Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 HD Power September 7, 2010
NightCycle
I love this TV. It looks great - the styling is simple with clean lines. It looked smaller in my room than I thought but I now think it's the perfect size. It was easy to set up and tuned loads of Freeview channels quickly including Freeview HD. The HD picture is perfect to me and far better than the SD channels. After watching anything in HD, the SD quality looks sub-par. I don't want to watch anything in SD now. I watched a football match in HD and thought it was great, the 100Hz MotionFlow seemed to do its job (or something did - it was clear and motion was not blurry).
I've tried it with my Xbox and I think it looks great. I read some reviews online about input lag being an issue. I haven't noticed it but I'm not a serious gamer. I also have a Sony blu-ray hooked up to it and the picture is brilliant. I'm not a fan of "Bravia-sync" though which means your TV remote changes to be your blu-ray remote when using it (if it's Sony compatible). I'd rather have two remotes and keep the same level of functionality on each (although you can change the remote back to standard operation with a few button presses).
The final thing is the sound. When watching Freeview, the sound is fine for me, no complaints. On one blu-ray I watched I think it tried to do something clever and the voices seemd quite quiet while explosions seemed deafening. I may have to mess around with the settings I suppose on either the TV or the remote.
All in all, a great purchase.
Great TV August 6, 2010
K. Young (London)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
When you get it set up right, it's a great TV. That said, thereare a few points worth making even if they are not faults in the product.
Firstly, if you are going from a 4:3 CRT to this product, make sure you set all your input devices (e.g. freeview box, VCR, DVD, BluRay, etc) to output to widescreen or 16:9 because otherwise Smart mode will do its best with a 4:3 picture, but you will get tons of nasty stretch effects.
Secondly, because its a big TV you tend to be more conscious of mpeg artifacts that occur within the video production process whether that be from live video cameras, video production or, most commonly, introduced during distribution e.g from the internet or via cable or freeview. There is not much you can do about that. As bandwidths increase the problem should lessen over time.
Finally, Internet TV is weak at the moment. There's not much content. Most of it is Pay-Per-View, advertising or specialist stuff geared to the US market. This will improve when Sony and BBC get their acts together on iPlayer, but we are all still waiting on that (assuming the government doesn't slash funding for BBC internet projects). Same with HD content on FreeView. If you are using cable you may need an upgrade to watch HD content.
Now onto the product. I attached the base on my own. I found it tough balancing the TV, the base, a screw and a screwdriver at the same time, so try to get someone to help you when you do this.
The default colours are a bit too red/warm for my taste, but you can adjust it.
I have never much liked the XMB (cross media bar) interface. Its OK, but a bit disorganised. Having vertical columns representing inputs or settings is OK, but they have now introduced new vertical bars for media types (image, move, sound) which means the same inputs can appear on different bars, but haven't added a vertical bar for network inputs, so the underlying model of the interface is mucked up. Poor interface design causes confusion. Fortunately, humans are intelligent and adapt.
There is no clear explanation of the interaction of the scene buttons and the per-input display and audio settings, so it is a bit of trial and error. Again we adapt, in my case by leaving it alone.
The Home button on the remote is too close to the down button. This sounds picky, but when you are making you fifth attempt at adjusting something only to accidentally hit the home button again, it's frustrating.
Because of this, I'll give it a four out of five, but I mean more 4.8 out of 5 rather than 4.1.
 Great TV August 2, 2010
Simon Thomas
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Originally bought an ex703, but it suffered from the cones at the top of the screen so returned it (didn't buy it from amazon), was toying with the idea of a Panasonic g20 plasma instead, but in the ended decided to go with the Sony ex503. Very glad I did so, the picture quality is superb, far better than the ex703, Freeview HD is outstanding, very sharp, great colours, great blacks and very good depth to the picture. Freeview SD is not as good as standard Sky SD, which I've got to say is very good quality, again far better than it was on the ex703. Blue Ray is superb as you would expect.
I think the Sony menu system is excellent, looks far more upmarket than the Panasonic g20 menus and program guides which look quite basic. The DLNA works really well for streaming video and accessing pictures etc from your PC. TV is a doddle to setup, fully working within about 15 minutes out of the box.
The screen is a bit thicker than the ex703 or other edge LED screens on the market but the picture quality is far better. The sound isn't great but for general TV viewing it's fine. If you watch a lot of movies you may want to consider adding a speaker system to improve the sound. All in all a superb TV for the price, out-performs a lot of more expensive TVs.
Sony KDLEX503U July 5, 2010
Sampras
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Excellent TV for an excellent price. Freeview HD is superb as is my SKY HD. Internet TV is also excellent, just need a Blu-Ray player to go with it now. No wonder this won best 40" buy in What Hi-Fi magazine. (It's 46" and 37" siblings won in their class too).
Excellent July 2, 2010
Angus
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Very pleased, excellent picture.
Sky Sports HD is awesome.
A little slow changing channels, not sure how much I value/will use the internet connection, maybe if more "normal" content available it will be a better feature.
No regrets at all
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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