Read ME! I've Got an Orange Sticker Next to the Author's Name
Written: Apr 24 '02 (Updated Apr 25 '02)
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Pros: HD-ready, widescreen, clear menus.
Cons: Somewhat pricey, DRC mode, short warranty.
The Bottom Line: "It often seems there's a bit of a premium to be paid for that famous 'no baloney' brand name."
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| radioguy's Full Review: Sony KP-57HW40 57 in. TV |
Nobody will ever accuse Sony of a lack of versatility. The Japan-based consumer electronics manufacturer puts out everything from telephone answering machines to digital memo recording machines, including camcorders, audio/video receivers, digital cameras, big-screen TV's, small-screen TV's, VCR's, DVD players, computers, monitors, portable radios, portable cassette players, portable CD players, portable DAT decks, portable Mini-Disc decks, microphones, video lights, tripods, cassette decks, turntables, speakers, subwoofers, and Memory Sticks.
You would think that any company that makes such a wide variety of products is not going to really excel at any of them. In many cases, Sony would prove you wrong. For example, their consumer and prosumer camcorders are excellent. The company actually launched the current revolution in digital moviemaking with their legendary DCR-VX1000 camcorder, a machine which brought three-chip, broadcast quality production within reach of the masses.
On the other hand, Sony has their misses. Sometimes, with Sony, you definitely pay for a bit more than you actually end up getting. It often seems there's a bit of a premium to be paid for that famous "no baloney" brand name.
After all is said and done, you can't realistically expect the Sony name to have some kind of magical power. If you buy a $60 portable CD player, you're going to get a $60 portable CD player. The economics of selling mass-market electronics dictate that it's probably going to be manufactured in China (People's Republic) and that, whoever the manufacturer, your Super Cheapo CD Player will be functional, and sufficiently sturdy, without having what you could call truly amazing fit and finish. But that's why you're only paying $60, except in the case of Sony it'll probably me more like $70.
One of the advantages of Sony is that, at a given quality level, they generally do a good job of packaging their products, paying attention to some of the small details, such as ergonomics and the owners manual, which can have a big impact on your operating experience. There's also a consistency to the Sony line. Just look at two or more Sony remotes. Whether you're looking at a remote control for a television or a DVD player, when you've seen one Sony remote you've pretty much seen them all.
Sony's HD-ready (high-definition ready) big-screen rear-projection TV's (RPTV's) demonstrate several of the trends mentioned above. They are not the greatest values available in their category, but you also won't go too far wrong buying one. The owners manual is reasonably clear, though if you lose it you'll be stuck having to call Sony customer service to get a replacement.
Some of the better companies, such as Onkyo, keep the manuals for all their current (and even several of their recent-past) models available as pdf files on their Web sites. I say Bravo to any company willing to go the extra mile for customer service.
Speaking of customer service, you can get a human voice on the line with Sony, but you won't necessarily be talking to an electronics engineer. In fact, they might not even know a whole lot about your specific TV.
The KP-57HW40 is the largest and most expensive widescreen (16:9) set in Sony's "KP" line of HD-ready RPTV's. The KP line includes sets with 4:3 (KP-43HT20, KP-53HS30, and KP-61HS30) and 16:9 screens (KP-51HW40 and KP-57HW40) with list prices from $2,200 to $3,200.
As the "HD-ready" tag indicates, the 57HW40 doesn't have a built-in HDTV tuner, generally referred to as a set-top box, like some of Sony's higher-end XBR RPTV's. You can watch widescreen progressive-scan DVD's with the set as soon as you get it (as long as you have a prog-scan DVD player, and they are very inexpensive these days).
Optionally, you might just use your standard interlaced-scan DVD player, but, because of the way the line-doubler works in this TV, it's more worthwhile with this set than with some others to go for a prog-scan DVD player (see the "Picture Quality" section below for more on this).
