Sony Bravia KDL-46W5810 46in LCD TV The W5810 range represents Sony’s first move into the Freesat market, allowing you to sample the delights of true HD broadcasting without coughing up any extra cash for a Blu-ray player or Sky HD subscription. Sony Bravia KDL-46W5810 Sony’s Bravia KDL-46W5810 – one of the company’s first Freesat tellies As the name implies …
Shame you couldn't check out some other HD channels as word on the street has it that BBC freesat HD is well below the HD standard you get with sky or virgin - more akin to DVD quality rather than blue ray quality. I would have thought a set of this size should easily show up the difference.
Freeview HD is just about to launch. Unless you live in the real sticks, why on earth would anyone go and buy a Freesat TV now ? i.e. who wants a dish on their house if they don't need one and who wants to invest in a system that, due to very low takeup compared to terrestrial broadcast, is likely to become obsolete ?
Buy a tv which has a tuner and speakers inside. Then plug in your av receiver, rendering speakers redundant. Next plug in your PVR, rendering the tuner redundant. And so on. Someone please start making TVs that are just screens so we don't have to pay extra for stuff we'll never use.
so here goes
1) "complicated disjointed menus? try using the menu notthe shortcuts, really complicated, press "home" and scroll over to settings.....alll the options you could want...just like you rave about with the PS3 in fact!!
2) a review where the first thing you did was put it on Vivid? not everyone in the world is meant to look like Dale Winton...being a pale northerner I expect the other pale northerners on Corrie to look ....well pale (except david platt he seems to glow these days)
3) @pootle... BBC broadcasts are usually at a higher bit rate than Sky-I'll be honest Im not to sure about the HD broadcasts but I know thats the case with standard def.
I think that'll do for me... mines the one with anti psychotics in it ;-)
Why buy freesat kit when freeview HD is just around the corner ?
Because there will only ever be a few channels on freeview HD due to limited bandwidth. Freesat has hundreads of SD channels and room for dozens of HD ones.
Also Freesat HD kit is much more mature than the initial freeview HD stuff will be.
Yes, that would be precisely what's needed. For years I've been searching for TV-sets with buildt in satellite reciever. They are rare and the ones which had it were lacking important features like the freesat EPG.
@Obsolete Freeview HD will, just like Freeview never propperly work as it requires line of sight to the transmitter. Recieving Freeview is completely impossible where I live. Yet I can get Freesat with a low error rate.
Just because I can connect to external sources doesn't make the built in ones redundant. I would rather not have a box for tuner external to the TV. My next TV will get rid of the ugly HD Cable receiver I have as it'll be built in to the TV - use less power and make the living room that much more attractive.
I listen to the TV 95% of the time through my AV system. 95% because TV speakers will never match a decent setup for sound - but when I want to play on the console and my other half wants to listen to music we can. TV for console sound, stereo for music.
Maybe what you want to by is a monitor with a HDMI input to use as a display only, not a full fledged TV. In which case no TV on the market is going to not have 'redundant' features...
Vivid mode is really designed for in shops and under bright lights focussed on being eye catching rather than accurate. Were you testing in an office or in home conditions? Each to their own though.
As mentioned the "Options" menu is basically shortcuts. The main menu is the Xross Media Bar.
The Scene Select is a capability to have presets for particular usage types with settings that are pre-configured although they can be changed by the user. Settings are also unique to the input in use so inconsistent input devices can be compensated for.
Personally the only picture setting I feel the need to do on these sets is to change Sharpness to 0 although I suspect the reviewer will disagree given that they liked Vivid mode. I don't think edge enhancement is a good idea with digital pictures. Depending on the input I also normally turn down or off the noise reduction functions but they are less important.
This is seemingly just a W5500 with a Freesat Tuner built in. To me it's a simple choice - buy a TV with a tidy integral Satellite tuner at a hefty premium, or buy the same TV minus the Satellite tuner and buy an external dual tuner PVR for half the price difference. For most people, the second option is better, but for some the first is what they want.
Personally, I prefer the flexibility offered by an external tuner. My £180 Technisat HDFS has recently had the capability of recording to a USB stick added via an automatic upgrade and is getting new features frequently. Sony are unlikely to ever offer such upgrades to firmware. I have had a W5500 for 6 months, with no 'feature' upgrades.. i.e. no new widgets, no support for more video codecs via DLNA etc.
As for Freeview HD - if you live in a valley that can't see the main transmitter, you will only get a small subset of channels on Freeview from a retransmitter mast. I live in just such an area, and we've had the switchover... With limited bandwidth, what's the likelihood of HD services coming OTA?
I've been looking to upgrade my TV to one with freesat built in , so i can declutter my lounge and get rid of my stb. this looks like jsut the job. I'm assuming I'll still be able to use my AV homeplug adaptors (I'm currently using the devolo ones) to connect to broadband over the mains wiring and get BBC iPlayer?
Not 100% certain that this is exactly the same as my W5500 in LAN functionality, but there is currently no support for iPlayer on the TV. Only a very small number of widgets (the best of which is a poor RSS feed reader) exist on the TV. The main use my LAN connection gets is for viewing all my ripped films via DLNA, but even that is restricted to MPEG2 (i.e. a straight rip with no additional compression == big files). Your Homplugs should be suitable for any use such as this.
If you want a one box solution with iPlayer, I suggest you wait a few years! TV widget technology is in its infancy.
/Craig
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