Sony KLV-26HG2

The Sony KLV-26HG2 is a 4 year old LCD TV which holds its own against modern TVs for picture quality with standard definition TV. It has it's minor flaws but is still a very satisfying television to own.

The picture quality for normal standard definition broadcasts is clear and very natural. There are some minor issues with colour banding and motion smearing but these are rarely noticable in normal viewing.

Although this isn't an 'HD Ready' TV I have used mine to view HD content from my media player using the component video connection at 1080i resolution. HD pictures look good but they don't have the same impact as they do on a bigger screen, although part of the reason for that is that SD pictures look so good already that you don't see a big step-change in results between SD and HD.

The cosmetic design features a brushed aluminium frame, which looks great and stands head and shoulders above the black plastic bezels found on today's TVs.

Standby power consumption is very low at 0.3W. If you left the TV on standby all day you'd probably waste less energy than you would by leaving a lights on whilst you pop out of the room for a couple of minutes.

My only real gripe is time it takes to switch between inputs e.g from AV1 to AV3 because you have to cycle through each input in sequence and each change takes up to 4 seconds. This is a pain when you regularly use the component inputs (AV3).

Tempting as it is to get a bigger HD Ready TV for a fraction of the cost of my HG2 ( £2300 when if first came out!) I'm going to stick with it until there's a lot enough HD content out there to make a big screen truly necessary.

I love this TV. I bought mine in Nov 04. And have had plenty of time to check it out. The picture is very very good. Really crisp and clear. It also sounds quite good for a TV, though if I want hifi sound I switch on my amp. It has 2 SCARTs, 1 Component, 1 SVid/composite. I predominantly use mine via my Sky digi box.

The only issue I've noticed (and this is probably true of all flat planel screens, whatever the technology) is that if you have close up shots of (say) a face, and the camera moves e.g. the whole picture moves. Some features of the persons face don't move immediately but follow a split second later (they sort of catch up). I call this smearing but it may have a more recognised name.