Sony Grand WEGA KDS-60A2000 60-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV

by Sony

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 55.6 x 20.2 x 38.9 inches ; 94.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 112 pounds
• Shipping: This item can only be shipped to the 48 contiguous states. We regret it cannot be shipped to APO/FPO, Hawaii, Alaska, or Puerto Rico.
• ASIN: B000GZUN9W
• Item model number: KDS-60A2000
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,576 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Experience rear projection on a grand scale. The A2000 SXRD television brings the picture detail and clarity of SXRD display technology to the masses. Imagine: Full HD 1080p picture quality within a slim, compact design. The Grand WEGA™ SXRD™ Rear Projection HDTV is also equipped with Sony’s WEGA Engine™ system, which minimizes signal distortion to provide you with the best picture , and features enhanced connectivity with dual HDMI (1080p capability) and front component inputs (1080i). Add PC inputs, SRS® TruSurround XT audio enhancement technology and a compliment of other great features and you begin to see why Grand WEGA SXRD Rear Projection TVs are an excellent value. The Big picture has never looked better.

SXRD Panels
SXRD technology is the latest display technology developed by the legendary television engineers at Sony to meet and exceed the demands of a High Definition image at its full 1080 line resolution. Digitally transmitted High Definition signals can contain over 2 million individual detail points that need to be displayed accurately and rapidly. SXRD displays those 2 million detail points per SXRD panel accurately since the 3 SXRD panels actually contain enough pixels to fully display a 1080 line picture without interlacing it. SXRD has the speed to create a smooth, film like image. The SXRD panels have a blistering 2.5ms response time (total rise and fall time), which exceeds the demands of even the most rapidly moving High Definition images. And SXRD creates highly accurate, natural colors because the 3-panel design displays all the colors, all the time.

SXRD Technology
With a display area of 0.61", Sony’s third-generation SXRD chip is one of the world’s smallest microdisplay chips with a full 1920 x 1080 native resolution. It has an outstanding panel contrast ratio of up to 5000:1 (chip). Over two million pixels per chip deliver incredible detail and clarity. You can see things even in the deep shadows. There’s a true sense of depth and dimension without annoying screen door effects interfering with picture quality. And watching sports is like looking through a sky box window. Pictures are crisp and motion is smooth.

Advanced Iris
Advanced Iris is a special Sony function designed to improve brightness and contrast expression especially in darker scenes. It is accessed inside the Picture Menu and offers 2 Auto settings and 5 Manual settings. Auto 1 and Auto 2 are dynamic adjustments that automatically open and close the iris according to the gamma level of the picture on the screen. Auto 1 is best used for viewing video content that has a large variation in brightness from scene to scene. Auto 2 is best for viewing video content that has less variation in brightness from scene to scene. The 5 manual settings (Max, High, Medium, Low, and Min) can be used to adjust the iris opening to allow the best possible picture viewing depending on ambient room lighting conditions. For instance, High works well for viewing in brightly lit rooms. Low is a good setting for viewing in low light conditions.

WEGA Engine Video Processor
Leveraging Sony’s TV heritage and engineering expertise, the latest generation of Sony’s exclusive WEGA Engine™ is born. Its fully digital signal-processing path includes video processing functions that are designed to improve overall picture quality. Among the key functions that have been added to the WEGA Engine are:

• Green, blue and white color enhancer circuit which selectively adjusts common natural colors like green, white and blue color levels for a more vivid image.
• Digital MPEG Noise Reduction Circuit which reduces MPEG artifacts such as "block noise" and "mosquito noise" caused by compression used in digital broadcasts used to maximize bandwidth.
• Digital Contrast Enhancer circuit processes every field automatically selecting out details and optimizing contrast for each scene. Adaptive processing improves the low contrast parts of the picture providing crisp and vivid images with high contrast.

