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Sony Bravia Z-Series KDL-40Z4100/B 40-Inch 1080p 120Hz LCD HDTV, Black
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List Price: $1,999.99
Our Price: Too low to display
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Batteries Included: 1
Binding: Electronics
Brand: Sony
Color: Black
Display Size: 40
EAN: 0027242736641
Feature: 16:9 Full HD 1080p Resolution (1920x1080p) LCD Panel
Label: Sony
Manufacturer: Sony
Model: KDL-40Z4100/B
Publisher: Sony
Release Date: 2008-06-01
Studio: Sony
Variation Description: Black
Warranty: 1 year warranty
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Features
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16:9 Full HD 1080p Resolution (1920x1080p) LCD Panel
Motionflow 120Hz; improves TV & DVD viewing
DMeX compatible; allows seamless feature upgrades
DLNA® Compliant - view photos from another room
HDMI x4, HD Component x2, PC Input
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Editorial Reviews:
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40" widescreen HDTV (16:9 aspect ratio) * high-gloss black finish * built-in digital (ATSC) and analog (NTSC) tuners for over-the-air TV broadcasts (antenna required) * built-in QAM cable TV tuner receives unscrambled programs without a set-top box (cable service required) * 1920 x 1080 pixels * 2 component video (accepts signals up to 1080p) *
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Receipt of 40" Sony Bravia Z series HDTV from Amazon.com
Comment: Order of a Sony 40" Bravia HDTV, Z series, was delivered in a timely manner. Product was delivered to home residense and unpacked to insure nothing was damaged enroute from shipper. Packing materials were removed by deliverer. Another successful order filled by Amazon.com.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best purchase.
Comment: I shopped online various websites, local stores and found the best price here. The company called ahead of time to arrange a time for delivery. Item shipped quickly and delivered to home with a breeze. Would recommend this company to anyone looking for quality and price. The BEST!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: great buy
Comment: Sony Z series 40" with excellent picture and sound. Colors sharp with HD service, both for movies and TV shows.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sony No Baloney
Comment: Being in the Cine-Media-Arts business all my life, I have come to demand much from my personal electronics. The Sony 4100Z LCD television has risen above all expectations. Sony has moved above the rest with their Z model. The package cannot be beat, if you want true natural colour, modern electronics, user friendly controls, good pricing, you cannot do better. Simply put, "Sony No Baloney".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Whoa! Nice picture!
Comment: I'm very happy with this purchase. I've read other owners' responses on various web sites, and I think that people don't realize the many issues that affect picture quality including inconsistent broadcasts and many picture settings.
The Sony Bravia KDL-40Z4100 comes with several picture modes: Standard, Vivid, Cinema, and Custom. Each of these can be customized with settings for contrast, brightness, color saturation, color temperature, backlight adjustment, noise reduction, and some advanced settings which amongst other things include options to use the wide gamut color space to take advantage of the 10-bit color. I recommend leaving all of these picture modes at the factory settings except the Custom mode which you can experiment with. Each mode has a Reset option so you can restore the factory defaults if you've mucked anything up.
The commentators at cnet.com and others pretty much parrot each other that the manufacturers deliberately deliver the TV's with gaudy color settings so that we morons will go gah-gah when we see them on the wall at a brightly lit Bestbuy. I think its a little more complex than that. In the case of the Sony Bravias, they are typically displayed in the Vivid mode to accommodate the brightly lit showrooms. However, even that picture mode is pretty good... in bright lighting. After all, the manufacturers want these things to look good on display, and they know people shelling out thousands of dollars for a set will tend to be very discriminating. I think the Sony engineers are a little smarter than the pundits give them credit for.
I purchased the "Digital Video Essentials: HD Basics" disk on Blu-ray to calibrate the picture. I carefully went through the explanations and the test patterns. However, I still get the best picture from the factory settings for the Standard picture mode. I've also tried a number of recommended settings downloaded from the Internet. Still, Standard picture mode is the best. My main criteria for judging the picture is how close it is to reality, and I have several Blu-rays, DVD's and some broadcast stuff that I know what they are supposed to look like.
I have been really appreciating seeing dark scenes clearly on the new KDL-40Z4100. Again, I'm using the default settings for contrast, brightness, and backlight. I know there is controversy about contrast ratios, but I can't imagine any better than deep black, bright clear white, and excellent detail in every shade in between.
Motion is also excellent. I watched ape-men fighting scenes and ballet-like spacecraft movements in 2001 A Space Odyssey on Blu-ray, a really fast action sequence in Casino Royale on HBO/HD, and a few Celtics games in HD on cable. All motion was completely smooth, and I saw zero artifacts. It has been quite a relief after seeing so much choppy motion on other sets in the showroom.
Now for the negatives: I bought a Sony Blu-ray player and a Sony Soundbar receiver/speaker system. There is a feature called Bravia Synch which is supposed to make Sony products more compatible with each other allowing you to turn things on and off with one button and a few other capabilities. I have meticulously gone through the manuals and tried various connection configurations, but I can't get the Bravia Synch to work--yet. This negative is somewhat offset by the fact that the remote is a universal remote that can easily be programmed to operate the other devices.
Another irritation is that I can't get closed captioning to work correctly. The options are Off, On, and On with Muting. Nothing works. I emailed Sony support, and to their credit they quickly responded, but the bad news is that you can't get closed captioning when using a cable set top box with an HDMI connection. Any closed captioning has to come from the STB itself. I got that to work, but it takes several steps through menus with the STB remote each time I want to turn closed captioning on or off. A minor nuisance.
However, there's more good stuff:
- 120 Hz
- 10-bit color; xvYCC; wide color gamut; deep color.
- Plug in a USB flash drive and listen to MP3's and view digital photos.
- Connect your laptop with an RGB cable and stereo audio connector.
- Optical digital connection for great digital sound.
- Really good programmable universal remote.
- Slim, modern design--best looking set on the wall.
BTW, Amazon has the best price for the KDL-40Z4100.
UPDATE 1/2/09: I've been reading other reviews about "sparkles" on the V-Series. There is a free software upgrade on sony.com that addresses that. Though I haven't experienced the so-called sparkles, I upgraded the software anyway. It's pretty easy. Just copy the file to a USB flash drive, plug it in to the TV, and follow simple instructions.
Also, in my review I mentioned using default factory settings for Standard picture mode. I now find myself more and more using the Vivid picture mode. Colors look really natural but a little brighter, and the contrast ratio is visibly better.
I am very discriminating and usually quite critical when it comes to consumer technologies. I wouldn't have written this rave review if this wasn't an amazing TV. I've looked closely at the pictures on many HDTV sets, and this one is really more advanced. I have nothing to gain in saying this except to tip off people that this is a really good set.
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