Sony Bravia KDF-37H1000 37-Inch 720p 3LCD Rear Projection HDTV Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)There is only one reason to pay $900 for a 37" LCD Projection HDTV...space. My 32" 4:3 TV died and it sat in a beautiful Oak entertainment center. I'm not ready to part with that furniture yet. The opening for the TV is made for an up to 35" standard TV. Sony was on the ball creating this HDTV for people like me.
Flat panel LCD's in this size range don't measure up to the brightness, contrast and color of the Sony Bravia. Read the specs and compare. Luckily when I was shopping around I was able to view this set next to several other LCD's and it easily showed them up.
When you get this thing hooked up, tune it to the National Geographic HD channel for eye popping results. I did find that I had to mess around with the picture settings quite a lot before I could find what worked for me. There are lots of options. Take your time with them.
The things that I didn't like about this set that took away the fifth star are:
1) Screen door effect. If you have been reading up on RP-LCD, you already have heard about it. Yep, its there. Although I haven't really seen it with the HD content. You really notice it on the low def stuff. It bugged me real bad the first week, but I hardly notice it much a week later.
2) Side mounted buttons. Here's a HDTV marketed directly to consumers that will be placing it in a cabinet. Move them to the front for this set.
3) Long, long, long warm-up time on the projector lamp. OMG, I'm back in the 60's waiting for my TV to warm up. We're talking 30+ seconds before the picture comes on. I got spoiled with the near instant on with my last 32" TV.
4) $200 to replace the projector lamp! Yikes, I hope I get all of my 8000 hours.
5) Trouble getting a learning remote to learn the special keys for Screen Zooming, Picture control, etc... Tried three different learning remotes and none of them could reproduce the signal. I hate juggling remotes.
Don't take any of the above as deal breakers. The screen door effect is minimal, buttons are hardly accessed, I've learned to have patience, 8000 hours is about 2.5-3 years at 8 hours a day and tomorrows remotes will probably work fine with it.
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS -
Its now been two weeks with the Sony and I'm starting to notice something that is really bugging me. So you understand how bad, I'm considering returning the set over it. When watching anything, HDTV, SDTV, DVD, etc... I can see an interleave effect when the scene changes. I notice this about 70% of the time. My family swears they can't see it, but it is bugging me to death. If anyone else has this set and you see it too, please write a review and identify such.

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3LCD Chips --- The 3LCD technology at the heart of Sony's BRAVIA¿ televisions provide a bright picture, with high detail and natural color. These three key benefits are immediately apparent when viewing a BRAVIA¿ TV. You can expect to see an incredibly detailed picture with eye-popping colors. Sony uses three tiny LCD chips (0.73) with a combined resolution of over 2.76 million pixels. The light from a high output UHP lamp shines into a filtering system that splits the beam into red, green, and blue light streams. Each color goes through its own LCD chip, which passes or blocks the light. The three beams are then instantaneously recombined and sent to the projection lens. BRAVIA Engine¿ EX System --- The BRAVIA Engine¿ EX video processing system came about as a result of Sony's expertise and long heritage in bringing cutting-edge picture quality to consumer televisions. It contains intelligent picture enhancement technology that reduces unwanted digital artifacts and delivers superb clarity and detail along with vivid colors. Sony's own Digital Reality Creation Multi-function v1.0 (DRC-MFv1) processor replaces the original SD signal with its HD equivalent. The result of BRAVIA Engine EX processing? Picture quality has texture and detail, deep and vibrant colors, along with excellent depth and contrast.

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