Sony Bravia HX820 Series

Great TV until it breaks down – Both myself and my inlaws bought the same TV. Mine broke after six months and theirs broke after five months. We both experienced the same after sales service. Absolutely abysmal, numerous phone calls, arguments, left without at TV for weeks and weeks while they try to fix the other one. So awful. No mater how wonderful the product is, I could not buy another sony product because if it breaks down, the effort to get a resolution is way too difficult. The TV itself is great. Just a pity they break down. functions durability

Great screen, needs work on the firmware – Its a great screen overall. The picture is fantastic. I am pretty picky when it comes to my home entertainment system, and I was not disappointed. The panel is really easy to see in my living room which is very bright during the day with lots of light coming in, and at night the blacks are very black and even. There is no form of motion blur at all while watching fast moving video. In my opinion its one of the best screens (in terms of picture) on the market.

The user interface is nice and easy to read, but there is a few problems which are very annoying(such as the EPG caching and others which are listed below). The remote control is un-necessarily huge, but I like the fact that it also controls my PS3 which I use as my BR player(it did this out of the box via the HDMI connection, no setup needed). Great quality picture, especially for blue ray. Looks good even when its off because its just a giant sheet of glass. I was surprised that the speakers where actually not too bad, for the size I thought they would be no good. There is an independent optical output for sound, so the TV does all the switching for you and you dont need a receiver any more. Just plug your amp into the TV via optical cable. Every time you turn off the screen the EPG will be reset. The only way to re-cache the EPG is to flick through each channel. Wont play a lot of video files from a memory stick.

Outstanding on or off – This TV is amazing to look at on or off. I have the unit mounted on my white wall and with it being a single black piece of thin black glass it looks incredible, perfect for the minimalist like me. Once turned on it almost looks 3D with the depth of the image it can produce on the high resolution, and high contrast ratio. It looks amazing when text is displayed on a black background, there is no visible difference between the black border and the blackness of the display, so the test look like they are printed on.

It has very effective power saving methods, by turning off with either no human movement in the room, (detected by the inbuilt camera), or over a period of time, requiring interaction via the remote to stop the TV powering off. Once off the PVR tuns off and with no audio feed, the Bose turns off. A great way to save power. Great looking off and outstanding picture quality on. Slight blooming when displaying highlighted areas. Meaning when highlighted areas are displayed, there can be loss of detail.