Sony KDL-40XBR Review

Bought a new TV. Another one. Cause our house got straight up robbed.

And all they stole was our beloved 37xbr6. No Christmas presents, no jewelry, nothin’. They rifled through everything, and at first I thought they stole our camcorder (with tape that hadn’t been transferred yet) and an old sentimental watch. Later it turned out they just moved them while digging through our crap. Sad that all we own worth stealing is our TV. Walked right by my iMac in the kitchen, didn’t touch it. They even moved the Christams ornaments that were sitting in front of the TV and set those aside so as to not break them. Thoughtful criminals.

Funny story: Logan was so upset that they’d stolen his shows until we explained that his shows were on the TiVo and it was still there. Which means, in about two-three years the natural evolution is that DVR will be built into the TV. His mind was absolutely blown that anybody would enter our house without our permission. He’s still kind of stressed about that.

Anyway, back to the new TV.

It’s not as good as our old 37XBR6. It’s bigger (they don’t make a 37 XBR anymore) and has more stuff, but it just doesn’t seem as good. The picture is crisper on all sources, SD included. What bugged me were the colors. Some were too vibrant (red) and some were washed out (blue) and no amount of fiddling with color tones (and I wasn’t about to read the manual to figure out how to adjust the RGB) could get it where I wanted it. Until I found that the thing was set to do about four different auto color corrections. Once I turned off auto contrast, huge difference. I’m now extremely happy with the colors, but it seems like I never had to fiddle with the 37XBR6. Heather says I did; and she’s probably right.

The big let down is in the sound. Part of why we bought the XBR6 in the first place was that it got great reviews for the sound quality. When reading online reviews of the XBR9, there was no metion of sound quality and that should’ve been my first clue. Of course, in the store, they let you compare picture quality (as much as you can) but forget trying to hear them. Sound on the XBR6 wasn’t world class, but it was rich for TV speakers. Unfortunately, the XBR9 is as tinny as you’d expect a flat panel’s speakers to be.

We compared against the Samsungs, and just as last time, Heather claims she can, ‘see the pixels and they maker nauseous ‘. I particularly liked the middle range samsung 40 LED version. We went back and forth between the two for more then 30min, but finally the Sony one because that’s what Heather said. They were both the same exact price, but the sales guy pitched in a free Sony blu-ray player (I can always make use of another one) with the XBR. So between that and Heather’s buy-off, that seemed the one.

Let’s hope ADT can protect this one. I don’t want to have to shop for another TV until I get to replace my aging DLP upstairs.

Overall: Not quite as happy spending the extra money on the XBR as I was last time. When I do finally get to replace my DLP, I think I’ll be perfectly happy with a lower model 1080p panel.