Buy Cheap Sony BRAVIA XBR Series KDL-40XBR9 40-Inch 1080p 240Hz LCD HDTV, Black
Experience powerful performance and superior design with the premium Sony BRAVIA XBR9 HDTV, featuring Motionflow 240Hz technology for maximum motion detail and clarity, plus internet connectivity with built-in BRAVIA Internet Video capabilities that let you enjoy thousands of on-demand movies, TV shows, music and more, and even lets you personalize your entertainment experience by selecting and positioning widgets containing the latest news, weather, sports and more directly on your TV screen.
Technical Details
16:9 Full HD 1080p Resolution Panel (1920x1080)
BRAVIA Engine 3 fully digital video processor
Motionflow 240Hz
Live Color Creation technology w/ WCG-CCFL backlight
USB to view photo/music/video
See more technical details
absurdo, February 3, 2010
By rojitas "george"
Jorge R. H February 3, 2010
I'll tell you something I am sure they will not believe.
Last week, buy one and these TV, turn off the computer and went to work.
After 15 minutes but I was billed 2 TV for $ 2600.les swear I do not buy them.
When I returned in the afternoon I found this strange purchase, immediately cancel the order of these 2 TV. Rest assured, I received the Emal of cofirmacion. (Delete)
At the NEXT day I found that I had canceled 1 but I was billed 1
try to reclaim but they sent me another mail saying it could not cancel, the strange thing was that I take away 1.
After a week they told me finalmene good that I will accept the return and repayment of money,
At that moment my box already had in Colombia South America and expect it back, I was paying for the nationalization of $ 350.oo.. Amazon told me I had to regrezarlo qe EU which would cost the same.
Absurd incredible but true.
I am very sad and economic problems muhos to pay my Visa.card.
Good luck and genius
Great quality, February 3, 2010
By G. Caetano (Chicago IL USA)
Sorry to see this unit no longer available from sony style but it was available at amazon. Easy setup and great quality in the unit and picture
Best TV period, January 17, 2010
By Mutual Information
Having made an extensive review of HDTV's including LEDs, I would say that overall the XBR9 series is the best. I read a ton of online reviews and went to the stores to compare first hand. The LEDs from Samsung and Sony are pretty good with very wide dynamic range. But the dynamic range was too high and at times the picture became difficult to watch. The blacks dominated most of the picture. Sure you can adjust this down but why pay the additional cost of LEDs when you have to adjust the contrast back to non-LED type levels? The 100,000:1 contrast on this set seemed perfect to my eyes. And the 240 Hz was smoothest of the hundreds of sets I compared. A comparison that was easy to make since the store ran a continuous demo. I'm not sure that live ATSC and cable transmissions would benefit from 240Hz since, they are compressed video and any motion shift accompanies pixelation and lossy information. Interpolation works best when the sample points are precise and lossless. So if you don't plan to do Bluray, maybe 120Hz is plenty. The picture quality is fantastic. Primetime and daytime NBC and CBS 1080i broadcasts are amazing to watch. The color variation is so accurately reproduced that it seems you are watching a moving painting instead of a picture. Leno Show, especially during Xmas, was amazingly vivid in color and detailed that I really didn't care about the content but was simply viewing the show as a spectacle or a museum piece.
If you do buy any Bravia TVs, I would advise to buy a Bravia theatre and bluray system since the Bravia Sync is great (though you may need to switch the little speakers for larger ones). Just put the disk in and the rest of the system turns on and switches over automatically. Saves at least 5 buttom pushes and the search for 2 remotes. You will love the system.
After months of research, happy at last!, January 11, 2010
By tasty donuts (Jersey City, NJ)
PROS: terrific picture, surprisingly good sound, sleek design, effective anti-glare coating, nifty PS3 integration
CONS: compromised off-angle color, no swivel stand, so-so internet functionality, no Wi-Fi
BACKGROUND: For months, I had been researching 40-46" flat panels to upgrade a 32" Panasonic LCD in the living room (now in the bedroom). Prior to that, I had a 34" Sony WEGA XBR beast (200 lbs) from my bachelorhood days that had to go due to space constraints in our apartment. The Panasonic was purchased in mid-'08 ($580) as a stop-gap until the higher-end LCD's came down in price. But then, our friends got us a PlayStation 3 and Blu-Ray discs for our birthdays, which meant that my wife could enjoy her favorite romantic comedies in full 1080p HD glory, and I could pick up video games again (specifically Call of Duty: MW2)... all of which meant moving up our new-TV timeline!