The 57HW40 lists for $3,200. At a full-price authorized dealer such as Circuit City or Crutchfield, the set sells for $3,000, or maybe $2,700 if you get a bit of a discount. You can find it from unauthorized dealers for $2,440, not including shipping (which they'll probably mark up considerably) and the extended warranty that they really, really want you to buy.
You'd get a better deal with the Toshiba 57H81, a set of similar size and features with a higher-quality picture and a lower price ($2,800 full retail, available from onecall(com) for $2,519.10 shipped and from crazyeddie(com), an unauthorized dealer, for $2,125, not including shipping and an extended warranty. By the way, make sure to check the feedback here at Epinions on crazyeddie, or any other Web merchant, before giving them your business.
Crazyeddie has an inordinate amount of negative feedback, though one or two people (such as Epinions user Placidman) have had satisfactory experiences dealing with this retailer. Their prices are definitely hard to beat, though they push very hard to sell extended warranties and the price of one of these, alone, can offset the whole savings you'd get at crazyeddie versus an authorized dealer. They are also reputed to mark up shipping charges substantially.
Decoding the Model Name
What's in a name, or, in this case, a model number? Quite a bit, actually.You can tell a lot about this TV just from the model number. To the best of my knowledge, all Sony TV's start with "K." The "P" stands for "projection." The "H," of course, is for high-definition (HD-ready). "W," natch, indicates widescreen. The 57 gives us the diagonal screen measurement. The "40" tells us this set is the third-generation in this series, a 2002 models (it was preceded by "10" and "30" models in 2000 and 2001, respectively).
Widescreen
So, that's what's in a name. Specifically, the widescreen tag indicates that this set has the standard 16:9 (or 1.78:1) aspect ratio, meaning ratio of width to height, of the new high-def broadcast standard. This 1.78:1 ratio, by the way, is close enough to the most common ratio used with widescreen movies on DVD, 1.85:1, that you can display these DVD's on this set and they will almost exactly fill up the available area, as long as they are anamorphic, which most of them are now.
Standard analog broadcast TV (known as NTSC, versus high-def which goes by the abbreviation ATSC) uses the almost-square aspect ratio of 4:3. When you display a standard 4:3 broadcast or VHS tape on the TV, it will either put horizontal bands to the right and left of the image (windowboxing) or use one of several methods available in the set's menus and via its remote to expand the squarish image to make it fit the rectangular shape of the 16:9 screen.
Stretching out the 4:3 image to fit the 16:9 screen avoids the possibility of the screen burn-in which may occur if windowbox bands are projected for long periods of time. Although these stretch modes technically distort the image, most viewers (your humble narrator included) don't find this very noticeable. Over a short period of time, many people become used to the stretch modes and don't even notice them.
In particular, the "wide zoom" mode works well with many broadcast TV images. This mode leaves the center of the image close to the original while, proportionately, stretching more toward the edges. For example, with a TV news reader this will create very little visible distortion. The "talking head" will look pretty close to normal while the peripheral parts of the picture, the newsroom background set, won't look very different from normal, even when stretched out considerably.
You have to consider your present and planned viewing habits to decide if a widescreen set like the 57HW40 will be the best for you or if it would make more sense for you to go with a 4:3 HDTV-ready television. If you know you'll be watching quite a bit of standard broadcast programming and, let's say, you have a substantial movie collection on VHS tapes in 4:3, then you might prefer a 4:3 set, such as Sony's HD-ready KP-61HS30. If you figure you can live with the stretch modes, and the most important thing to you is having a set that will display anamorphic 1.85:1 DVD's perfectly, then you would probably lean towards the 57HW40.
There is an interesting little Web site where you can compare the amount of screen real-estate that you would get with two TV's. For example, let's say you are considering a 57-inch 16:9 TV, such as the KP-57HW40, and a 61-inch 4:3 TV, such as the KP-61HS30. Just go to this site and type in the number 57 and pick 16:9 in the first set of boxes and then type in 61 and pick 4:3 in the second set of boxes.
