Sony BRAVIA KDL-26S2000 26 in. HDTV TV

The first thing I would like to state about televisions is that when thinking about purchasing one, you should visit your local retailer. There you will be able to see for yourself each TV and decide which one you think looks the best. Having said that, quality opinions can help make a final decision easier, especially if one decides to buy online.

I am not going to go into the specific details of how many pixels there are, the native resolution, what inputs there are, because for that info there is already too many sites where you can find it. Instead, I will decribe what I think of the TV, how it has worked, or not worked, for my needs, and why I think it is a great buy.

So I decided on an LCD TV because the location I wanted it in warranted a wall mount, and last time I check you can't wall mount a CRT without some major supports:) This was my first purchase of an HD Built-in TV, I have a CRT HD-Ready in my basement, so I decided to go into my major retailer to take a look at what they had. The first thing to figure out is what size TV you need, which can be found out with some research online. My choice was for a 26", which seems to be a very common LCD size, the next is 37" and then gets bigger from there.

The choices for 26" TV's was pretty broad but you can even narrow it down when you decide on HD Built-in, which YOU SHOULD GET. Yes, the caps were needed, because buying an HD-Ready (not built-in) TV nowadays just doesn't make sense to me. Sure, one can say that you can save some money because you have a cable box at home which works as a decoder anyway, or, I don't need HD yet because I don't subscribe to it, aren't very good reasons. You will not save that much money and you will regret it later. So please, get one that has HD capabilities built-in.

Ok, so now you narrowed it down to a 26" HD Built-in LCD TV. From what I found from the TV's available at the store, Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Zenith, Viewsonic, and maybe some others, Sony and Sharp were by far the best in picture quality. So that left me with 4 options, the XBR series from Sony, which fetches about a $500 premium from the Bravia line, and 2 Sharp models, which seemed the same except for external appearance. As far as I could tell, the Bravia looked just as good as the XBR so that narrowed it down to 3, and since the 2 Sharp TV's were basically the same I know had a choice of 2.

From this point, the sales person talked me into the Sony because he said they had a better picture and, well, it's a Sony. While I am very happy with the TV I am going to exchange it for the Sharp, which I will explain in the next paragraph. Quickly I will talk about the digital tuner capabilities of the TV. In my city I am subscribed to the basic lineup of channels from Comcast cable, this is the super basic package with only local and community channels and have it connected directly to the TV. I hooked up the TV and did a digital and analog scan, the digital takes upward of an hour so expect a wait. Once complete I had most of the channels but was missing many of the HD local channels. It turns out they were there, my TV just was not letting me add them to the channels so I have to manually tune them in. So to answer some confusing questions out there, yes, you CAN receive HD broadcasting over your cable feed.

I have babbled a little bit so I will get on to the bits that annoy me and the bbits that I am in awe with.

The picture is AMAZING! If you have not seen HD than you are seriously missing out. WOW. It really is sharp and you really can see all kinds of details that you normally would see.

The menu system is very user friendly and intuitive, the only probably I have run into is the fact that I cannot add a digital channel that was not found on the scan. This is a problem because I cannot name the channel so I have some weird channels that I need to get used to, like 75.1, 73.2, etc..

The Sony is also VESA compatible with wall mount systems so most will fit with no problems. I bought the OmniMount cantilever system that works great, the only slight gripe I have is that the outputs and inputs of the TV are a little cramped when the mount is mounted to the back of the TV. You can get things in there, but I hope you have small fingers.

So, why am I going to exchange a great TV? Because I HATE, yes HATE, cable boxes. I am so used to not having big ugly boxes, DVR's, etc., that once I started using the Sony I realized that I wanted a TV with a CableCard slot. I want the capability to tune in digital channels from my cable provider, when I subscribe to said channels, without having to have a big, ugly box on my shelf.

Final read:
Buy this TV if you do not, and will not, be subscribing to cable TV and get your HD content Over The Air. Or if you have it near your entertainment center where you can hide said ugliness.

Don't buy this TV if you do not have anywhere to store your cable box for a nice clean install.