Best Buy HDTVs Reviews

Sony BRAVIA XBR Series KDL-40XBR9

I will admit up front that I am a complete HDTV newbie. I hung on to a 20 year old, 22 inch CRT color “monitor television” for far too long, in part because I do not watch much television programming (a bit of baseball, PBS, occaisional Law & Order reruns, that sort of thing) and in part because the whole HDTV techno nerd thing was too intimidating. After much online research and a few surreptitious visits to Big Box electronics stores, I finally settled on the 40XBR9 and bought it from an Amazon seller — and could not be more pleased with my selection. The picture quality is simply riveting. The menus are reasonably user friendly and I have not found it all that difficult to calibrate for optimum results in a softly lighted room. With minor tweaking, the factory defaults work well for most cable television programming. I used the CNET suggested calibration for movies on the 52XBR9, and it works very well on this 40 inch unit.

This is a beautiful television. The bezel is as slim as they come and is an unadorned, moderately glossy black. While it is not a small television, it is not too overbearing for a medium sized bedroom or office. Considering its slender bezel, and the fact that there are no visible speakers, the sound is more than adequate for watching most TV programming. I purchased a ZVOX 525 sound base and an OPPO blu ray player to go with it. I have yet to watch a blu ray disc, but upscaled DVDs like Ratatouille and Wall-E are incredibly crisp, vivid and detailed, with wonderfully natural color, deep, pure blacks and brilliant whites and grey tones. With sound from the ZVOX, this is a wonderful way to enjoy movies in a moderate sized room without an enormous investment of time and money and without a lot of wiring and equipment monopolizing the space.

The one down side is that the XBR9 is not very forgiving of poor quality source material. My local cable provider still offers a limited selection of true HD content. SD television does not fare well on this set, although with some tweaks you can get acceptable picture quality — ratchet down the sharpness so the poor resolution is not obvious, use a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than ‘stretch’ the image to fill the screen, so the perspective is not distorted, turn down the brightness and restrict the color range to avoid the exaggerated and artificial hues that seem to be part and parcel of SD TV, and you get a reasonable picture on par with a decent CRT. But once you’ve seen good quality 16:9 HDTV content, you will be somewhat disappointed with SD sources.

This competes head to head with the high end LCD and “LED” TVs from Samsung. I think it beats them for at least two reasons. First, the Samsung models have a very glossy, “wet look” screen, which is really a distraction. Under some conditions, it gives the picture more “pop,” but except in a darkened room, the glare problem is insurmountable. Second, the comparable Samsung televisions have wider and more obtrusive bezels with a brilliant piano black finish, which is made even more garish by Samsung’s somewhat ludicrous red “Touch of Color” gimmickry. The Samsung design is like over the top prom wear. The 40XBR9 is the electronics version of the perfect, simple and refined little black dress.

Prices seem to fluctuate wildly — the prices quoted on the date of this review are about 15% higher than they were when I made my purchase ten days ago. You may want to keep an eye on the market and catch the next wave of “sales.” But you won’t buy this TV because it is an inexpensive “bargain” — you may buy it because dollar for dollar, it will give you the most pleasure during the years it will be in service.

TWO MONTHS LATER: Having now had the opportunity to use my Sony 40XBR9 to watch post-season baseball in HD, as well as a number of blu-ray discs, I remain as pleased with my purchase as ever. This has transformed the way we watch movies and cable programming at home. I added a Harmony One remote to the system to avoid the remote control shuffle required to operate the blu-ray player, Zvox, cable box and Sony in tandem. It all works nicely and with a minimum of effort.

Reviewed by : High style and high performance,  Oct 8, 2009