This will give you all kinds of figures and comparisons, such as the size of a 4:3 image shown windowboxed (with dark vertical bands to the left and right of the 4:3 image) on the 16:9 TV and the size of the 16:9 image shown letterboxed (with horizontal bands above and below the image) on a 4:3 TV. It also gives breakdown for the more extreme widescreen 2.35:1 images (16:9 equals 1.78:1; most widescreen DVD's are slightly thinner, at 1.85:1; a minority of DVD movies are in the more extreme 2.35:1 aspect ratio). Here's the URL:
http://www.cavecreations.com/tv2.cgi
As you can see if you work out the figures, the image size of 4:3 video displayed with its original geometry intact, using windowboxing (vertical bars to the left and right of the 4:3 image) on the 57HW40 will be roughly equivalent to what you'd get showing the image on 47-inch 4:3 TV.
Thus, even with 4:3 material displayed with its original geometry, you'll have a fairly large picture on this TV. Also, like just about all widescreen HD-ready TV's, the 57HW40 has modes which will take a 4:3 image and stretch it out to fill up the entire 57-inch 16:9 screen.
Picture Quality
The actual picture quality of the 57HW40 is quite good. It's better than Panasonic and about equal to Mitsubishi, overall, but not as good as Toshiba. Since you can usually get an equivalent-sized Toshiba set for less, it's a better value than the Sony. The Pioneer Elite HD line blows all these sets out of the water, but the high-end Pioneers sell for about two to three times as much.
All of these sets use seven-inch CRT's, which are universal on monitors in this price range. You don't find the next-higher CRT size, nine inches, until you get into TV's and projectors selling for more than $10,000. While seven-inch CRT's do keep a TV from resolving the full 1920 resolution of the horizontal lines in a 1080i HDTV image, this limit is common to all sets having seven-inch CRT's.
With progressive-scan (480p) DVD's, which the 57HW40 projects at native 480p resolution, the TV has a pleasing, film-like image quality, though it falls short of the image quality of the current Toshiba TV's (the xxH81 line, including the 57H81) with this type of video. However, with standard broadcast, cable, and any other NTSC (480i) input which has its resolution increased through the set's Digital Reality Creation (DRC) circuitry, the picture is not so good.
To understand this, you first need to know how interlaced scanning and progressive scanning work. I have an explanation of these two formats here in the fourth and fifth paragraphs of this review:
http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-744C-219AA457-3A2F303C-prod2
Unlike most high-def TV's, which line-double 480i NTSC-standard analog input (broadcast, cable, VHS VCR, S-VHS VCR) up to an effective resolution of 480p, the 57HW40 doubles the interlaced resolution, resulting in a 960i image. You can get into all kinds of arguments here about whether 960i is a higher resolution than 480p. In terms of lines on the screen at any given moment, they are actually identical and both require the same projection bandwidth of 31.5 kHz. Unfortunately, because of inherent drawbacks in the interlaced method of projecting the image, bumping it up to 960i preserves some of the problems the signal starts out with at 480i (or a somewhat lower horizontal resolution, depending on the exact NTSC source).
It's somewhat strange that Sony has stuck with the DRC approach and not resorted to the line-doubling used by most of the other HDTV manufacturers. This is at least the second (maybe the third) year they've used DRC in their TV's, but the drawbacks of this technology were identified quite early on. Some other problems on Sony sets, such as the lack of a second full-bandwidth component-video input, were fixed on the 2002 models. Not so with DRC. The bottom line is, if you plan to get this set to watch a significant amount of NTSC-source material, you need to see one of these TV's in person to decide if DRC is acceptable to you.
