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Dave Butler

That particular model is beloved by many videophiles, and with good reason—it looks fabulous. One big reason for this is its deep, inky black level, which has never been equaled by any consumer-grade flat panel other than the late, great Pioneer Kuro plasma. LCD TVs with LED backlighting or edgelighting can achieve a comparable black level when displaying a flat black field, and the few with LED backlighting can get pretty close on real program material, but they have other problems, such as halos around bright objects on a dark background.

Otherwise, many modern flat panels, especially high-end models, can hold their own in terms of color accuracy and resolution—heck, the KD-34XBR960 has a horizontal resolution of "only" 1400 lines, not 1920 as in most current flat panels. Granted, LCDs exhibit motion blur, and the fix of frame interpolation causes the dreaded "soap-opera effect," but plasmas have no such problems to begin with.

Also, the Sony can only accept 720p and 1080i high-def signals, and it displays everything at 1080i, so interlace artifacts might intrude, and it can't avoid 3:2 pulldown on 24fps movies, making this content appear somewhat jerky. Finally, its screen measures only 34 inches diagonally, which is too small to be considered a true home-theater display, though smaller screens do tend to hide any problems in the picture. And at nearly 200 pounds, I sure wouldn't want to lift it into place!

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