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I’ve waited long enough. For the last 3 years, I have been biting my fingernails waiting for the right time to toss out my 32″ inch 12-year old CRT and purchase a High-Definition TV without feeling like I got in too soon only to be quickly out-paced by newer and better technology. After a ton of researching the different technologies, manufacturers, and physically looking at the TV’s, I finally made a decision a couple months ago. I chose the Sony 52″ LCD HD XBR4, and here’s why.

I live at an altitude of 6,984 feet. In years past, the plasma television sets had a problem at higher altitudes due to the pressure differential between the plasma gases inside the cells and the air pressure outside. As a result, the power supply would have to work harder which often times resulted in a noticeable buzzing sound coming from the TV. I have witnessed this first hand. Three years ago, we purchased four 62″ plasma screens at my work for our video teleconferencing rooms. Once the plasma’s were/are powered on, sure enough, there was/is the buzz. I also confirmed this in the smaller sets by going to the local retail stores where I noticed the infamous buzzing noise. Granted, the newer plasma screens have improved, but not enough for me to feel comfortable dropping several thousands dollars on a nice television only to be plagued with buzzing and potential power supply problems.

The LCD sets seemed to be the right fit for my situation and geographical location. The viewing angle is nearly 180°, there is virtually no glare whatsoever, there is no limitation on altitude, and the power consumption is nearly half that of a plasma. But in years past, the LCD screens were nowhere near as good as the Plasmas in that they couldn’t display fast moving content without blurring. While LCD’s have improved, they still aren’t perfect and all of them have their problems.

Regular Programming (HD and SD content)

The flagship Sony 52″ LCD XBR4/XBR5 is no exception, although the extent of this is difficult to gauge. I’m a little peeved at the “HD Lite” signal quality through DirecTV (HD Lite, meaning its not quite HD). Their quality is nowhere near good enough to really produce an awesome HD picture and this is quite evident if you watch fast moving scenes; the pixelation is quite noticeable and the contrast is greatly reduced. It is better than standard definition, but not when compared to other sources. For example. my over-the-air HD antenna for the local channels has a much better looking HD picture than DirecTV. So because of DirecTV’s “HD Lite” content quality, this makes it difficult to really gauge how good of a TV the Sony XBR4 really is unless you have a Blu-Ray player which utilizes maximum video bit rates (and for the record, Blu-Ray content looks phenomenal on this TV!) or an over-the-antenna in which your local channels have a better picture quality than DirecTV (like mine do in Colorado).

Anyhow … the XB4 does have a bit of a ghosting problem (Some call it blurring, others call is smearing) with some fast action, specifically hockey. Granted, it’s not horrible, but it’s there and it’s not just on my set. I have seen this on the 46″ XBR4 as well as another friend who has the 52″ XBR5. When the camera pans or the player skates fast, there is a noticeable blurring that trails or sometimes is in front of the player. It doesn’t matter if the signal is in 480i, 720p or 1080i. As the TV warms up it seems to diminish quite a bit, but it never goes away. It has nothing to do with the TV settings. I have tried every combination of cinemotion, motionflow, sharpness, color, MPEG noise reduction, noise reduction, DRC … you name it. I even turned the color to 0 such that the picture was black and white and the ghosting was still present. I also have a very expensive HDMI cable connecting my HR20-700 DVR to the XBR4 so that can’t be the problem. It also has nothing to do with the source of the material (although I can’t be for certain unless the bit rates for each channel are increased). I can pause the DVR and the ghosting isn’t there so it’s not a function of the material being viewed. Once you un-pause the DVR, the ghosting is back. Despite this, the HD signal really has improved the overall fun in watching hockey games as compared to my old 32″ CRT. I’m not suggesting this is a horrible TV and you shouldn’t buy it. But I would like to let other potential buyers know that there is a bit of a ghosting, blurring or smearing problem with fast action on the Sony XBR4 and the Sony XBR5. My guess is, though, you will see some form of blurring on any LCD set. That’s just a function of the technology. On a side note, I rarely if ever, notice the ghosting problem when watching regular HD programming. I have a feeling that the hockey player’s jersey’s in relation to the size of the screen and the contrast with the white ice makes it easier to notice. But again, it could also be a function of the DirecTV lower bit rates. A hockey game on a BluRay DVD would probably answer this question.

