An excellent work by Sony for viewing your HD movies.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

The “Go Green” feature where the TV turns off if nobody’s around. You can also switch off the display and listen to the audio. Great picture quality, good representation of the bright areas, plenty of HDMI ports (4) two component-video and PC input.

Thumbs Down:

Expensive, the stand doesn’t swivel, the darks don’t look as it should, they look bluish.

Inside the Trunk:

Remote control – Infrared (Sony RM-YD028), Stand included.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

46’ inch, 1920 x 1080 Full HD Resolution, Panel without stand – 44.1 in x 4.2 in x 28.5 in x 50.9 lbs, Panel with stand – 44.1 in x 12.7 in x 30.4 in x 57.3 lbs, Image Aspect Ratio 16:9, Image Contrast Ratio 4500:1, Dynamic Contrast Ratio 100000:1, Viewing Angle 178 degrees, Analog TV Tuner NTSC, Video Interface HDMI, S-Video, Component, Composite, Speakers 20 Watts

Connector Type
3 x Audio line-in (RCA phono x 2) – Rear, 2 x Audio line-in (RCA phono x 2) – Side, 1 x Audio line-out (RCA phono x 2) – Rear, 2 x Component video input (RCA phono x 3) – Rear, 1 x Composite video input (RCA phono) – Side, 1 x Digital audio output (optical) (TOSLINK) – Rear, 1 x S-Video input ( 4 pin mini-DIN ) – Side, 1 x USB 2.0 (4 pin USB Type A) – Side, 1 x VGA input (15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15) – Side, 3 x HDMI (19 pin HDMI Type A) – Side, 1 x HDMI (19 pin HDMI Type A) – Rear, 1 x Audio line-in (Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm) – Side, 1 x USB – Rear

Remote control – Infrared, Width 52.8 in, Depth 9 in, Height 33.2 in

Razzle Dazzle:

Sony KDL-46VE5 is a conservative and typical when it comes to looks. There are silver speakers in the bottom and the screen of the panel is surrounded by black borders. Below the LCD TV is a now swiveling stand, which goes well with the tone of the panel. The back panel of the LCD TV has a bunch of audio jacks (the red and white ones) and has a single HDMI port. On the sides it has the red white and yellow jacks for audio and video input, three HDMI ports, and one VGA port for computer connectivity. A USB port is also available for photos and music.

Inside Dope:

Everyone’s going green, some are going because they care and some are doing it to please people. And Sony is doing its two bits to go green too!

Sony KDL-46VE5 has a presence sensor which automatically switches off the panel if no one is watching it. Now don’t get all freaked out thinking that someone is invading your privacy. The panel has a motion detector below the panel and if it doesn’t feel anything moving in front of it for a long time, it gets switched off. The motion detector can detect up to ten feet and if no motion has been detected for a specified time (you can set it to 5, 30 or 60 minutes) the TV goes blank but the sound remains on. Blank TV will cut the power consumption to almost half.

After 30 minutes it detects for motion again and if no motion is detected then the TV is switched off completely. The presence sensor gives a warning when the TV is about to be switched off. It says “The TV is about to turn off” and moving your body in front of the screen will remove the warning and the panel wont go into hibernation. But this can be a pain in the neck for the five minute setting where in the panel will get shut down quickly if it doesn’t detect motion for five minutes. The presence sensor will struggle in detection where there is low light.

There is a setting where in you can turn off the picture and leave the sound on. This can be use full if you are listening to music or if you in the kitchen and you just want to hear the audio from the TV. You save power by switching off the display. There is also a room lighting sensor which acts according to the light of the room. The LCD brightens up or dims itself according to the room lighting.

Sony KDL-46VE5 is a lot similar to the 40 inch Sony KDL-40VE5 and 52-inch Sony KDL-52VE5. All three panel share similar features and size of the panel is the only real difference.

The remote of the LCD is good and there not a lot of buttons so you won’t get confused. The remote is small and has less buttons as compared to the other LCDs where a new user might get confused.

The are plenty of controls for user to modify, for example, the Picture menu brings up options of backlight, picture, brightness, color, hue, color temperature, sharpness, noise reduction, adv. Color enhancer, gamma, clear white, live color,

The TV has a good picture quality, watching HD content on this Full HD panel is a pleasure. We also tested the panel for standard definition content and it was quite good. We weren’t happy with the dark areas, they weren’t as dark as they should be and appeared bluish. The saturation could have been better.

Finally the TV was plugged through PC the display was good and it delivered to our expectations, the vertical resolution could have been better, and this panel was not as good as Sony XBR9 in PC connectivity.

Nitty Gritty:

Overall we were happy with the performance of this panel. The LCD TV is not that good in the looks design and there is nothing out of the box done to make this LCD look attractive. We were happy with the power saving options like presence sensor and the feature to turn off the display and only listen to the sound when required. This LCD would make a good buy.

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