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Wanted a small HDTV that would fit in a cabinet opening, finally settled on this Sony Bravia 720p with some trepidation as I have a 1080p set from another brand in the living room and thought that the picture quality might be less than I was becoming accustomed to. I like the favorites setting and the unit is fairly easy to operate. Turns out I didn't need to worry, the picture is beautiful, sharp and clear. Seems every bit as realistic as the 1080p Sharp Aquos in the other room.The room it sits in gets a lot of sunlight, but the picture is bright and colorful and unaffected unless we open the blinds and put sunlight directly on the screen. If I could figure out how to make the remote also control my Dish unit it would be even easier to operate. Nothing really to complain about with this HDTV.
The replacement reconditioned 26M4000 that Sony sent had the same problem right out of the box. Sony Bravia M-Series KDL-26M4000 26-Inch 720p LCD HDTVRecently experienced a problem with a 26M4000 that locked up after auto programing and experienced other fatal issues. This will be a serious problem when the nation switches to digital in June 09 when everyone will need to reprogram for digital. In fact the reconditioned one has more serious flaws than my original.Sony is dragging their feet in responding to this issue. Their initial response was great, I received the defective replacement in 3 days.
I bought it as a gift for someone. When I look for a TV I go with Sony.They love it.
For anyone else, I'd suggest checking it out yourself before you buy. I bought this TV on sale recently at a great price and was initially very satisfied. Unfortunately, it has an auto-dim feature that basically changes the contrast and backlight settings automatically depending on how much black there is on the screen. If you only watch movies or play games with no dark scenery at all, you probably won't be annoyed too much. The Regza actually has a similar feature but you can change its setting from low to high or disable it completely if you wish. It makes dark scenes very dark and bright scenes very bright.
For example, if you play a game like Dead Space on it, the ACE pretty much makes the game unplayable since it darkens everything so much that you can barely make out what's on the screen. The picture quality is great, even though it could use a few more picture settings to tweak the image more to your liking. As gamer, it was just impossible to deal with. Since I couldn't find a way to disable it, I spoke to a Sony tech online who told me that what was doing that was the ACE contrast enhancement feature and that there was no way to change it. This was definitely a deal breaker for me. Needless to say I returned it after a few days of frustration and ended up buying a 37" Toshiba Regza for just around a hundred dollars more and am very happy with it.
Hopefully Sony will make a firmware update later on so people can do the same with their Bravia ACE, though from the response I got from the Sony tech I spoke to I wouldn't hold my breath.
I chose this TV because most reviewers, including Consumer Reports, rated the Sony Bravia's picture quality very highly, although they criticized the set's ease of use. I really had no difficulty doing either. I have owned one for a month, and set it up originally before the transition to digital TV, so I had to rescan after Feb. 18th. Reception is good even with the old rabbit ears that I'm using, and I am extremely pleased with the picture quality. I am very satisfied with my purchase.
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