Home > Consumer Reviews > SONY KDF70XBR950 70-Inch LCD Projection TV

I have an 8-year old 50 inch bigscreen that still puts on an exceptional picture. I had found a deal on a satellite receiver that could tune the local channels in HD and connect to the bigscreen with S-Video. I had decided that I would not upgrade until I found a 60 inch or larger with a better picture. I saw this Sony on display showing Discovery HD, and had to have it. Since I got it home, I have been glued to it watching anything available in HD.

The Set: It is an LCD-projection system using a very bright lamp to project thru the LCD and onto the screen. It never needs converging. It is not affected by speakers or magnets. It has seven inputs for sources such as a DVD player, satellite receiver, etc.. Four inputs (one on the front) accept S-Video or composit video plus two channels of encoded audio. There are two inputs for RGB component sources, and one DVI input for the highest grade connection. The internal tuner will tune any broadcast tv channel, analog or digital, and offers picture with picture(side-by-side) and can adjust the size of the two pictures to maximize one and minimize the other.

The picture: It's like standing at a window and looking at the world. Simply breathtaking. There are several modes to take less-than-HD sources and fill the screen. With movies on DVD, it's better than the picture in a movie theater. and DVD players are only 480I/P sources. A 1080I source provides the best picture.

The Sound: The internal sound system provides excellent sound with several modes. The Trusurround(tm) mode will provide a very good impersonation of Dolby 5.1 surround, minus the sub-woofer. I frequently hear sounds behind me and turn to realize the home theater system is OFF, and I am listening to the TV's sound. For most people, the onboard sound will be enough. For those that want all of the theater experience, you will probably want a home theater system. I have a Sony DAV-FC9 home theater system for full enjoyment of movies.

Other: This set weighs 225lbs in it's carton. Sony recommends no less than 4 people to move it and has provided some hand-holds for that purpose. It needs a sturdy base to sit on. Sony's base is overpriced, in my opinion. I found a nice base from a home theater collection at a furniture store. It has room for DVD recorders, satellite receivers, or the home theater receiver. The screen protector is a solid sheet of tempered glass about 3 inches larger than the screen. It makes the set a bit front heavy. Read the manual for more info (www.docs.sony.com/release/KDF70XBR950.pdf). The glass has a front-surface anti-glare coating to cut down on reflections. It should not be touched, except for gentle cleaning. If you are watching a dark program(outside scene at night) you may still get some reflections from light room objects, but not overwhelming.

To Sum it Up: I am very happy with this HDTV receiver. I still have not found a better picture on anything bigger than 60 inches. I apparently am not the only fan. I had to order it from a local store by placing a 20% deposit and wait for the next shipment. My one complaint, if that, is that with this sharp of a picture, you can see the flaws in lesser programming.

I have had this TV for two years now. No buyer's remorse what-so-ever. I still have not seen a better TV at this size, and I have looked at DLP, LCD-RP, LCD-directview, plasma, CRT, and also front projection. Five of my friends have gone out and bought this TV (or the 60-inch version) after seeing it in action at my house. I cannot say enough about how stunning the picture quality is.

The 60-inch version of this TV now uses LCoS instead of LCD, and I think it has higher resolution, so I may wish to upgrade if they ever come out with the 70-incher in LCoS.

I have heard two complaints about this TV in the HD forums. One of which is completely bogus. The other may be a concern.

1) The big sheet of plexiglass in front of the screen causes too much glare. This is the bogus complaint. If they had put a lenticular screen in front to cut down on glare, you would lose both brightness and viewing angle. Give me the ultra-bright, super-sharp, wide-angle-viewable screen any day and I'll do whatever else can be done to cut down on the glare.

2) The contrast drops off sharply at dark grey. Yes, LCDs have contrast problems below a certain brightness level. You will definitely see a sharp drop off in detail in darker areas of the screen when watching this TV. It is inherent to LCD. No way around it. In my opinion, there are at least as many drawbacks to the other technologies (DLP, Plasma, CRT).

Go get one of these before they are all gone!

I speny just under 8,000 USD for my KDF70XBR950 in August 05 and it recently started showing a blue squiggely line in the center - bottom of the tv. I had a repair tech come out and he told it had a bad optical assy and that I should contact Sony as there was a known issue with this part. I contacted Sony and they claim that while there is a known issue that "my particular issue" wasn't the specific issue covered by the extended warranty. Bottom line is they want $1,400 to repair it. So I am stuck with a peice of junk KDF70XBR950 that I paid more for then my car and Sony refuese to stand behind it. Buyers beware - Sony does not stand behind their products. I can buy a new 73 inch Mitsubschi for $3500 so why pay for the $1400 repair for a product that will just fail again....

There will never be another Sony product in my household!

...lamp life not so good. Ours lasted less than a year (average TV use-2 hours/day). Replacing the lamp is easy, but expensive ($185).

If you have the means to go to a store and see the picture quality of TVs to compare this model with other models, do it. I did and this TV has a much better picture than any of the TVs I have seen including plasma or LCD TVs that were a few thousand dollars more. And this is a big TV. I highly recommend it.