HDMI and PC Inputs
Designed for maximum versatility, Sony’s Grand WEGA SXRD line is equipped with a comprehensive range of input interfaces. The HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is the first industry-supported, uncompressed, all-digital audio/video interface. HDMI™ technology supports enhanced or High Definition video, together with multi-channel digital audio to provide matchless image and sound reproduction. A D-Sub 15 input also allows connection to your PC, allowing you to use your high resolution Grand WEGA SXRD TV as a computer monitor.

What's in the Box: Rear Projection HDTV, Remote control (RM-YD010, operating instructions, quick start guide, batteries (AA x 2), warranty, product registration card.

Product Description

SXRD technology is the latest display technology developed by the legendary television engineers at Sony to meet and exceed the demands of a High Definition image at its full 1080 line resolution. Digitally transmitted High Definition signals can contain over 2 million individual detail points that need to be displayed accurately and rapidly. SXRD displays those 2 million detail points per SXRD panel accurately since the 3 SXRD chips actually contain enough pixels to fully display a 1080 line picture without interlacing it. SXRD has the speed to create a smooth, film like image. The SXRD chips have a blistering 2.5ms response time (total rise and fall time), which exceeds the demands of even the most rapidly moving High Definition images. And SXRD creates highly accurate, natural colors because the 3-chip design displays all the colors, all the time.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

123 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent picture in all modes, but..., September 14, 2006

By 

M. deFreitas (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Grand WEGA KDS-60A2000 60-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV (Electronics)

...you have to calibrate the display (as you should with ANY television), and because of the incredible detail possible with a 1080p picture, the "garbage in, garbage out" tenet of picture quality really holds here.

I can't stress those two points enough. If you cannot afford a full calibration by an ISF technician, you should at least purchase Digital Video Essentials or Avia Guide to Home Theater (both available at Amazon) and calibrate the brightness, contrast, color, and grayscale tracking of the display. It is not fair to gauge the picture quality of the display when using factory settings, which are set to "torch" mode (super-bright, super-contrast) to attract ignorant buyers at Best Circuit Buy City. You MUST calibrate the TV for your viewing environment. Note that the A2000 remembers calibration settings PER INPUT and PER RESOLUTION. That means if you have an HD cable box that is in "pass-through" mode - meaning it might send 480i, 720p, or 1080i, depending on the source - for best results you will want to calibrate using the same input as the cable box, and at all resolutions. If you can't do that, you should at least calibrate at one of the resolutions, then copy the settings to other resolutions and tweak for best picture.

After doing a basic calibration, evaluate picture quality using high-quality sources (OTA high-definition, progressive-scan DVD, HTPC, etc.) and the best connection you can (HDMI or component). Most standard definition cable content is crap, and blowing crap up to 60" and (comparitively) ultra-high-resolution will result in big, high-resolution crap. In my opinion, after proper calibration and judicious use of the noise-reducing/picture-enhancing features of the A2000, standard-definition content looks pretty good. It'll never look as good as your old 27" CRT, due mostly to being blown up to 4x the size. Compared to other 60"-class HDTVs, the SD quality is excellent. Check your cable signal strength, and compare several SD channels - some have better overall picture than others.

OK, rant over. Here are my thoughts on high and low points:

High Points
- Amazing HD picture quality
- Good SD picture quality, keeping in mind GIGO
- Quite bright enough to be usable in a well-lit room
- Accepts 1080p natively (hello HD-DVD)
- Low-reflectivity screen
- Blacks are very deep
- Plenty of inputs
- Plenty of calibration/configuration options (even without going into the service menu)
- Immune to "rainbow effect" of DLP sets
- Immune to burn-in (CRT, plasma)
- Good viewing angles
- User-replaceable bulb

Low Points
- No picture-in-picture or picture-and-picture (has "freeze" feature, which seems of dubious usefulness)
- Silver bezel (this is strictly a matter of opinion; I prefer an all-matte-black bezel)
- No bulb timer (to gauge lifespan of bulb)

