Customer Reviews:
 Breathtaking. November 21, 2008
R. D. Smith
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
I actually own one. It is hard to imagine how a picture on a TV based on the current ATSC encoding could look any better. The blacks are "black-black". The colors are intense. The picture is bright. The only limitation I can see has more to do with the source material than with the TV itself.
I have DirectTV HD and Sony blu-ray, I also have rabbit ears for local TV. I will for the purposes of this review, ignore Analog TV and VCR, both of which are beyond obsolete.
With standard 480 source, the mosquito filtering is poor or non-existant. I am not sure if this is because of the TV, because of the upscaling of the DirectTV HD-DVR or because of the original network processing. However with true HD source (either 720P or 1080i), the results are stunning. The 3-D processing (two dimensions of the picture and one dimension of time) to interpolate intermediate frames is just stunning. With any other TV, I have learned how to see the macro blocking when the compression is running at the limit, but this TV does an incredible job of not only smoothing out the inter-frame judder, but it remarkably sharpens the picture for those interpolated frames as well. When I pause a picture with the DVR, you can see macro blocks, but as soon as you press "play", you can actually see the motion processor cutting in.
The results with a good blu-ray disk are, well, get your popcorn and 64 oz cup of soda because it is better than a movie theater since it is brighter.
I have two complaints, both of them "nits". The first is that it takes way too much effort to set the sleep timer. Obviously Sony did not anticipate that a lot of users would use this TV to fall asleep on the couch with. Its not a big deal, but other TVs have a one button sleep button - the height of lazy, I'll admit. The other thing is that the "universal" remote doesn't know how to control the DirectTV HD-DVR. Like all other universal remotes, you still need a remote caddy in your La-Z-Boy to keep all of your other ones...
Of course the obvious down side is the $7,000 price, but YGWYPF.
Viewed the new XBR8 today October 24, 2008
S. Clark (Austin, Tx USA)
6 out of 28 found this review helpful
Saw it at the local Sony style store here in Austin this afternoon.
They were showing the Transformer blue-ray and it was AMAZING looking.
WOW-the best to be sure. Wish I had an extra 7 grand laying around.
And I just got an XBR4 last year.
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