Customer Reviews

Sony Bravia XBR Series KDL-52XBR7 52-Inch 240Hz 1080p LCD HDTV

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I just received my TV today. All I can say is: OH MY GOD! The picture is gorgeous. The sound is incredible. Setup was a breeze. The guys delivering it were nice and courteous. They set it up for me, and even offered to take the packaging away (I kept it in case there were problems).

I've read reviews that state there were screen problems, especially with rain or fog. I don't see it. No artifacts, no blurring, nothing. I think as long as it is setup correctly, the problems don't occur. There are a lot of settings, but the menus are clean and easy to understand.

I am a little hard of hearing. My old TV was cranked to the max, and I could just hear it. Not my new Sony! Even at 50% it is too loud even for me.

Just a note (in case someone else has this problem): I initially didn't have sound at first through the HDMI cable (and panicked a little). The problem was I had to configure my cable box audio setting specifically to HDMI. You'd think as an engineer, I would have known...

The picture is awesome with my Oppo up-scaling DVD player (I don't have a Blu-ray yet).

A nice touch: because of the multitude of connectors on the TV (and the compactness of HDMI's combined audio/video cables) I was able to get rid of a huge rat's nest of cables (coaxial, composite, S-video, and various combiner/splitters).

Update:
I've had the TV for a few weeks now, and still love it. I bought one of those DVD kits to calibrate the color, et. al., but all I had to do was change the color setting from "vivid" to "standard." The TV's settings were already spot on!

I've also noticed that the picture is much better if you turn off a lot of the "extra" settings that affect the picture, like the CineMotion. I have a set of PAL DVDs that looked all jerky. I turned this off and now they look great. My NTSC DVDs were OK most of the time, but certain scenes were jerky. They now look great, too. The Motion Enhancer seems to be best at "Standard."

I took delivery of my first 52XBR7 a couple of weeks ago. I agree with the other reviewers that the picture is outstanding, with one big exception. After watching it for a couple of hours, I couldn't help but notice that there were very obvious clouds/blooms of light throughout any dark scenes. I've read about this problem, called "mura" by the Japanese, but hadn't had a problem with it on my 52XBR2. After spending the whole day wall mounting it and selling my XBR2 to a neighbor, I settled in to watch. I tried to ignore the "mura," but it's really bad. Last week, Amazon swapped out the TV for me, but the second one has the same problem. It has less "clouding" but has what are referred to as "flashlights," several lights that point from the edge towards the middle of the screen. These lights are obvious during dark scenes. I have some more serious family issues to deal with at the moment, so I'll let this go for now and decide later if I want to return the set and try a Samsung. This TV has an excellent picture if the high definition material is brightly lit, but with some shows like "Sarah Conner" or "24," the backlight bleed really detracts from it. I don't know if I got unlucky having two sets with this problem, or if others just live with it. Good luck if you choose this TV. Make sure to do your research on the "clouding (mura)" and "flashlights" issues first.

UPDATE: Another reviewer of the 40" version of this set had this problem and speculated that Sony releases TV's with problems for online sale only. Amazon assured me that this is not the case and offered me an additional 5% discount if I keep it or a full refund if I want to return it. I've decided to keep it because I can't afford to purchase a set like this for the full retail price, which is what Best Buy is charging, a full $1,000 above Amazon's price! Throughout this experience, Amazon's customer service has been excellent. I would give them 5 stars!

I have been wanting a flat screen TV since the plasmas came out almost 10 years ago and were $40,000. ANd finally, I made the plunge and am very happy. Sony by far is the best and the 240hz motion flow is VERY noticable. I read a review where the guy said he could not tell at all. You can tell a LOT. Dont know what that guy was looking at. Anyway, it is pricey but I am happy with it. If you are sensitive to the LCD motion stutter, get the 240hz model...even if you have to wait a while for the price to come down. The only bad thing is one small software glitch when using one of the presentations methods in the slideshow feature (maze method freezes after about 10 pics, but other methods work fine). All in all this is a great TV and it has dropped over $800 dollars already since i bought it in December! Bad for me, good for you! Oh and for those people that are having trouble committing and research stuff to death... just do it. I killed myself researching plasmas vs. LCD and then the different types of LCDs etc and now that I have it, I am SOOO happy. Black scenes are always going to be a little different on an LCD, however the 240 motion flow far outweighs the occasional funny blacks...OH, and football is out of this world on it.

