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(More customer reviews)I started searching for an HDTV about seven-years ago while doing some work at CES in Las Vegas. I still remember the moment I spotted my first HD set there. It was a 60" Zenith showing a Dallas Cowboys football game. I stared at the box for about an hour with a small drop of drool hanging from my chin-despite really disliking the Cowboys. After talking with the sales rep., I was sure I'd have a set within a year. Then the HD standards wars began, things got ugly and everything was put on hold.
Years passed. My son, who was 9-years old at the time of the CES show, got older and I got grumpier.
With each passing season I would check out every new HDTV set. I looked at successive generations of plasmas, front projectors, DLPS, LCDs, rear-projection RGB sets and D-ILAs. Each time I thought, this year, this technology will be the one where cost, styling and picture quality converge to produce the winner. But plasma was way too expensive, and every other technology had artifacts that left me wanting. And that Zenith I saw at CES? That was a one-of-a-kind TV that cost about 100K. So each year my son and I returned home empty handed.
Then last year I walked into a showroom and my heart fluttered for the first time since that day in Vegas. Sitting on a high-tech stand was a stunning Sony 60" Grand Vega XBR. It was a gorgeous package with an amazingly sharp picture. But after looking closer, I started seeing artifacts that made me reconsider: Fast motion sequences would pixelate. The "screen door effect" started bothering me, and the shiny glass font reflected everything that wasn't black. What I thought was going to be a long-term relationship-and an important bonding experience with my son-became a 1-hour fling. My son didn't talk to me for a week.
Then this past October (2004), Sony released its KDF-60XS955. I read every review. I scanned all the specs. I waited for it to arrive somewhere, anywhere. Then one day as I was walking through Frys, I spotted one on the showroom floor and immediately fell in love. In fact, I was stunned at how attractive the entire package was: great looks, great price, and a great picture. Something had to be wrong.
I didn't tip my hand immediately. I went home and came back a few days later to see if my memory of the set was as good as the actual thing. Amazingly, it was. That had never happened before. When viewing other sets for a second time, I found that my memory of them was always better than the real thing.
So I came back to view the 60XS955 five more times, and each time the picture thrilled me. I was even more amazed when I learned that the 60XS955 I had been looking at was connected to a set of rabbit ears-not cable or satellite like all the other sets-just a $12 piece of metal sitting on top of the Sony. I went to other stores to see what the picture looked like connected to satellite and I was even more impressed.
Needless to say, I finally bought one. When it arrived and I turned it on, it looked even better than in the showroom. It took a few days to figure out that, since I don't have 90 fluorescent tube lights installed in the ceiling of my living room, I don't have all that ambient light reflecting off the front of the screen. When my now 16-year-old son first saw the picture (during a Lakers/Rockets game that was being broadcast in HD) he hugged me and said those three words every father longs to hear, "So how much?" I told him it was about $700 below retail (Pacific Sales in L.A.) He then mumbled that he loved me and we all watched the game together.
If you're interested in all the specs, you can easily get them from Sony. But here are a few that were important to me. This set finally incorporates and standardizes a number of different technologies. For example, it has a CableCard input. I have cable, so by renting the CableCard and avoiding the charge for a second cable box from Time Warner, I save $5.50/mo. I believe the CableCard also produces a cleaner signal, but I've not done a side-by-side comparison yet.
The set has a built-in HD turner if you want to pick up off-the-air broadcasts with your own set of $12 rabbit ears. The front screen has a matt finish so you won't see those nasty glass reflections that the XBR series produces. Possibly because of the matt finish and a smaller chipset most, if not all, of the "screen door effect" has been eliminated. The processors are now faster so there's little to no pixelation in the background of fast-moving sequences, unlike the current crop of DLP sets that produce a tiling effect with fast moving images. The NTSC tuner has been greatly improved so normal, non-digital or non-HD broadcasts are watchable. (You immediately get spoiled with HD, so anything less is a letdown, but they're watchable.) All of these advances have converged to produce images that almost look 3-D when viewing HD broadcasts.
This 60" Sony also sports the new HDMI connection standard that allows for uncompressed HD and non-HD DVD viewing with DVD players that have an HDMI output. The remote is adequate, but somewhat of a letdown. The accompanying Sony stand is a bit expensive but gorgeous, and a perfect match for this set. This year's stand also has 2 shelves; unlike the one shelve on last year's XBR model. The sound is rich and full with a respectable sub-woofer. All of that and the TV weighs only about 113 lbs.
