List of options never ends, July 15, 2010

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N. Seal – See all my reviews

  

I couldn’t be happier. Everything has worked as advertised and the quality of the unit is above average for all the junk I see these days. I wanted it for my master bedroom to mount on the wall and have as few wires and devices hanging off of it as possible. The Bluray/Dvd player works well and connecting to a network was a snap. I even streamed a video from one of my computers to it, but the streaming quality leaves a little bit to be desired. I believe that is mostly due to the infancy of the technology. The internet functions work great for what I want Youtube and netflix operate just fine.

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Superb Sony HDTV and excellent networking features, August 26, 2010

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Jason E. Havens (Destin, FL United States) – See all my reviews

  

We are very pleased with our Sony Bravia 40″ HDTV. It arrived quickly, and has exceeded our expectations. The picture and sound quality are very good, which has been our experience with Sony products. However, Sony’s new Internet-ready features make this unit one of our best electronic buys. We watch Netflix and even use it in conjunction with our HP EX495 1.5TB Mediasmart Home Server ( Black). The only downside to the latter is that videos will not stream wirelessly. This Bravia uses Sony’s wireless USB adapter (Sony UWA-BR100 – Network adapter – USB – 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11n — sold separately), which works well though I wish that it could handle dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) wireless N transmission like our Tivo wireless N adapter and and all of our Apple devices. However, although we can view pictures and stream all kinds of music files, we can’t do so with our video files. I know that Sony requires pretty specific formatting in order to play video files (MP4 encoded using h.264 codec and AAC audio), and I can actually use my relatively new Western Digital My Book AV DVR Expander 1 TB USB 2.0/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDBABT0010HBK-NESN (also ordered via Amazon) to play the same video files copied from my HP home server; they play well. There’s nothing that I can do, though, to make this TV or my Sony Blu-ray home theater system (BDV-E570) recognize those streaming video files on my home server. I researched and confirmed that it’s likely not an issue with HP or its Twonky Media DLNA software because the other files stream flawlessly. Hopefully Sony will improve this feature, although I’ve read posts that indicate that streaming video even via wireless N doesn’t work well unless you have superb buffering technology, evidently like that used by Netflix and others. Regardless, we’re still well-pleased with this Sony TV and would definitely recommend it. Sony has released a couple of updates even since we purchased our new Bravia several months ago, which have expanded the Internet-based options to include most streaming music websites and plenty of video websites as well. The only other improvement that I’d like to see is the ability to use the USB port more freely, as others have commented, because I think that it only supports Sony’s wireless USB adapter at this point in terms of wireless options. As mentioned, it works well with the compatible My Book AV external drive and might even allow a USB hub (not sure about this, but I plan to test it).

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Great – once it works, December 12, 2010

The TV is great – once you can get the software updated to the new version. Until then it goes off and on over and over, among other interesting features.

Customer service at Sony is staffed by people who do not understand or speak English very well.

BUT, after you get the new software on it, it’s a nice set.

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