HD-Ready
The 57HW40 is HD-ready (a.k.a. an HD monitor or HD-capable), not a full-fledged HDTV. Basically, this means that, as mentioned above, it lacks an integral high-def digital tuner and, to have HDTV reception with this TV, you will have to employ one of the set-top box tuners which receive the digital HDTV or SDTV (lower-resolution digital broadcast) signal and convert it to a high-resolution analog video signal to feed an HD-ready set. The standard video inputs of the TV will accept signals at 480i (NTSC-standard resolution, which includes cable, broadcast, VCR, and interlaced DVD). The two component-video inputs will accept signals at 480i, 480p, and 1080i.
A note on the last of those resolutions, 720p. So far, only the ABC TV network, among the major U.S. networks, has used this format (NBC, CBS, and PBS use 1080i while Fox uses 480p/16:9). This TV cannot actually display video at this format (its native display formats are 480p, 960i, and 1080i). Most set-top box digital tuners will convert the 720p digital broadcast signal to the 1080i analog output which the 57HW40 accepts and displays in native mode.
Video Enhancement Features
To enhance DVD movies displayed on this TV, it features 3:2 pulldown. This mode overcomes many of the problems inherent when films, a 24 frame per second (fps) medium, are transferred to video, a 30fps medium. It's not that crucial a feature, because many progressive-scan (480p) DVD players do this automatically, and it's actually better to perform this function in your DVD player. Want to know why? Read this:
http://www.epinions.com/content_8202784388
It's not only a superior approach to do the 3:2 pulldown in the DVD player, but some inexpensive DVD players, such as Panasonic's DVD-RP56 actually have better pulldown processing chips than this TV. See the following URL for more on the RP56.
http://www.epinions.com/content_53747486340
In the case of the RP56, it's the Faroudja 2200 chip, previously only found in $800-plus external video scalers and line-doublers. When you input a 480p signal from a DVD player, the TV displays it in native mode, meaning the signal is passed directly to the display circuitry and projected at its original resolution.
Other video enhancement features on the 57HW40 include a comb filter, velocity scan modulation, "dynamic focus circuitry," "dynamic picture processor," and a "microfocus lens system." The TV can split the screen into two equal sections, displaying a broadcast program from each of the TV's two tuners in each of the two sections. It can also divide the screen into smaller segments, showing a different scanned channel in each segment.
Like most Sony TV sets, the 57HW40 has a number of preset video modes: Vivid, Standard, Movie, and Pro. In each of these, the various picture parameters (brightness, contrast, color, etc.) are set. For example, in the movie setting brightness is turned down considerably as compared to the other modes. The convenient thing about these modes is that their settings are just starting points. You can reset all the parameters in each mode and the TV keeps your settings, allowing you to have everything pre-adjusted for DVD's, tapes, video games, or whatever you plan to use. You can also adjust the color temperature of the image ("cool, neutral, warm").
Protective Screen
There's a built-in protective screen. Some people prefer to take these off and on some TV's, such as the new 47-inch Panasonic HD-ready widescreen sets, there's one model with the protective screen (the PT-47WX51) and one otherwise-identical model that comes without it (PT-47WX49). The model with the screen costs $200 more. There's no option for getting the 57HW40 without the protective screen.
Other Features
Tuning features include "express tuning," "freeze memo," "favorite channel," "channel index," "jump channel," and V-Chip. There's a sleep timer (30, 60, 90 minutes) as well as two on/off program timers. The menus can be set to display in English, French, or Spanish. Other features include automatic convergence (adjusts the lining up of the three CRT's which project the image onto the screen), "channel caption," "caption vision," and "easy set-up button." The set is Energy Star compatible and will work with Extended Data Service (XDS).
Many of the features on this TV are accessed through a set of menus. These are much more straightforward than the menus on some TV's. The menus here don't do tricks or make you feel like you are playing a video game, but you can get to them quickly and they are logically arranged.
