller box to the right.

Speakers

One criticism I had of the previous S and V range BRAVIAs was that the speakers produced sound that was, while not unusable, a little odd - the acoustics didn't seem quite right. The 40W's speakers are an improvement and are definitely acceptable by TV standards, producing a deeper, punchier sound. The TV makes use of licensed audio processing technology from SRS (called TruSurround XT), which makes things sound a little less bland. It also features the BBE Digital system, which makes a dramatic improvement to the liveliness of the sound.

Conclusion

All in all, I came away very impressed by the KDL-40W2000. Sony is a name that most people would typically associate with high quality products rather than ones that represent excellent value, but here, they've given us a fantastic amount of both. I'm not sure if the colour shift issue (my biggest gripe with this TV, but still an avoidable one) is just an unfortunate quirk of the hardware Sony's engineers were given to build a TV with, because if it's not, it's incredibly careless. It'll be interesting to see how Sony respond to me reporting this, but in the past they've not been too receptive of suggestions for improvements to products, so stay away from this TV if you think it would be an issue for you (I have no faith in them offering a fix).

Nevertheless, this video processing quirk is, as I said, avoidable, and I've seen far worse. What makes it even easier to tolerate, though, is the fact that the 40W allows you to send it 1080p video through its HDMI jacks and see a near-perfect reproduction of this on screen with close to no additional tinkering. This leaves owners with a fantastic upgrade path because it means that the 40W is ideal for pairing with an external video processor. Now, processors aren't cheap by any means, but it's an incredibly nice thought knowing that if Sony chooses to release an updated model in the future with a better "BRAVIA Engine", you can get an even bigger improvement by adding your own external video processor to your existing TV (an off-board video processor will easily beat a TV's own internal one). Just knowing this actually makes the 40W's slight processing issues far more tolerable.

Sony are well and truly picking up steam in the LCD business, but the days of them having a patented, unique display technology are over. Muchas they'd like to try and claim that "Live Colour Creation" is a revolution rather than an interesting feature, Sony have no Trinitron to rest on anymore, and indeed, it's a well-known fact that they're sharing LCD technology production with Samsung. If you want this AV geek's opinion, this means that in order to set themselves ahead of the pack (and their business partner), they're going to need to give more attention to detail in the video processing department and avoid slight quirks that we've seen from them recently, rather than just resting on their promotional department's work and their glamorous brand name.

To conclude, then, the KDL-40W2000 is an excellent TV with minor problems - provided you get one that doesn't have the cloudy backlight problem - as well as a display with excellent short and long-term future proofing. If you're looking for a 1080-line display to make the most out of Sky HD and HD DVD (or Blu-ray), then right now I suggest you look no further, although your choices right now are fairly limited anyway. Let's see how the other manufacturers respond to this latest acheivement from Sony.