Sony Bravia KDL-40W5500 LCD Television
Sony is one of the most famous and the most successful stalwarts of electronic goods in the world. Of its innumerable products, the most famous and the most used are its range televisions. Of late, Sony has been producing televisions that are world-beating. As a part of revolution, even the televisions have changed the way they look and perform. The most effective of those are the LCD TVs, and the best of them are the ones manufactured by Sony.
Sony has released its latest LCD TV, the Sony Bravia KDL, mainly for the purpose of movies and gaming. Bravia stands for ‘Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture’. This is considered as one of the best LCD TVs in the market, with Samsung and LG being the other serious contenders. To over score these two, Sony has included many new features in its latest product, keeping in mind its misfires in the past.
Design:
Sony not at its best:
The design of the Bravia is not as attractive as expected from Sony, mainly due to its sharp corners. Its design is good but certainly not as eye-catching as those of LG and Samsung. Its 40 inch screen is large enough to give a theatrical experience to the viewers. Its dimensions being (W x H x D) 987 x 686 x 303 mm and weighing just 20.5 kg, the TV looks very sleek. It is so designed, that it occupies very little space and it can, if necessary, be hung to the wall as well. All the buttons are to the side of it and it is neatly tailored and hence looks very neat.
HD Display:
With a superb High Definition detail and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, the Bravia KDL-40W5500 is a great player for movies and especially games. Its LCD screen with an S-IPS type panel gives you stunning pictures. The screen is also not a reflective type and hence no reflections appear on the screen, which gives you an optimum display quality.
Features:
Sony has introduced a few additional features in the Bravia KDL40W5500 to make it more valuable.
100MHz Processing Engine:
The best of them is the Motionflow system, which is the name given by Sony to its 100 MHz engine, which also has an Image Blur Reduction Technology. With this system, the pictures are more lucid and are also sharper than ever, even for fast moving objects. This feature minimises the side effects during play and it alters the newly calculated frames for better visual experience. With these technologies, the fast- moving objects or images, like action movies or sports and others, can be viewed without any blur or any other problem. Also, pictures are vibrant with good depth and clarity, and high contrast with the Bravia Engine 3.
AppliCast:
The AppliCast software is another feature that you will find very useful in the Sony Bravia. When the AppliCast option is on, then it gives you all the details of the movies and the music files while they are being played. A brief data of the movie or the song is displayed on the screen. The AppliCast gets the information from the internet. So, to make use of this option, you must connect to the internet.
Options available for the tweakers:
Another feature of Sony Bravia KDL-40W5500 40 inch LCD TV is that there is an adjustable option for Standard and MPEG noise reduction. Other options include the gamma correction to give you good colour contrast, a black correction option to sharpen the darken images, Clear White processing and Sony Live Colour System, which help in boosting the colour response of the images. You have four options to choose from. They are High, Mid, Low and off, and are used to adjust colour clarity and picture vividness. The Bravia features can be done with the built- in software, known as the DLNA enabled PC, which can store a few movies and music files and plays them whenever required. There are a variety of options like the Eco settings and the Light sensor that can automatically adjust the brightness of the TV.
Additional Features:
The 24p True Cinema feature in KDL-40W5500 enables you to watch the movies with excellent picture quality and without any blur. The Intelligent Picture feature enabled in the TV gives you crisp images even when you are playing with an analogue signal. Another excellent feature is that when you are not watching the TV, you can turn on the Picture Frame mode, to turn the TV into a photo frame and you can have your pictures displayed on it just like a photo frame. This is a very unique feature of its kind. With the Voice Zoom feature, you can always change the volume of voices with actually changing the background volume. The USB Media Player feature allows you an easy access to your photos, music and videos. The DLNA Ethernet port helps you sync the TV with your PC. This is a very appreciable feature.
Many of these features are unique and are very useful. They are certainly helpful in sufficing all your needs and all of these make a perfect high end TV.
Performance of KDL40W5500:
When it comes to performance, the Sony Bravia KDL-40W5500 Full HD LCD Television deserves full marks. With all the features discussed above, it gives you an excellent performance and very few problems.
Picture Quality:
The 40 inch screen is big enough to turn your TV into a home theatre. The picture quality is excellent and the depth, the details and the colour of the pictures are outstanding. Even the high definition pictures and movies are played with stunning quality and you can least expect a blur while playing your favourites. Even if there is an analogue connection, there is no need to worry at all, as there is Intelligent Picture. The Dynamic Contrast Ratio of the Bravia KDL-40W5500 is 100000:1, which gives you a very good picture clarity and great contrast.
HDMI Cables:
The four HDMI cable connections are very useful and with these, you can get the pictures with the highest quality possible. With the help of these cables you can connect your TV to any high definition devices such as a Blu-Ray Disc and the Playstation3. Hence, you can also play games with these digital cable connections.
Experience of games:
The MPEG Noise Reduction enhances the performance of the surround sound as it reduces the noise and gives out the optimum output. With its HD sharpness, it gives you wonderful footage, be it from your Blu-Ray Discs for Microsoft Xbox 360 games or be it a Cricket match from the cable TV network. Everything looks very dynamic on you TV and most importantly without noise or blurring. Its response time has been very good.
