Customer Rating:
Summary: Failure after 2 years
Comment: Nice picture, beautiful styling, but reliability extremely poor. I expected Sony to be a high quality set, and give at least 5 to 7 years of service in our home, where we only watch TV in the evenings for a few hours, a few nights per week. This set failed with a 2.5" black band from top to bottom of the screen, which makes watching the HD picture TORTURE! It is well after the 1 year warranty, so I am on my own. Cost to repair versus cost to by SOME OTHER type of set??? Waiting to see.
Customer Rating:
Summary: P.O.S. - I don't mean Point Of Sale!
Comment: I had this plasma for about 6 1/2 months when one day I turn on the TV and there is a 3 inch wide black line running vertically down the screen. At first, I thought it may have been the faulty cable company so I put in a dvd and the same thing, then I turned the plasma off and you could see the same line. I may have gotten about 1000 hours of usage out of the tv. I then spoke to a Sony Rep. and I get a garbage response. BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT THE SONY WARRANTY! Sony gives you a 90 warranty on Labor (so it would have cost me an outrageous amount on service) and 1 year parts. Luckily, I had bought from Circuit City, first time I had ever purchased a major electronic from CC and Damn am I glad. They took care of it for me and so I actually ended up spending more with them. I have always been happy with Sony but this was a terrible experience. I expect them to take care of a purchase this large, especially when it has only been 6 or so months. No more Sony for me. I am going to Panasonic or Phillips.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Image is great, annoying hiss/noise very aggravating
Comment: We have three SONY televisions in our home and one digital camera. This is the only SONY dud we have ever encountered. Shortly after purchase it began to hiss and whir and whine. TV is in the living room and we can hear that incessant noise in the kitchen. Using the home theater with surround sound cranked up barely masks the noise.
We purchased a three year service contract through Circuit City. Tech came out and claimed this model is known for fan noise and that we MUST LIVE WITH IT.
When I hear the noise this beautiful and expensive plasma unit makes I get sick to my stomach. I will never be foolish with my money again. Have learned some valuable lessons here.
EDIT: I called SONY on 5/27/05 and they offered to send a tech from a different repair vendor out to the house. I asked them what this vendor could do that the other could not. Stated I wanted this TV returned and swapped for a new one. No way. Wont even go into detail as to how they messed up the repair appts over these past few months.
So I figured what the heck. Called Circuit City. THE NEXT DAY they gave me a TV worth five hundred more and called it an even swap. I cannot believe how great circuit city stood by me and how awful SONY treated me. I got a hitachi and the picture AND the sound is great.
Now we listen and watch in comfort and feel GLAD about our purchase.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good even with regular cable
Comment: If you have a HD signal, or even component DVD signal, just about any plasma or DLP or other digital-based tv will look great. But with regular cable channels, quality depends more on the signal processing chip in the tv. That chip converts the regular picture to the definition displayed by the tv. Sony has a really good signal processing chip, better than the Samsung or most others. Also, as this tv is Extended definition rather than high defintion, there is less interpolation for the chip to do.
So you will get a better picture with this tv off regular cable than just about any high def tv. The native resolution of this tv also matches dvd's. If you watch mostly high def channels, all seven or eight of them, then get a high def tv. If you watch mostly the 100s of regular cable channels, the tv will give you a better picture, which is why consumer reports rated its picture better than most HD sets. If you watch high def, this tv will give you a great picture too.
Just sit back more than about six feet from this tv, as it's large.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Consider purchasing a different model.
Comment: After owning this unit for just over one month it developed an annoying hiss.
Sony's repair service initially diagnosed the problem as a faulty video board. A new video board was installed but proved defective.
The repair service man plans to return to put in another video board, but they are no longer sure that this will solve the problem. The repair service gentleman's second guess is that the annoying sound may be coming from two internal fans, in which case they say that we'll just have to live with the problem.
Beware of this unit. The hiss that we hear can be heard from two rooms away and is a constant reminder that we purchased an inferior product.
p.s.
In case you think that we are bashing Sony, think again. In the past we have enjoyed many of Sony's products. While we may purchase other Sony products in the future, we recommend that others stay away from this particular unit.
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