SO glad I waited a while to write this review...

Author's Rating:

Pros: Good picture, good sound quality.

Cons: The bulb is absolute CRAP. AVOID this model.

The Bottom Line: 

Bet you didn't bargain on buying a replacement bulb well before the promised "8,000 hours of life" were up. I didn't. MAJOR manufacturer misrepresentation.

Author's Review
Update: There are some questions answered in the "Comments", should you wish to read further. Thanks.


About 14 months ago, when our RCA 36 inch home theater Gigantor tube (circa 1992) finally bit the dust, it was time to go TV shopping.

Plasma, DLP, HD...welcome to the new world. We didn't know anything about this stuff. We also didn't buy right away, because we tried to do some homework. This wasn't a $99 throwaway 19 inch we were looking for, but the main TV for the house. One we were going to step into for the first time regarding TVs.

Paid for a subscription to Consumer Reports, did extensive research online, asked friends, dealt with salesmen in all sorts of retailers, from the high-end "specialty" type, to department stores with an electronics department, to the big box guys. We ended up buying this from one of the big ones that went out of business earlier this year. We were torn between a Sharp model and the Sony WEGA, and our trust in the Sony name (plus an in-store sale which made this about 50 bucks cheaper than the Sharp at the time) sealed the deal.

It was pretty funny getting the old RCA monster out of the house..huffing, puffing, grunting, sweating and groaning..and then bringing in the new one with little more than 2 fingers.

Setup was easy. Picture was good. Not as crisp as in the store, but with some fooling around with the settings on the remote, we did well. When we got rid of Comcast and went with DirecTV, THEN we got the picture as it was meant to be seen.

It's clear, it's crisp. I have no complaints about the picture, whatsoever. We have it in the corner of an 18x18 room, so there's really no bad viewing angle or blind spots, with the way our furniture is set up. You can sit anywhere on the sectional or on the floor or stand anywhere in the room and see it fine.

WELL. Guess what. About a week ago, my husband tells me that "it's time for a new bulb."

What? Wait..this thing isn't that old. The manufacturer said 8,000 hours is what the bulb's life is.

Well, guess what. A search on the internet shows that, surprise, surprise, the bulb life claims were in many cases overestimated, or outright "bee-ess".

I didn't think I'd have to buy another bulb for at LEAST another year and a half, and in pricing these things online, it appears I'll get raked over the coals for about $150. For what I paid for this thing, I really wasn't expecting to get hammered for a bulb replacement so soon.

The only fortunate part is that my husband says it "should" be easy to replace; the manual makes it look that way. However, in reading some other people's problems with it online, they find that they're having to call in TV repairmen, which is adding about another 300 bucks to get the bulb replaced.

Here, stupid me thought that with the old-style tube TVs going the way of the dinosaur, that TV repairmen would be going out of business. Apparently not.

Sound is great. Picture quality hasn't started deteriorating..yet, but it is EXTREMELY annoying and obnoxious that every time I turn the *insert profanity of your choice here* set on, that message comes up about the bulb.

Had I written this review prior to a week ago, I would've praised this thing up and down. I would've told you that the only part I have trouble with is switching over to DVD, because you have to push the button a whole bunch of times to go through Video 1, Video 2, etc channels to get to where you can actually put your DVD on and watch it. I was going to tell you that adding a surround sound to this thing made it seem like the people on TV were in the room with you and that I'd put this model against any out there and bet the WEGA would win.

Well..it seems the WEGA is going to win more money out of me way too soon.

Want a little irony? My father bought the Sharp within 2 weeks of us getting the "superior brand."

...Guess who's NOT getting messages on the screen that the bulb will need replacement. Guess who watches a whole lot more TV than we do. Guess whose TV picture is pretty awesome, even though he's still got cable?

Yeah.

Thanks, Sony, for contributing to the "planned obsolence" in your products and in trying to milk people who didn't go the cheapest route possible and chose you based on your past reputation and good products, for this, as far as I'm concerned, defective bulb crap.

With as many complaints as you find online. as far as I'm concerned, Sony should do a recall on the bulbs. They didn't live up to their claim, and that claim was part of what sold the TV.

Maybe a class-action suit will happen. There are enough sharks in suits out there, and there are enough annoyed people like me, if you pick a search engine of your choice to learn more.

Frustrated doesn't even begin to cover it. The only good thing is that I'll be buying the bulb through Amazon's "Sony Store"..which, guess what, has the same bulb cheaper than on SONY DOT COM. Yes, they're selling the SAME THING for different prices. If you still believe in the Sony name, believe you'll get hosed for about $25 more if you buy it "direct" and "cut out the middleman".

Yeah, right. They get you coming and going. I would rather take a chance on an unknown brand and have saved about half the cost of the TV had I known this was going to happen. It might seem minor, but over the life of a TV, if I'm dropping $150 every year and change, forget it. This was WELL beyond what I expected to pay for a TV, and I feel like a jerk.