Picture in Picture:
The picture in picture facility allows you to have a great experience of watching multiple channels at the same time. So, you can, at a single point in time, watch both the news and a movie. Even while performing this task, there are no considerable problems and the output is pretty smooth.
Sound:
The Bravia has only two front speakers on the front. The sound quality is a bit low considering the expectations from Sony. This is because, even though the treble and the mid range sounds are picked up well by its speakers, its ability to pick up the bass sounds is on the lower side. This is not uncommon with the flat LCD TVs since they do not have enough depth to provide a good audio system. But the presence of Dolby Digital makes it fine for movie watching. You can experience digital surround sound effect with these speakers and also the S-Force technology for front surround sound. There is also a sound booster technology to enhance the sound performance. Even then if you need a better sound output, then you can always connect the analogue stereo and the digital optical outputs to any external speakers.
Networking:
With the DLNA home networking technology, you can connect your TV to your computer and then play pictures, music and movies. With the integrated Standard Definition Digital Terrestrial tuner, you can watch high definition pictures on the digital TV. With this, you can easily receive Digital Terrestrial TV channels and Radio channels. Sony also allows you to watch Cable TV with the help of a digital cable tuner. But this feature is subject to country and also only with the supported operators.
Power Consumption:
The Sony Bravia KDL-40W5500 is an energy efficient TV and hence consumes minimum power. Its power consumption is about 110 watts in the normal mode and just 60 watts in the power saver mode. It is a very low consumption rate for a TV. You can avail this opportunity to save some bugs by just depressing the Energy Saver button. After you do this, the light sensor in the TV senses the intensity of the light outside and then cuts down the power consumption. You can also turn off the monitor while listening to the radio, and hence reduce the power consumption.
Warranty:
Sony offers a warranty for about 1 year from the date of purchase. You can extend the period by registering on the Sony’s website.
Conclusion:
The Sony Bravia KDL is an excellent LCD TV series and is considered as the best one in the market for gaming purpose. Its price is also a reasonable one when compared to the others. Its design may not be the best and its rugged looks only attract men and particularly the youth. An average customer would rather want a curve- edged TV, which looks more dynamic. But there are many other things in it that make it very valuable. The features discussed above, add immense value to the Bravia, as there are many of them that are very unique and most importantly, very useful. The best ones are that of the Internet connection and the Ethernet port for streaming music and movies. However great the features are, at the end of the day, all that counts is the performance and Sony Bravia is second to none, when it comes to performance. The picture delivery is fantastic with all the options to customise the way you want your TV to perform. It is particularly the best one for the gamers who use Wii, Microsoft Xbox and Playstation3. Sony itself agrees that the audio output is not up to the mark and it can be considered as an average audio output. This is true but Sony has made this up by producing an excellent picture quality. It has also managed quite well to maintain the balance between the price, features, performance and usability.
Verdict:
No TV is perfect and every TV has its own drawbacks. But when it comes to the Sony Bravia, these drawbacks are very few in number. So, considering everything that is discussed above, the Sony Bravia KDL-40W5500 is an excellent and affordable choice that makes your living room really lively.
Bravia KDL-40W5500 40″ LCD TV - Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | Sony |
| Model Name | Bravia KDL-40W5500 |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 987 x 686 x 303 mm |
| Weight | 20.5 kg |
| Display | TFT |
| Display size | 40 inches |
| Image aspect ratio | 16:9 |
| Dynamic contrast ratio | 100000:1 |
| HDTV compatible | Yes |
| PC interface | Mini USB |
| Refresh rate | 120Hz |
| Audio | 2 speakers, Subwoofer |
| 24p True Cinema | Yes |
| DLNA capable | Yes |
| BRAVIA Sync | Yes |
| Timer | Clock, sleep timer and on/off timer |
| Special Features | Dynamic Contrast Ratio 100000:1 Advanced Contrast Enhancer (ACE) Live Color™ Technology MPEG Noise Reduction 3D Comb Filter CineMotion/Film Mode/Cinema Drive DOLBY® DIGITAL Voice Zoom Sound Booster |
| Connectivity | AC Power Input RF Connection Input(s) Composite Video Input(s)3 (2 Rear / 1 Side) S-Video Input(s)1 Component Video (Y/Pb/Pr) Input(s)2 Analog Audio Input(s) (Total)DMI™ Connection(s) (Total)4 (2 SIDE/2 REAR) PC In (D-Sub) + Audio In (Stereo Mini)1 (Rear)Use both as PC Audio in and HDMI-DVI Audio in Video Out (SCART)1 (REAR)5 (1 Side/4 Rear) Audio Out 1 Digital Audio Output(s) Optical Digital Output – 1 Headphone Output |
| Accessories | AC cable, Operating Instructions, VESA Mounting holes, VESA Hole Spacing, VESA Screw Dimensions, Table top stand, remote commander and wall mount bracket |
| Power Consumption | 60-110 W |
| Warranty | 1 year |
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