A side note: I've read that some people have complained about visual noise or distortion. I believe much of it comes from cheap cables and connectors. This set is very sensitive and very big. Small amounts of snow on a 27" set can look like a snowstorm on a 60" set. But with the right cables the picture is crystal clear. So don't cheep out. Get the more expensive shielded, gold-plated cables, like those from Monster, for example. Also, get an AC line filter and surge protector (About $79. Mine is also a Monster. It will clean up the picture, protect the sensitive electronics and extend the life of the bulb). With those added items, this TV should look like you're viewing reality.
So after a seven-year wait, I've finally found my HD set. My son has a new-found respect for my nerdy side, my wife now knows that there really wasn't "another woman" working at Frys I'd been seeing, and the space I had reserved seven-years ago along the wall in my living room has finally been filled with a truly beautiful piece of technology.
Richard Krzemien
www.TheWriterAtWork.com
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Sony KDF-60XS955 60-Inch HD-Ready LCD Projection TelevisionHuge screen. Brilliant, lifelike image. Explosive sound. Yes, it's Sony's 60-inch KDF-60XS955 rear-projection LCD television, which is equipped to deliver standard and full-fledged HDTV reception right out of the box with its integrated NTSC and ATSC (HDTV) tuners. It also offers digital cable readiness with a CableCARD slot and the latest digital-video interface, HDMI. Weighing a mere 113 pounds and standing under 21 inches deep, the set also offers maximum image with minimal space investment.The set's 1,366 x 788 liquid-crystal display frees you from having to make convergence adjustments or having to worry about image burn-in. Instead you get incredible detail (more than 3 million pixels), high contrast, and even, corner-to-corner brightness from the set's user-replaceable 132-watt UHP (ultra high pressure) lamp.The screen features a wide, 16:9 aspect ratio to match the dimension of most movies and HDTV broadcasts, and the KDF-60XS955 offers compatibility with standard-definition 480i, enhanced-definition 480p, and high-definition 720p and 1080i signals.Sony's CineMotion 3:2 pulldown detection and reversal is a handy feature for watching progressive-scan movie programs in their native 24-frame format. Digital video mastering introduces a common distortion when adjusting 24 frames-per-second movies to 30 fps video; 3:2 pulldown digitally corrects this distortion, removing the redundant information to display a film-frame-accurate picture.The set's WEGA Engine system maximizes picture performance from any video source by minimizing the number of digital-to-analog conversion processes. This full digital processing engine includes Sony's MID-X (Multi Image Driver), which maintains the integrity of a converted signal by minimizing image loss in the scaling process; and a proprietary optical engine, which employs a trio of Sony's wide-XGA, high-resolution LCD panels, 1 for each of the RGB signals (resulting in a total of 3.28 million dots of resolution).The optical engine also features a special 11-element lens system responsible for the lightweight, ultra-slim cabinet. The lens system bends the light path, creating an ultra-short focal point while maintaining high brightness. This proprietary system delivers vivid images from the center of the screen all the way to the edges.This XS Series Grand WEGA television offers advanced menu functions that are typically found only in service menus: gamma correction (bright and dark balancing), black correction (enhances contrast), white balance (fine-tunes white intensity), detail enhancement (sharpens the picture), and clear white (emphasizes whites).The set includes numerous other features.
TwinView PIP (picture-in-picture) lets you view any 2 sources simultaneously, even at different image resolutions, while the built-in Memory Stick media slot offers ready display of both JPEG images and MPEG-1 video.
A Memory Stick media slot (compatible with Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Duo media) grants convenient viewing of JPEG and MPEG-1 files. It can also display customized slide shows using MP3 files for background music.
Authorized CableCARD ability means the set will receive digital cable television systems services directly from the cable operator without requiring a bulky, external cable box.
Live Color is an innovative circuit that emphasizes blues and greens without affecting reds for a more natural, vivid picture. Choose from 3 enhancement levels (high, medium, low) or "off."
Sony's exclusive S-Master 1-bit digital amplifier produces 5 watts per channel (x 2), pumping an additional 20 watts into a built-in subwoofer for rich, full-bodied sound from movies and music.
HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is a lossless, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface to link the set with any audio/video source (such as a set-top box, DVD player, or AV receiver).What's in the Box TV, remote control, remote batteries, a user's manual, and warranty/registration information.
Buy cheap Sony KDF-60XS955 60-Inch HD-Ready LCD Projection Television now.
