I just received this TV from Amazon 2 days ago, so my opinions are based on first impressions...

This actually the first Sony HDTV I've owned. I have a 32" Sharp LCD from 2005 (which is still a great TV) and I owned a 40" Samsung LCD from 2006 which recently died. This is my first 1080p television. As with most of these sets, you will need to make adjustments for a while to get things just the way you like. I spent a couple of hours fine tuning the picture settings on this set and wow! As far as television viewing, SD picture quality is so-so which i have come to expect. Combine that with my cable company's poor signal compression level and there are just certain channels that make you turn your head away. HD channels are another story. This is where this TV shines. Channels like Discovery and HD Theater pop off the screem, almost Blu Ray quality. Audio quality is not the best, but as i believe someone else mentioned, if you're investing in a set like this, chances are you're going to have a 5.1 or 7.1 setup to go with it, which i do, so the onboard speakers arent an issue...

As far as Blu Ray viewing, I have only thrown in a couple of discs to see how this set handles them. I fed my PS3 "Baraka" and what i had intended to be a 5 minute PQ test ended up lasting about 40 minutes. It's that amazing. Watching a particular scene in "Quantum of Solace" i was completely floored (The airplane chase sequence) With the motionflow and cinema settings fine tuned, the landscape in particular during this sequence almost looked 3-D!

One of the major marketing points for this set are it's "Eco-friendly" tools, many of which i've disabled. The motion sensor that sits in the middle of the speaker grille is useless to me because my center channel speaker blocks it. I do like that fact that there's a "kill switch" on the side of the set that cuts all power consumption. When my wife and I travel we usually unplug our appliances so having this should keep me from having to get behind the TV stand and unplug the set amongst other things.

Additionally as others have mentioned, I would have preferred that Sony placed more of the HDMI outputs on the back of the set as opposed to the side. This is a minor inconvenience that can be solved with right-angle HDMI cables or adapters...Get more detail about Sony BRAVIA VE5-Series KDL-46VE5 46-Inch 1080p 120Hz Eco-friendly LCD HDTV.

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