Audio Features
There is stereo sound, with a simulated Dolby Pro Logic effect. The two speakers, located behind a cloth grille on the lower part of the front face of the set, are about three inches. The stereo audio amplifier, with dbx noise reduction, feeds 20 watts to each channel. The sound is competitive with a boombox or desktop mini stereo. It won't replace an A/V receiver, but it's good enough to keep up with most movie soundtracks and pretty much all TV broadcasts (except for broadcasts of movies, natürlich).
Remote
Of all the remotes I have seen, the Sony's are definitely towards the large end of the size spectrum. Operating on a pair of AA batteries, the TV's RM-Y909 flashes out not just the infrared control signals for the 57HW40, but also suitable ones to control a wide range of other A/V gear including DVD, VCR, cable boxes, and DSS. Although it's a bit unwieldy, this remote is also a tough one to lose (though it's not totally out of the question). The frequent-use buttons are all close together and the major ones are phosphorescent blue (volume, channel, etc.).
Inputs/Outputs
These are the inputs and outputs (all rear-panel unless otherwise specified; component-video inputs accept 480i, 480p, 1080i): Video 1: L/R analog audio, composite video, and S-Video; Video 2 (front-panel): L/R analog audio, composite video, and S-Video; Video 3: L/R analog audio, composite video, and S-Video; Video 4: L/R analog audio and composite video; Video 5: L/R analog audio and component video; Video 6: L/R analog audio and component video; TV Out: L/R analog audio and composite video; Audio Out: L/R analog audio (can be set to fixed or variable); VHF/UHF Input: coaxial jack; Aux RF Input: coaxial jack; Loop-Through RF Input: coaxial jack; Control-S: minijack (for connection to other Sony gear, allows unified system control).
Caveat Emptor
As I have explained in detail in a few of my past reviews, I suggest that, to ensure the best value for your money when making an electronics purchase, you:
1) Decline to purchase premium cables such as Monster brand. Standard cables from reputable companies such as Radio Shack, RCA, Belkin, and Recoton will serve you equally well. You gain no performance advantage in a home-theater system by using premium-priced cables or speaker wire.
2) Avoid Extended Warranties. If you do decide to buy a service plan (which, in economic terms, only makes sense if you know you could not afford to replace a product which breaks down), shop around. The electronics superstores tack on giant markups with their service plans. In fact, much of their profit margins hinges on selling you a service plan. See bestbuysux(org) for more on this. Check the prices at the jandr Web site if you absolutely insist on getting a service plan. However, instead of buying a service plan, I'd suggest you just buy at a store with 30-day money-back return. If the TV works perfectly for the first 30 days, it's likely to keep doing so for several more years. Some credit cards will double the coverage period of the manufacturer's warranty (since the 57HW40 includes only 90 days of in-home labor coverage, doubling it would give you a nice six-month safety cushion).
3) Be careful about where you shop. Especially with online merchants. Unfortunately, New York City, in particular (including Brooklyn) is a haven for unscrupulous Web retailers, with the exceptions of retailers like B&H Photo/Video (kind of a spiritual successor to the legendary 47th Street Photo, but more straightforward) and the above mentioned J&R Music World. Check the ratings and reviews of Web merchants right here at Epinions or at sites such as audiosurvey(com).
Conclusion
The 57HW40, like most Sony products, is somewhat pricey for what you get. While similar Toshiba sets cost less and perform better, the 57HW40 is a decent option, especially for people who are fans of Sony products (some folks even sleep more soundly knowing the Sony name is on all their home-entertainment gear).
The 57HW40 weighs 168 pounds, which is very light for a TV of this size. The similar Toshiba 57H81 tips the scales at 230 pounds. While there isn't necessarily a direct relationship between TV weight and quality, a heftier set might indicate, among other things, a more substantial power-supply transformer which, in turn, would allow greater picture stability. Sony backs up the 57HW40 with a one-year warranty on parts and 90 days on labor, including in-home service. Considering the cost and complexity of a product like this, having a warranty limited to 90 days of full coverage is not terribly encouraging.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2,700
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radioguy
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Member: R.U. Experienced
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 228
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