To add some context to my opinions: I watch 60% SD content and 40% HD content, plus Xbox 360 gaming and the occasional DVD. I am not a 'videophile', but I do have enough skill to calibrate the display including service-menu adjustments. My viewing environment has a WNW-facing window shaded by trees. During the afternoon/early evening, the room is pretty well lit, but without direct sunlight hitting the TV. At night, I watch TV with some lights on in the room. The A2000 is more than bright enough for all viewing conditions I encounter, and has very low reflectivity (the old Tosh was like a mirror when dark). If you have a light-controlled home theater and bias lighting, I expect you will have even better results than I.

For more information on the A2000 (buyers' experiences, calibration, tweaks, etc.) see these AVS Forum threads:

[...]

112 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent in all modes, September 25, 2006

By 

Kevin Murphy (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sony Grand WEGA KDS-60A2000 60-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV (Electronics)

This is my second HD set, and it's much much better than what I had. Not only does this have an excellent HD 1080p, but the picture from standard def sources is the best I've seen. The internal scaler (which converts SD to 1080p) is among the best made.

One thing that happens, though, is that people hook up devices that have their own (inferior) scalers and then complain about the Standard def. This happens often with "hi-def" cable boxes, where the installer sets the cable box to do all the converting before it gets to the TV. Not much the TV can do when the cable box has already mucked things up. The proper thing to do is to set up the cable box to "pass-through" mode (i.e. leave the signal alone!) so the $3000 TV's scaler is used instead of the junk in the $80 cable box.

When set up properly, regular TV looks like DVD used to, DVD looks hi-def, and true HD is eye-popping.

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars FIVE STARS to AMAZON: ZERO STARS to SONY., February 10, 2007

By 

John Salter - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sony Grand WEGA KDS-60A2000 60-Inch SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV (Electronics)

AMAZON is the only way to purchase large screen HD-TV's like this.

They don't publicize it as much as they should, but they ship all large screen TV's with WHITE GLOVE service, at no extra charge. When you compare what all the other online retailers charge for this service, AMAZON is the LEAST EXPENSIVE. And to cap it all, they also have a no quibble/no cost return policy.

AMAZON delivered my TV with free (White glove) shipping in 4 days.

Unfortunately, after a few days trying to set it up for my DVD player I noticed a HORRIBLE HALO around dark objects when set against bright background.

My immediate reaction was to RETURN the TV to AMAZON. But SONY included a notice with the TV asking that if there is any problem with the set, if I called their customer service number, they would look after me.

So I called SONY and reported the problem. But rather than look after me as they promised they merely gave me numbers of two local TV repair firms to call - not what I call excellent service.

I called them, and both said they could come in 10-14 days - so much for responsiveness.

A tech came, and immediately recognized the fault. He said he needed to discuss it with SONY. He returned 10 days later with a very large circuit board. Replacing the board was no mean feat. He removed around 40 screws to remove three covers, which he pushed and pulled for two hours before getting the new board installed.

But when he switched the TV on, NOTHING would work. The TV was now totally broken. He spent another hour putting the old board back but it was still totally broken. He then admitted it was now unrepairable.

We both called SONY and explained the situation, and asked SONY to send a new TV.

SONY refused - even after I escalated the issue to Customer Relations. They said it was their policy to NEVER replace TV's, and if I wanted a new unit I would have to sue the repair tech.

So then I called AMAZON to explain the situation. They immediately took sympathy, and even though the TV was delivered over 30 days ago, they gave me two options:

a) To collect the TV and refund all money paid by me, including shipping, or

b) To bring a replacement TV, and take the old one away at no additional cost to me.

I chose the latter and the new TV arrived four days later.

So the moral is - DO NOT TRUST SONY. If you have a problem - send it back and don't let SONY try to fix it. They don't have clue.

Thank you AMAZON, your service is wonderful!

SONY, you should be totally ashamed. Your customer service is a disgrace!