I decided to look at Sony models first, as I had helped a family member pick out a Sony 40W4100 earlier and it turned out to be an excellent TV. I compared them against the Samsung 6-series and 7-series LCD's as well as the Panasonic 42G10 plasma. Though plasma is still superior to LCD in many respects, the lack of flicker-free 24p support on the 42" Panasonics was a deal breaker. LED backlight technology was tempting, but the cost is still prohibitive and the edge-lit models have their issues. I also admit to having some brand bias - I have not had good first or second-hand experiences with Samsung products. Don't get me wrong, in many ways their TVs are comparable or even superior to Sony's, but I still see too many reports of random bugs and reliability issues for my tastes. Besides, I've always felt Samsung pictures to look "boosted" and a little fake in the showroom, and my attempts to calibrate them (admittedly by eye) were never that fruitful.
I found the Sony Z and XBR9 series to provide the balance of performance, features, and aesthetics I was looking for. (I considered the W5100, but wanted the newest Bravia Engine 3 which purportedly has improved processing.) The biggest obstacle was price - with so many 40" options under $1k, it was difficult to justify the premium. But I waited and found a terrific package deal on the 40XBR9 just before X-mas, netting me an unbelievable price on the set - cheaper than the Z or even W models!
PICTURE QUALITY: As expected from a top-of-the-line Sony, the picture quality is excellent, with rich but realistic color, smooth motion and reasonably dark blacks. If you turn off the fake dynamic contrast as you should, the blacks aren't quite to plasma or LED-backlit standards, but it's still very good (at least 10x better than our Panasonic); only when watching off-angle or in a completely darkened room do I notice the blacks being on the bright side, and when properly adjusted there's little or no "black crush," where anything dark in a scene automatically becomes black. (Samsungs are often adjusted to have black crush to look more contrasty in the showroom - don't fall for it, it's a trick!)
There have been complaints of clouding and sparkle artifacts with Sony LCDs, but I see absolutely no sparkling in my set, and if there's clouding (as all LCDs have to some degree) I really don't notice it. Cable programming like HBO HD looks great, PS3 games and Blu-Rays fantastic, and standard-def material isn't too bad either - very watchable, as long as you're not expecting miracles. The picture quality upgrade over the Sony W4100 isn't enormous, but it is noticeable, with deeper, more accurate colors, smoother motion and fewer artifacts. Though the 240Hz MotionFlow still looks a little fake for my tastes, the Bravia Engine 3 is visibly improved over the older Bravia 2 engine. Even if you're not going to spring for an XBR, definitely try to get a model with Bravia Engine 3.
FAVORITE FEATURES: Hallelujah, the screen has an anti-glare matte finish instead of the dreaded gloss on so many Samsungs, so glare is really well-controlled - we have no problem viewing with lots of daylight flooding in from a side window. The TV boots up quickly, with picture coming up normally within several seconds, and very little delay acquiring signals or switching resolutions. The PlayStation 3 integration is pretty neat - turn the PS3 on, and the TV automatically turns on; if it's already on, it switches to the right input. Once on, you can navigate the PS3 menu and control video playback through the TV's remote control. When you turn the PS3 off, the TV returns to your previous input. Fully customizable input labels are a nice touch that every TV should include. The side-mounted input jacks seemed odd to me at first, but they actually work really well - they are sufficiently concelead but allow a shallower wall mount as well as easier access. The internet widgets are mostly curiosities, but YouTube worked great, and Netflix/Amazon streaming are useful if imperfect (more on this later).
SOUND QUALITY: Most importantly to us (as we don't have a home theater), the sound from the built-in speakers is really excellent. It's reasonably full, with a natural midrange timbre and intelligible dialog. There are 4 speakers - a pair of down-firing woofers and side/back-firing tweeters - which fill out the sound nicely, as long as the TV is placed near a boundary like a back wall (it probably won't work as well in the middle of a room). It's not quite as nice as the sound on my gargantuan old WEGA tube TV, and it won't replace a home theater, but unlike so many Samsungs I've heard it's eminently usable for everyday TV or casual movie viewing.
