View Full Version : Sony Bravia 40'' KDL-40V4000 1080P HD LCD TV w/5 year warranty - £581.03
Sony Bravia 40'' KDL-40V4000 1080P HD LCD TV with 5 year warranty - £581.03 - In Stock at M&S Online (http://www.thedvdforums.com/affiliatelink.php?localaffiliateid=61&url=http://www.marksandspencer.com/gp/product/B001D820AG)
Can be had a little cheaper but not with a 5 year warranty
this could be what i'm looking for!
was £499 at John Lewis post xmas. still a good price though.
Shame it's not the award winning W series though.
mclaughlan
12-01-2009, 16:53
Its £581.03 when you go the till due to the VAT reduction
anyone going for this? i need my birthday to come first, 10 days! hope it's still there
Dick Long
12-01-2009, 18:05
Bought this from M&S before Xmas for £699 with the free Sony BD player and discs deal.
Very attractive set with superb HD but takes a little effort to get the SD settings right (see Playback Hardware threads for details).
M&S are great - 5 year guarantee is automatic so no faffing about, and free delivery is on specified day and includes installation. :thumbs:
meeti roti
12-01-2009, 20:54
Bought this from M&S before Xmas for £699 with the free Sony BD player and discs deal.
Very attractive set with superb HD but takes a little effort to get the SD settings right (see Playback Hardware threads for details).
M&S are great - 5 year guarantee is automatic so no faffing about, and free delivery is on specified day and includes installation. :thumbs:
Agreed got this for 499 from JL and after some research on the internet managed to get the best out SD.
Certainly much better than i was led to believe. Dont get too sucked into the whole LCD vS Plasma debate.
Its a great price especially inc the 5 year guarantee
really superb for under £600 - and 5 years free ! I am off to speak to the missus !
Got this from JL and very impressed with the jump from CRT :)
Just need to off-load DV-575A and get a nice blu-ray player :thumbs:
got this over christmas from M & S instore for the same price, very impressed with the telly. Tomb Raider underworld on the 360 looks great on it :P
Is it really that good for SD, most reviews I read say the blacks are not all that and that the SD has really bad blurring. Also it's only 50hz which with Sony's 200Hz technology, I'm surprised that every set isn't at least 100Hz which would at least help with somne of the horrible blurring that LCD screens seem to be so prone to.
Phil - Sounds like you really need a plasma if you are that fussed about blurring etc?
Not going down the Plasma route as well as they have limited viewing angles, as I have said in the past until something comes along that beats my Loewe CRT in terms of SD PQ and sheer contrast and luminance levels then it will remain. I already have an LCD wall mounted in the bedroom for HD viewing but I haven't got round to replacing the main screen in the living room. I've even looked at the Loewe Connect 37" and still been left feeling underwhelmed and that's really top end technology so even the Kuro leaves me a little dissapointed.
Um, plasma's have superb viewing angles (well the Panny one's I've seen do)
Anyway, not the thread for it!
This sony is great value and I would seriously consider it if I wanted a 40" LCD.
bigdutch
14-01-2009, 17:38
Got one for my parents from amazon with 3 year warranty for around £540, it's a nice telly (and they are over the moon with it) but not as good as my Panasonic plasma 37".
It's the colors and viewing angle, as I have a small front room, plasma was the right choice.
I have a sony 26 inch about 3 years old and it is very bad for smearing - cost £1100 ! I was wondering will this tv be any better??
Dick Long
14-01-2009, 18:45
Mine doesn't smear at all and I can't see how the blacks could be any blacker!
Like all LCD and plasma screens it's all in the settings. Most people run them with colour/backlight/sharpness way to high. Sony send them out set up for instore HD demos rather than at home SD.
If you have access to BBC-HD they are now broadcasting the updated version of the test card during parts of the day. The professional set up procedure for HD is here. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/12/a_christmas_present_from_the_h.html) (Luckily you can go back to the factory 'normal' defaults if you screw them up!)
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/af14471428.jpg
After reading this review that makes sense about the sharpness and backlight comments you made.
http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/sony-kdl40v4000-review-20080822127.htm
From the review
"Motion Resolution
Chapter 31 of our handy FPD Benchmark Blu-ray Disc revealed that the Sony KDL40V4000’s motion resolution was around 250-300 lines, in other words, completely within our expectations for an LCD TV without a 100hz system. Very subtle green trails were visible in some areas, but these were not visible during real-world content and were far less distracting than the green phosphor trails exhibited on certain Plasma displays.
Video Processing
The Sony KDL40V4000’s standard-def video processing is average. At first, we were about to say that this television featured the worst standard definition scaling (upconversion) we’d ever seen, but fortunately, this turned out to be a bug. An explanation: when the TV is fed with 480i, 480p, 576i, or 576p video, and Sharpness is set to “Minimum”, the TV actually applies the maximum amount of sharpening, resulting in a very poor quality picture with a huge amount of ringing.
Stepping [Sharpness] up to 1 completely removes this ugly look, leaving us with a slightly soft, but beautifully clean picture. Compensating for the softness with just a little bit of the [Sharpness] setting resulted in pleasing SD scaling - what a relief! Just in case it wasn’t clear, we’ll repeat: if you use any sort of standard-definition video device with this TV connected via HDMI, be sure the Sharpness setting is set to 1 instead of “Min”! This bug does not extend to the built-in Freeview tuner, nor the other video inputs, which probably explains why it’s snuck through.
With this behind us, we moved on to the Silicon Optix HQV Diagonal Filtering test, being piped in from a DVD player outputting 576i over HDMI. This tests how effectively the television’s video processor can reduce the appearance of jaggies, which result from Interlaced material. Here, the Sony KDL40V4000 failed the test, producing jagged edges at almost all angles, suggesting that no Directional Interpolation is being used at all. How much or not this will matter in the real world, though, is debatable, as the majority of sources don’t feature enough detail to really highlight this shortcoming.
