Sony will produce a truly awesome LCD TV before long, and the 40-inch KDL-40Z4500 shows that it is thinking along the right lines, but has yet to hit on the perfect recipe for success.
The styling, despite a sparkly 'Midnight Sky' finish, is a slight letdown; the 'floating' clear-frame concept may have turned heads a few years ago, but it's starting to look a bit tired on the front of a chassis that is incongruously chunky by today's standards.
Features
The crowd-puller here is Sony's proprietary Motionflow 200Hz technology. This turbocharged scanning facility is designed to reduce blur on fast-moving images in order to render movies and sport more smoothly and without the judder that has plagued so many LCD screens in the past. It joins forces with the latest version of the Japanese giant's Bravia Engine processing, to put every one of these 1,920 x 1,080 pixels to best use.
Other notable entries on a mildly diverting spec sheet include a 'Picture Frame' mode that enables you to deploy your KDL-40Z4500 as a 40-inch, full HD photo display as well as a bog-standard, three top spec HDMI inputs, Ethernet for PC connection and a brace of Scarts.
Ease of use
Using the KDL-40Z4500 LCD TV is frustratingly inconsistent. In common with many new Sonys, it is equipped with the innovative XMB, enabling you to organise your entire (Sony-badged) AV system using one remote control.
So it's a shame, then, that the interface for the TV itself seems to have escaped from 2004, along with the cabinet styling, and the rather spidery text and rudimentary graphics that offer a perfunctory welcome to the various menus. It's adequate and perfectly functional.
In fact, if setting up the Philips Cinema 21:9 is like arriving at an expensive hotel with invisibly efficient porters, then installing this Sony is more like checking into a Travelodge.
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