Sony XBR tube televisions have long been the reference standard for the highest-performance sets widely available to consumers. Today, as HDTV sales boom and digital television sets have gotten thinner than Paris Hilton turned sideways, the Sony line of WEGA XBR tube HDTV sets still sets an impressive standard for NTSC and HDTV performance at a very fair price. I recently designed a theater for my bedroom, which is centered in a built-in cabinet much like home theater systems installed in living rooms through the country. I had the width for a 42-inch plasma and I shopped for such a set voraciously. However, I found that I wasn’t impressed with the contrast and black levels of those sets, especially in imperfect environments where ambient light could seep in to the room. The plasmas looked washed out and dull. At the time (just a few months ago), LCD sets showed incredible promise and, at ...

The KV-36XBR450 is a 36-inch direct-view TV from Sony, part of the FD Trinitron Wega series that features an extremely flat tube and a number of interesting enhancements. These include “DRC,” or “Digital Reality Creation,” which is basically a horizontal and vertical line doubler, “Cinemotion,” which allows automatic detection of film content and application of a reverse 3/2 pulldown, “Twin View,” which allows you to view two different inputs side by side, 16:9 enhancement for widescreen-enhanced sources, velocity modulation, which enhances vertical line definition, and component 480p, 480i and HD1080i and S-Video inputs. Installation and Setup The KV-360XBR450 is fitted with a helpful series of inputs. These include the standard VHF/UHF antenna/cable coax input and a converter output allowing the TV to be switched between scrambled and unscrambled cable channels without a splitter (in through VHF/UHF in, out of “to converter” to ...

Could the Sony Trinitron 36XBR200 WEGA (pronounced vega) be the last great television set? Mitsubishi is out of the game and nearly all of the high-end TV sets on the market are HDTV-ready and formatted in a 16x9 ratio. For future use with DTV, the 16x9 is great. For now, you either stretch the picture or watch a smaller video image on a larger screen. The XBR 200 comes with all of the latest picture enhancements a high-end user could want in a set that is relevant to a modern theater. The most important feature is the Sony WEGA flat screen technology. Unlike traditional sets, the WEGAs are not curved at all, which provides a very crisp picture and reduces the effects of glare in a very bright room like my own. At just under 25 inches deep, the WEGA design ...

HDTV (High Definition Television) first went public about three years ago. There were very few TVs available then that were compatible with High Def, and even fewer programs that one could watch in HD. Has anything changed? When the electronics companies such as Mitsubishi, Philips, Hitachi and Toshiba announced their first HDTV products, they were all of the rear-projection big-screen variety, between 50 and 70 inches. Sony, always happy to buck any trend, introduced the KW-34HD1. At the time, the Sony was the only direct view HD set available. The Sony KW-34HD1 sells for $6,999 (it was $8,999 when it was introduced). It utilizes Sony’s now famous WEGA flat screen picture tube. The image size is 34-inch diagonal, and the aspect ratio is the HD standard 16:9. The KW-34HD1 is a true HDTV set, as opposed to "HD compatible," which does ...