Recently, I bought a TV, a 32″ Sony Bravia S LCD model. It has been 9 years since I owned a TV. I do like watching movies, and used a projector or a laptop to watch during that time. However, now that I’ve moved to Singapore, I don’t have the projector anymore. Hence the TV.
Sony adds many features to “improve” the picture quality of the TV. I found it best to turn off as many as possible. The “noise reduction” and “sharpness” left the skin-tones looking like plastic, and ruined the perception of depth of field. With the TV color adjustments in “neutral” as far as possible, and the “enhancements” turned off, the picture quality is good. The blues in particular are excellent. The contrast is very good. I should note that I have a bottom-of-the-line DVD player, but connected through Y/Pb/Pr (progressive component video) cables.
This TV is not “full HD”, being only 1324×768. I did wonder whether to pay the extra for 1080p capability. A 1920×1080 picture has twice as many pixels as a 1280×720. However, at my viewing distance of 5 meters, it is not clear that once can see the difference between 1080 and 720 lines on a 32″ tv. I calculate that for a 720 line screen, 1 pixel subtends less that 1 arc minute at my viewing distance; 1 arc min is is the smallest detail that a person with 20/20 vision (or 6/6 in metric) can resolve reliably. Going up to 1080p seems overkill.
The Sony’s audio quality is fair. Movies that depend on the center-channel, such as the Lord of the Rings, are hard to follow: either the sound is too loud, or you can’t hear the dialogue. Still, the picture compensates. As my wife said, it’s as good as her Mac Powerbook. That’s saying something. 