Sony will deny there is a blurring problem, but it’s there. Just read this thread in the AVS Forums or do a Google search on “XBR4 hockey” and you’ll see this is a very common problem with the Sony XBR4/XBR5. Some can live with it, some are utterly annoyed by it. The people that can’t live with it will find a problem with LCD technology no matter what brand of TV they buy. I can live with it, and in fact don’t even notice anymore. It is such a vast improvement from my 32″ CRT I can’t complain. Again, I just want to let potential buyers know that the Sony XBR4 isn’t perfect, but it do produce one heck of a great picture with most content.

Blu-Ray Content

I just recently purchased the Panasonic BD-30 Blu-Ray player and connected it to my Sony XBR4. I will say that Blu-Ray content on this TV is phenomenal. I started re-watching the Planet Earth series and I’m just blown away at the clarity, picture quality, brightness, and color that this TV can produce. Most of the settings are fairly neutral too, meaning I don’t have the brightness or contrast cranked up.

The Motion Enhancer works very good with the “Standard” setting. In the “High” setting, the motion is very fluid and smooth, almost like there are 100 frames per second. It’s sort of bizarre at how good it looks. But even in semi-fast moving scenes, a lot of artifacts start showing up around the edges of objects so it is unlikely one would leave their TV in the setting. The Standard setting is best as it produces no artifacts at all and helps reduce jitter. I have yet to watch a Blu-Ray movie that utilizes the Deep Color capabilities, so I can’t comment on that yet.

My Conclusion

It’s fair to say LCD technology is far from perfect and I knew this before I purchased my XBR4. But the technology has improved greatly from years past and I just figured this was a good time to jump into the market because it was good enough for me and it was a big enough improvement from my 32″ CRT to justify the purchase. If you’re super picky about your picture quality when watching sports like hockey or football, you probably should stay away from the XBR4 and perhaps LCD’s in general. Take a look at the plasma screens as they can handle that sort of motion better, although their brightness and contrast won’t be as good as the Sony XBR4. As I mentioned before, I live at 6894 feet and the noisy plasmas and the lower contrast were a worse trade off than an LCD.

My Setup

• Sony XBR4
• Denon 2808ci AVR
• Panasonic BDP-30 Blu-Ray
• DirecTV HR20-700 HD DVR
• Klipsch RS-35 series 7.1 surround speakers
• HD-Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD compatible

In the past, electric cars were more of a joke than a practical solution. Even today, when most people think about an electric car they immediately remember the EV-1, a tiny little shoe box that could barely travel at freeway speeds and had a range of at most 70 miles. It’s understandable why no one was interested; It simply wasn’t fun and was barely practical.

However, the electric car has drastically change since then. The Tesla Roadster is an all electric car and not a hybrid. But get this … it can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in under 4 seconds which makes it faster than a Ferrari. The two door convertible sports coupe can also reach a top speed of 135 mph and has a range of 245 miles. It also comes with all the amenities of a normal car such as a navigation system, AC, radio, ABS Brakes, cruise control, and air bags. Now that sounds like a fun car to drive!

The air alone is enough to keep the engine at an optimum operating temperature. In addition, when the vehicle comes to a stop or is stuck in stop and go traffic, the electric engine shuts off instead of remaining idle unlike a combustion engine, which wastes gasoline.

However, as of this writing, things have changed dramatically with the advent of lithium-ion batteries. The batteries are much smaller, much lighter, last considerably longer and have a much better recharge capability. For example, the lithium-ion batteries in the Tesla Roadster Sports Coupe can be fully recharged in as little as 3.5 hours and a full charge will allow the car to travel 245 miles non-stop. They are much lighter and the energy density is much greater which means the batteries take up less space compared to a lead-acid battery configuration of the same size and can last much longer.

The real breakthrough may come in March of 2008, when Toshiba begins selling the SCiB (SuperCharge Ion Battery) which can charge at 50 amps with a recharge time of 5 minutes. It’s capacity loss after 3,000 recharges is only 10% but can be charged over 5,000 times which means it could run continuously for 10 years recharging once a day. Depending on the cost, this could be a huge breakthrough in favor of the electric car.

When an electric car needs to be recharged, you simply plug it into the wall at your house. You don’t have to find a gas station or wait in line. Currently, the Tesla Roadster can fully recharge in as little as three hours. With Toshiba’s new SCiB SuperCharge battery, this could be reduced to a matter of minutes; a comparable amount of time we spend at the gas pump. Chances are your commute is around 50 miles a day which means you would need to recharge about once a week.

