I really appreciate the fact that you are an ardent fan of Sony. To be frank, im a big fan of Sony. All my AV products right from my portable CD player of yesteryears to my Car audio, to my 29inch TV, to my HDMI DVD player and my hi fi music system. Only my LCD and my Home Theater are different.
Frankly speaking the difference between these two brand of LCD's like in the eyes of the behold. The specs may be varied and huge but ultimately your viewing experience decides.
I have looked at Sony V and W series along with the 5 and 6 series of Samsung LCD's with the HD content and more or less similar settings and found that Samsung was sharp and crisp. Also the most important factor in deciding on a LCD, the Black and White levels were superb on the A550.
The contrast ratio's mentioned by the manufacturer is the dynamic contrast and not the actual one. No manufacturer gives the actual contrast ratio. But i think for a 32inch LCD, dynamic contrast ratio from 15K-20K will be fine.
By the way what is your LCD model? Also do you get the slight haziness in the picture with DTH connection?
i'm having a KLV26T400A. I'm living in an apartment, and my room isnt big, so had no option to go for a bigger LCD. By the way, whats the use of buying a full HD tv when I'm not even using Blu-Ray, or any high def content so to speak! (An hd ready tv will work just fine for me till the turn of the next decade or so!
) I have LG DV388 dvd player, and I'm using a JAE HDMI cable version 1.3b, so that helps me upscale to around 1080p. (Although I'm not sure if its actually true 1080p! I mean nothing can upscale a 576i resolution to 1080p, can it? Thats like asking a VGA pic to be upscaled to a megapixel pic!
)
i tested samsung series 4, 26", and all of sony's 26" models (both S series and series T). the samsung models have a wide color range and i think the color pattern was really good and sony's red wasnt as good as samsung's. but apart from that all other colors just glued me to sony. I'll tell you something, green was never my favourite color, but after seeing the "nearly pure" green of sony, i think i am going "green"!
the green is truly awesome on sony. apart from that, the sharpness, the backlight and the contrast features, especially the darkness was far far better on sony. (here's how i did it, i paused both tv sets to a particular frame of the video, and reduced the color levels of both tvs to zero. now i compared the darkest and the brightest spots. i repeated this 5 or 6 times for different frames to check the "actual" contrast ratio. in all cases i found sony to be a better performer, both in black and brightness levels.) i used a dvd of seabiscuit and a dvd of casino royale to test both the LCDs. the only thing that got me into a dilemma was the fact that samsung had awesome looks, and its remote and connectivity features were better. plus the dealer was a little bit pushy in terms of samsung i dunno why, maybe bcoz he had a better commission or something.
however, after deep thoughts i finally narrowed down to sony.
I finally went for series T as it had exactly the same panel contrast ratio as the S-series, and exactly the same Bravia 2 engine, so really didnt matter. as far as the connectivity is concerned I'm happy with just one HDMI option coz that helps me connect my LCD to my DVD player. I also use a component cable to connect my DTH STB to my LCD. and considering the fact that we might have 1080i (thats the max resolution of DTH transmission anywhere, my component cable will do me the trick!) so one HDMI port works just fine for me. plus I have a Philips 5.1 HTS, which helps get a decent amplification (although I am considering buying an AVR in the future).
i play full dvds (4.5 gb) most of the time and the performance i get out of my LCD is breathtaking. seriously speaking, i couldnt have asked for anything better.
finally, i am having Big TV DTH. i went for that and not tata sky bcoz it had the component cable connectivity unlike tata sky. so it offers "marginally" better images!
to counter the haziness i have increased the sharpness of my LCD for DTH and have decreased it to around 5/100 for HDMI. that works just fine for me.
all in all, i'm a very very satisfied sony customer. (btw, i previously had a samsung CRT tv as well as a Samsung monitor, so i'm not completely alien to samsung.)