DESIGN: The TV looks great - extremely sleek and streamlined, with a super thin bezel that my wife really likes. It doesn't have the imposing high-tech look of some previous XBR sets with the floating glass design, instead opting for a minimalist design with hidden speakers. We have it sitting on a 16" deep Elfa wall unit and it's very attractive without calling too much attention to itself. For the first few weeks, I was somewhat alarmed at how quickly the glossy black bezel attracted dust (I was wiping it down every other day), but thankfully this has mostly gone away - probably just some manufacturing residue holding a static charge or something. (FYI, the edge trim on ours is a darker charcoal-gray color, rather than the lighter silver I've seen on some earlier showroom models.)
CONS: my biggest pet peeve is the limited viewing angles of the LCD panel. If you drift even a few degrees off dead center, colors will fade rapidly, particularly reds. More than 45 degrees off axis and the picture is quite washed-out - the backlight bleed off-axis isn't as bad as our 32" Panasonic, but the Panasonic's IPS panel does a better job maintaining color fidelity. If you have lots of family and friends that like to watch movies together, or do a lot of viewing off to the sides, plasma is still the way to go. The internet functionality, while potentially useful, feels a little immature. Navigating through the interface is limited and sluggish, and some of the internet widgets are so slow as to be barely usable. I only tested Netflix streaming briefly and it did stutter at times, though a recent software update supposedly mitigates this. I still intend to use it, but for best quality, I'll rent the Blu-Ray. I also get the nagging feeling that the menus are a tad more sluggish than on the non-internet-capable W4100 - probably just extra overhead from the more bloated system software.
A couple more nits: Wi-Fi really should have been included, and it would have been nice if Sony included a SD card slot for photo/movie viewing, though the limited video codec support makes the latter rather moot. And I really wish the stand swivelled, particularly given the limited viewing angles.
In the end though, these gripes are fairly minor, and in a few weeks of ownership haven't detracted from our overall enjoyment of the set.
Incidentally, 40" is the perfect size for our living room (12' x 16' or so) - the 9' viewing distance is comfortable and easy on the eyes (my wife says she is squinting a lot less). For a more cinematic experience, or for a lot of game playing, a 46" is a better fit for this distance, but we specifically didn't want the room to become a theater.
CONCLUSION: All in all, I'm extremely happy with the 40XBR9! If I were to be really strict, I would probably have to dock a star here and there for the aforementioned cons, but given all the other 4 and 5-star reviews for TVs that I feel are inferior, I'm taking the liberty of grade-curving it up. Highly recommended!
UPDATE (1/31/10): I should probably mention that as cited in the CNET review, the XBR9 does suffer from some slight backlight uniformity issues. On a completely dark picture, patches of the screen will be slightly lighter than others. On my particular set it's only really noticeable in the top left corner against a black screen. Also, when using a HDMI splitter and my DVR in 720p output mode, the Sony was a bit finicky locking onto the signal and displayed an "unsupported signal" error (my Panasonic had no issues). However given that HDMI splitting can be rather marginal in and of itself, I don't consider it a major problem. (Switching the DVR to 1080i, which is a better setting for a 1080p TV anyway, was an easy workaround.)
PICTURE SETTINGS: Here is my calibration by eye, using test patterns on the PS3 and a blue filter. For Blu-Ray movies, I use the theater mode.
Picture mode: Custom
Backlight: 4 (theater: 3)
Picture: 85
Brightness: 50
Color: 55 (theater: 58)
Hue: G2
Sharpness: Min
Color Temp: Neutral (theater: Warm 2)
Cinemotion: Off
For TV viewing, my settings are (somewhat arbitrarily) slightly different
Picture mode: Standard
Backlight: 5
Color: 49
Cinemotion: Auto 1
All other features (noise reduction, black corrector, etc.) are always OFF. For the most accurate picture, don't use that stuff!
Motionflow is set to OFF except for some video material such as sports which can benefit from it. For film-based material I still find the motion interpolation rather unnatural in distracting.
Currently I am using some power saving features to be a little more green; however for the most accurate picture they should be set to OFF.
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