The other advantage of the electric car is that it’s very quiet. Most people who have never driven an electric car are startled when they come to a stop. The first reaction is restart the engine because when the car isn’t moving, the engine is literally off. It doesn’t idle like a gasoline engine. Quiet is nice, but perhaps more so for those who live near busy streets or freeways as the sounds of passing cars will be greatly reduced.

So which is better? For me, the answer is obvious. Electric cars are mechanically simple compared to the internal combustion engine. For example, here are some things a gasoline powered car has that an Electric car does not …

• Engine Oil
• Oil pump
• Coolant / Radiator
• Transmission
• Exhaust pipe
• Exhaust manifold
• Clutch
• Spark Plugs
• Fuel Injectors
• Fuel/Oil/Air Filters
• Engine Belts and Timing Chains

This means you won’t have oil changes, coolant flushes, or transmission problems. There are no air filters, oil filters, or fuel filters to replace. There are no tune-ups or emissions tests. There are no belts or radiator hoses to replace.

More so, electricity rates are much cheaper compared to gasoline. In order to travel 250 miles on gasoline and assuming you get 20 mpg, you will need 12.5 gallons. Based on today’s gasoline rates of about $3.00 a gallon, that will cost you $37.50. To drive the same distance of 250 miles using electricity (based on the Tesla Roadster) with an electricity rate of $.10/kWh will cost you a whopping $5.00. Add all the other expenses such as changing oil, filters, spark plugs, transmission fluid, and coolant and that’s a heck of a savings over the course of 100,000 miles. Even if you did have to replace the Lithium Ion batteries at the 100,000 mile mark, the before mentioned savings will more than pay for the new battery pack, which in all likelihood will be far more advanced and longer lasting that the old one you had to replace.

Electricity it also a domestic commodity. Add some nuclear power plants to our electrical grid and we can easily support the electric car. With oil reserves existing in finite quantities, oil price uncertainties and the unproven fear of global warming, it’s just a matter of time before the electric car becomes more practical than the internal combustion engine. Necessity breeds innovation.

The other day, my 4-year old son was playing in the kitchen and accidentally launched a brand new $1.50 Ferrari under the refrigerator. It was imperative that I retrieve this Ferrari immediately so I popped off the lower front grille and started swooshing a ruler back and forth. In the process of trying to retrieve the famed car I was stunned to see that the underside of the refrigerator had turned into a fuzzy dungeon off lost receipts, pieces of food and a crap-ton of dust. As I slid the ruler back and forth, I managed to push the car further back into the fuzzy dungeon and realized I was going to have to move the whole darn refrigerator. No problem, I thought. It’ll just take a minute.

… sigh.

That 2-minute job turned into a 2-hour job. The fuzzy dungeon of paper receipts from years past and pieces of food were of such quantity, it would be a mistake to simply re-cover it by pushing the refrigerator back in place after retrieving the car. It was time to clean. At first, I got the vacuum out and started sucking up all that I could via the front grille. In doing so, I discovered something profound … there’s a water pan under the fridge. For some reason I had assumed this was a relic of the past and newer technologically “advanced” refrigerators didn’t require a pan. Luckily, it was totally dry and appeared that it had never been wet in the past. But that got me thinking. I know there’s a fan somewhere under here too, because when the refrigerator is “on” I can feel warm air coming out the front. So I started sucking up more of the fuzzy dungeon and discovered there is a “W” shaped wire mesh cooling coil under the refrigerator too! Unfortunately, I couldn’t gain complete access to the wire mesh cooling conductor, so to finish the job I had to empty the refrigerator and tip it on its side (this is what took the better part of two hours).

Come to realize, the fuzzy dungeon that forms on the heat conductor meshing under the refrigerator can greatly, and negatively, impact the performance of your refrigerator. The purpose of that wire mesh grille is to remove heat from the coolant and conduct it to the air. Well, if the air can’t interact with the grille because of the fuzzy dungeon, then the refrigerator has to work longer and harder to remove the heat and thus cool the refrigerator. It ends up wasting electricity and can burn out the compressor much earlier than designed.

I don’t know how dusty your place gets, but it might not be a bad idea to clean the underside of the refrigerator once a year. This was the first time I had cleaned mine since moving into the new house 5 years ago, so it was incredibly nasty. However, since the cleaning, I have noticed that the refrigerator runs for a much shorter period of time when it kicks on.