Sony KDL-52W4100 user reviews

3.5 stars

"Nice for price, but comes with some lesser qualities." on December 10, 2008 by Pavelow

Pros: Great color and deep black levels after adjustments; gads of picture controls; nice motion flow effect for most DVDs and Blu-Rays; great Blu-Ray picture; plenty of inputs: 4 HDMI, 2 component, 3 composite, 1 PC; and digital audio optical out.

Cons: Poor viewing angle, contrast drops 50% from 15-30 degrees off of straight ahead viewing! Menu has steep learning curve. Can't reach control buttons on top of TV? Motion enhancer & Cinemotion problematic on some DVDs. Only one RF input. RED push.

Summary: Overall I'm sorta happy with my new 52W4100 but faced some buyer's remorse after delivery. I didn't remember that CNET had said that uniformity of the picture dropped off considerably from straight on viewing. On further investigation I found a very detailed review on another site that tested the contrast on viewing angle and found a 50% drop when looking from 15-30 degrees off of straight ahead viewing. It dropped even further but not as dramatically as you go to 80 degrees off center. This was a big disappointment. Fortunately, I have a small family and most of us are sitting within plus or minus 20 degrees of center when watching the TV. That said the family didn't notice the drop in contrast until I mentioned it. They believe it has an excellent picture.

After installing the TV and hooking up all the connections I started reading the manual. Went through the "easy set up" steps fairly easily but then dove into the menu for the CNET settings suggested. Holy crap did I have a steep learning curve and I'm a former USAF pilot. Took me a while to go through all the menu options which were not intuitive and the instruction manual does not do a good job of walking you through each title option. Once done and settings in place I experimented with Vivid, Standard, Cinema, and Custom picture modes to see what looked best during day sports and night time viewing of DVDs/BRDs. CNET is correct about the RED Push and I in fact had to back it off some more with a setting of R1 instead of CNET recommendation of R3. It all depends on the programming and ambient lighting in the room. I settled on Custom at night and a modified Cinema for day time sports. Vivid and Standard are just too fake and bright for me. Overall I thought it was a great picture (straight on that is) with more accurate colors than my 3 year old Mits WD52628 DLP. The DLP has great deep blacks and the Sony W4100 LCD now rivals those black levels.

Performance for the most part is great. I did notice the uneven back lighting effects that CNET discovered. The good news is you don't really notice the unevenness unless you're looking for them during the darkest scenes. Motion enhancement and Cinemotion worked great at the medium settings until I played my wife's "Bleak House," a BBC production on standard Region 1 DVD. There was an excessive amount of jitteriness even in the slowest motion scenes. I turned off Motion enhancement using the Options button on the remote control but still had problems. It took me a day to investigate and find out how to access Cinemotion which is the 3:2 pull down processor located in the MENU using the HOME button on the controller. After turning OFF Cinemotion, the DVD worked perfectly. It is just annoying that I will always have to turn off these processors for some DVDs.

On the back of the set there are plenty of inputs for all your devices. I would have liked to have two RF inputs (for both Cable and Antenna) like my Mits, but I'll live with one. I would have liked to have an additional digital audio coax out for flexibility, but I can survive on the digital audio optical out that provides excellent Dolby 5.1 to my receiver. I haven't yet tried the PC input which is a step up from my Mits. One annoyance was the inputs are on the back right hand side instead of the center area. I see the logic in this for wall mounting, but for a stand mount it makes it easier if they were all near the center back. I had to switch around my electronic devices and drill another hole in the back of my entertainment center to accommodate wiring distances. Save yourself the hassle and make sure you buy all 6 foot cables, not 3 foot cables. The cables have to travel at least 18 inches just to get from the right hand back to the center harness to keep them neat and out of view from the front of the TV. Remember, there is a clear piece of glass between the bottom of the set and the speaker bar that shows everything behind the TV.

My new Sony Blu-Ray player looks great on this TV! Make sure you go into the MENU under SCREEN settings and turn the adjustment to FULL PIXEL; otherwise you'll have 3% over screen that is unnecessary and misses part of the picture. This SCREEN setting must be done for each input device. I left it at NORMAL (3-4% over screen) for CABLE and Cable Box for Standard Def programming. But I go back into the settings and change them to FULL PIXEL during HD programming. Would be nice to have a button on the controller for that. Would also be nice to have backlighting on the remote controller, but you'll have to get the Z4100 for that. And, I don't know what Sony was thinking when they put the main TV controls on the Top edge of the set. I can reach them but cannot see them from a standing position. Most of the time I wouldn't use them, but they should NOT be unusable in the first place.

Bottom line, nice TV for the price, but comes with some lesser qualities. Paid $2100.