This TV has the best picture we've ever seen. It's absolutely stunning.

Lots of Amazon review comments out there about the refresh rate and stutter on the 120Hz model. That isn't a problem at all with 240Hz.

An HDTV is only as good as the signal it receives. We had a heck of a time with Time Warner (they gave us the wrong cable box, even with the right box the HD channels didn't work, they eventually came out and put a signal booster on the box) but once that was straightened out you cannot beat the picture on this TV. We have two other, older Sony TVs in other rooms that we'll probably sell because no one will want to watch them after seeing the picture on this one.

We have a small living room and were worried the TV would be too large for the space. It isn't.

We did alot of research before buying and made the right choice. You can't go wrong with this brand and model.

TV was delivered in perfect condition a few days ago as promised by CEVA/Eagle. The delivery folks were good - they unpacked and set it up on the stand before they left. I did not turn it on immediately because it was cold outside and the unit needed time to acclimatize.
I have now been playing around with it for a few days and still have a ton of settings and options I have yet to explore. I am happy to say I have none of the clouding issues that some others have mentioned here. Some of the cool features I have found so far.
Picture quality - One word describes it - Fantastic! Default picture quality is great. However, I have yet to calibrate the color/brightness settings to tone it down, conserve energy etc.
Favorites - I like how the favorites GUI lets you scroll through all the channels you have surfed.
Networking and USB - Pictures on a USB stick or on my desktop computer look great. Plugged it into my network, went through a few basic setup steps and it was able to find and display all the pics on the computer. Various slide show effects are great too. Not been able to play a video clip off the computer yet. Need to check compatible formats.
TV Guide - The interactive TV Guide is the best I have seen. Better than those provided by the cable and satellite companies.
Web Browsing - Computer looks great on it. As soon as my Logitech Mediaboard bluetooth keyboard arrives I will have my computer hooked up permanently to the TV.
Only thing left to do is to properly calibrate the color/brightness settings yet. Will update later.
Watch the price on Amazon and buy when low.

Awesome performance. A bit pricier then other this class but worth it. great with sports and movie. Mounted on wall and love it.

This 240 hz 52" XBR7 Sony is excellent in all respects. Wish it had a memory stick though. Easy to set up and menu is quite friendly. Not sure if the 240 hz makes a great difference over 120 hz but I like what I see. Color and definition is excellent with lots of features. Originally priced at $4M(!), within 4 months it dropped to a little less then $2.5M. Highly recommended. I have had a number of Sony XBR's and they have all been reliable. I expect this one to be the same.

I bought the XBR7 after 5 months of study and research. I am very pleased with my decision. The picture on the set is beautiful, far exceeding the other Hi-def TVs that I own. Delivery was one day longer than estimated, but that was not really a problem. A potential headache was the fact that the price increased while I was in the process of purchasing. After I started the purchase process I investigated the warranty (my decision was no extended warranty). The price went up $154 while I was investigating the warranty. I called Amazon, got an agent who could not help me. I told her I felt like I had been "bait & switched". She passed me to a supervisor, who investigated, and sold me the TV for the price at the start of my transaction (the lower price). So all worked out, it just took about 20 minutes on the phone.

Set up was as easy as others have described. The sound quality is excellent. I have seen no negative performance issues, including slo-motion of hi-def football games I had on my DVR. My only comment to my wife was that I bet the actresses really hated Sony and Hi-def, because they don't look nearly so good now that you can really see them, LOL. I could not really tell as much on my other Hi-def TVs. This Sony is clearly worth the money. There may be better sets out there, I am not an expert. But I am very careful at spending money, and I definitely feel like the XBR7 from Amazon is a great value.

This is an excellent tv. It is almost $1000 dollars cheaper than best buy. Sports are extremely smooth with the 240 motion flow. Blue ray movies are unbelievable. Looks like your looking through a glass window at a live event. I would highly recommend this tv, and buying it through amazon. They are 5 star!

After reading review after review, I was a bit skeptical with this purchase...especially since it is pretty expensive. Well this has turned out to be a very good purchase for me. I have had no problems with the blacks as some reviews mention. t.v was really heavy and hard to put up on a wall mount; but other than that, the quality of the picture is awesome. I have to add, this is my first high-def big screen and i couldn't be happier with this purchase. I don't have anything to compare the 240Hz to, but I can't complain about the clarity on the screen. Great purchase, do recommend.