The Film Cadence tests fared just as poorly, with the PAL (2:2) cadence failing, and the NTSC (3:2) cadence and Detail Test being a hit and miss affair. As a result of this rather uninspiring performance, the old adage of bringing your own video processing, in the form of a high quality upconverting DVD player (or video processor), is more true than ever. That won’t save TV broadcasts viewed on the Sony KDL40V4000’s built-in Digital TV tuner, though, but to be fair, these broadcasts have so many other inherent problems anyway, so a lack of cadence detection or diagonal interpolation may mean little for some viewers."
The only Sony sets that are worth the money IMO are from the W series upwards i.e. W, X and Z.
I personally like the X series the best and have to say that the picture on the X series is astonishing.
I had a Sony V3000 and returned it after a few days as the pic quality was disappointing to say the least and this was after trying different settings.
Dick Long
14-01-2009, 21:07
In the interest of balance it might be worth quoting the overall review conclusions rather than just the negative points :nono:
Conclusion
Pros
SPVA panel and Backlight control allow for deep black level
Exquisite high-definition detail from “Full Pixel” 1:1 pixel mapping
Handles 1080p/24 video signal correctly without telecine judder
Scaling of standard-def input is clean, without ringing
Solid connectivity
Settings can be saved independently per input
Speedy and responsive EPG and channel navigation
Table-top stand swivels and easy to set up
Colour accuracy is relatively good
TV menus and fast, and remote is easy to use
Panel uniformity (in our test sample) was excellent, with almost no clouding/unevenness
Cons
No white balance control in user menu for greyscale calibration
Motion resolution not as good as on HDTVs equipped with MCFI/100Hz technology
Fails to apply 3:2/2:2 pulldown compensation to 480i/576i film-based content even with [Film Mode] set to “Auto”
Doesn’t smooth jaggies from Interlaced content effectively
Small amount of non-defeatable edge enhancement visible on 1080i/1080p input, which is unnecessary
Summary
The Sony KDL40V4000 is an aesthetically pleasing, affordable HDTV which puts out a very pleasing image, due largely in part to its fantastic calibrated black level. Colours are relatively accurate, and although it wasn’t possible to fully calibrate the display, the “Warm2″ greyscale preset will still please many. Gaming, too, was fantastic fun, thanks to the almost non-existent input lag.
A very slight forced sharpening of 1920×1080 feeds, underwhelming standard-def video processing, and a lack of user-accessible Greyscale control were a touch disappointing, but at the end of the day, the Sony KDL40V4000 ticks the most important boxes for High-Def users. It doesn’t redefine what we’ll all expect from a mid-range display, but on the whole it’s a solid, good-looking, affordable choice.
Dogbreath
14-01-2009, 21:52
The only Sony sets that are worth the money IMO are from the W series upwards i.e. W, X and Z.
I personally like the X series the best and have to say that the picture on the X series is astonishing.
If you can find a KDL-40X4000 for £600 then please post the link! If not, why even mention a TV that costs well over twice as much as this one?
In the interest of balance it might be worth quoting the overall review conclusions rather than just the negative points :nono:
Conclusion
Pros
SPVA panel and Backlight control allow for deep black level
Exquisite high-definition detail from “Full Pixel” 1:1 pixel mapping
Handles 1080p/24 video signal correctly without telecine judder
Scaling of standard-def input is clean, without ringing
Solid connectivity
Settings can be saved independently per input
Speedy and responsive EPG and channel navigation
Table-top stand swivels and easy to set up
Colour accuracy is relatively good
TV menus and fast, and remote is easy to use
Panel uniformity (in our test sample) was excellent, with almost no clouding/unevenness
Cons
No white balance control in user menu for greyscale calibration
Motion resolution not as good as on HDTVs equipped with MCFI/100Hz technology
Fails to apply 3:2/2:2 pulldown compensation to 480i/576i film-based content even with [Film Mode] set to “Auto”
Doesn’t smooth jaggies from Interlaced content effectively
Small amount of non-defeatable edge enhancement visible on 1080i/1080p input, which is unnecessary
Summary
The Sony KDL40V4000 is an aesthetically pleasing, affordable HDTV which puts out a very pleasing image, due largely in part to its fantastic calibrated black level. Colours are relatively accurate, and although it wasn’t possible to fully calibrate the display, the “Warm2″ greyscale preset will still please many. Gaming, too, was fantastic fun, thanks to the almost non-existent input lag.
A very slight forced sharpening of 1920×1080 feeds, underwhelming standard-def video processing, and a lack of user-accessible Greyscale control were a touch disappointing, but at the end of the day, the Sony KDL40V4000 ticks the most important boxes for High-Def users. It doesn’t redefine what we’ll all expect from a mid-range display, but on the whole it’s a solid, good-looking, affordable choice.
I was quoting from the review I read about the SD performance which to be fair sound a little disappointing as statede above. I ain't having a dig at yo set man and I wouldn't want to rain oin your parade, hell a budget TV is just that a budget tv and I wouln't expect it to be all singing all dancing. I just need to justify getting out of my decent CRT into a decent LCD.
If you can find a KDL-40X4000 for £600 then please post the link! If not, why even mention a TV that costs well over twice as much as this one?
Mentioned it because I would rather pay extra for something like a TV which is a product you don't buy everyday rather than just go for a cheap bargain.
Not comparing the two just pointing out that Sony's budget TVs are not in the same league as the W, X and Z series.
The W4500 is an extra £300 but is a much better IMO.
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