My pioneer 435 plasma was stolen a couple of weeks ago and my insurance company have offered me a pioneer 427, or something else if I really would prefer an alternative.
With this in mind, and having read positive reviews of the sony w and x series lcds, I visited my local av dealer, not some comet or currys, to compare their performance to the pioneer.
I have to admit I was skeptical that the sony x series would offer the same performance as the pioneer, especially with fast moving images, and was expecting my visit to confirm this. I entered the shop with a definite plasma bias.
However, with the two panels side by side and running a mixture of standard def freeview broadcasts, high def satellite images, and upscaled dvd, my bias towards plasma was shattered.
With high def, the pioneer was very very good, but nowhere near that of the sony. In fact, the pioneer seemed positively grainy in comparison.
The standard def broadcasts again seemed to favour the sony. While the pioneer coped better with low res and poor quality channels, stuff like sky news and planet earth on bbc looked amazing on the sony. In fact, one of the staff had to check that the footage from planet earth was not high def.
I also looked closely at the ticker tape on the bottom of the screen on sky news and bbc 24 and some stuff on eurosport, to see if the sony could cope with fast moving images. This was where I was expecting the sony to fall flat on its face, with a quoted response time twice that of the pioneer. However, there was absolutely no discernable difference between either of the two panels.
Watching 'lost' thru an upscaling denon also highlighted the sony's ability to handle fast moving images and high contrast levels. The pioneer was, as I expected, able to produce a remarkable and natural looking picture, but unexpectedly, so to was the sony, which if anything, revealed more detail.
I hated to admit it, but the sony was the better performer. I spent over an hour in the shop comparing the two panels with three of the sales staff setting up identical feeds into both. They were equally stunned at how good the sony was when the actually compared it with the pionner simultaneously, because they too had preconceptions that the plasma would naturally be a better tv at that size, and hadn't actually compared the two side by side.
With this in mind, and having read positive reviews of the sony w and x series lcds, I visited my local av dealer, not some comet or currys, to compare their performance to the pioneer.
I have to admit I was skeptical that the sony x series would offer the same performance as the pioneer, especially with fast moving images, and was expecting my visit to confirm this. I entered the shop with a definite plasma bias.
However, with the two panels side by side and running a mixture of standard def freeview broadcasts, high def satellite images, and upscaled dvd, my bias towards plasma was shattered.
With high def, the pioneer was very very good, but nowhere near that of the sony. In fact, the pioneer seemed positively grainy in comparison.
The standard def broadcasts again seemed to favour the sony. While the pioneer coped better with low res and poor quality channels, stuff like sky news and planet earth on bbc looked amazing on the sony. In fact, one of the staff had to check that the footage from planet earth was not high def.
I also looked closely at the ticker tape on the bottom of the screen on sky news and bbc 24 and some stuff on eurosport, to see if the sony could cope with fast moving images. This was where I was expecting the sony to fall flat on its face, with a quoted response time twice that of the pioneer. However, there was absolutely no discernable difference between either of the two panels.
Watching 'lost' thru an upscaling denon also highlighted the sony's ability to handle fast moving images and high contrast levels. The pioneer was, as I expected, able to produce a remarkable and natural looking picture, but unexpectedly, so to was the sony, which if anything, revealed more detail.
I hated to admit it, but the sony was the better performer. I spent over an hour in the shop comparing the two panels with three of the sales staff setting up identical feeds into both. They were equally stunned at how good the sony was when the actually compared it with the pionner simultaneously, because they too had preconceptions that the plasma would naturally be a better tv at that size, and hadn't actually compared the two side by side.
