Sony Grand Wega 60-inch (KFWS60S1)

Design
The Sony KFWS60SI is the flagship of the company's Grand Wega series of rear projection televisions, coming in with a whopping 60-inches of screen width. While slightly smaller than the 62-inches Toshiba's 62JM9UA rear pro offers, the Sony Grand Wega is no less imposing, requiring a decent sized living room to fully showcase its talents. And just like the Toshiba, the Sony's design has more in common with sleek and stylish flat panel screens than old bulky rear projection sets. The Sony KFWS60SI, despite its large screen, is only 52cm deep -- a far cry from older rear pros -- and weighs in at 50kg (which is lighter than comparable plasma sets).

Sony's kept it simple at the front of the unit, framing the screen in a simple black border with only a Sony logo at the bottom middle interrupting the clean looks. The television's speakers flank the screen on either side and are quite discreet. There's little in the way of controls on the television's recessed silver bottom -- there's an on/off touch button, plus a Memory Stick/Pro card slot on the bottom right hand side, while located in a hidden push panel on the left are some inputs for external devices (component, S-Video and headphones). The rest of the television's inputs are grouped together at the rear of the set.

Features
Sony's Grand Wega series of rear pros use LCD projection technology to produce pictures -- in this case three high resolution LCD panels (one each for red, green and blue). Sony claims this technology produces better images with more natural colour than DLP rear projection sets, which rely on a spinning colour wheel to produce its colour images. The 16:9 wide screen is capable of displaying 1366x788 pixel resolution, and is compatible with the best high definition signals (1080i, 720p, 576p and 480p). The set also boasts the proprietary Wega picture engine, which Sony says 'can upconvert signals to high definition-like quality'.

And while the Sony is capable of producing HD pictures, it's only saddled with analog television tuners -- two of them for picture in picture capabilities. We're starting to sound like a broken record here at CNET.com.au, but until the manufacturers start building in digital tuners as standard, we (unfortunately) have to keep repeating that to make the best use of a HD-capable screen like this Sony, you'll need to shell out some extra bucks for a digital tuner. The deficiencies in analog signals are just shown up too clearly with a screen this size.

This Sony features decent but not outstanding inputs. Strangely, there's no HDMI, nor is there DVI, meaning there's no digital video input at all into this Grand Wega. The best this Sony sports is two component connectors at the back. Other inputs include three composite and two S-Video. The set's on-board speakers -- two 5W plus a 20W subwoofer -- are serviceable, but have a nifty option of being able to be configured to work as centre speakers in a surround sound set-up. Simply plug the television into an amp/receiver and you're away.

When it comes to picture features, the Sony boasts all the usual picture adjustment options of modern sets, including some handy colour temperature presets should you prefer your images warmer or cooler than normal (although the warm setting almost made the images look sepia). It also sports a free frame feature -- press freeze on the remote, and the television automatically goes into a split screen mode, with one screen showing the current program and the other the frozen image.

Performance
Setting up the Sony KFWS60SI is a breeze, with the television automatically doing a scan for stations when you first power it up. The image takes about 30 seconds from a cold lamp to show a fully bright screen -- which is passable for a projection television, as long as you're not in a rush to see something on the screen straight away.

Overall image quality on the Sony is outstanding, and is on par with the best any flat panel screen can offer. We hooked the KFWS60SI to a Sony HD television tuner with impressive results - images were crisp and lifelike, with good colour reproduction throughout. The screen's brightness has to receive some special praise -- viewing this Sony in a brightly lit room produced results not too dissimilar to a traditional CRT screen, a high compliment indeed for a rear projection model. Also helping the image was some anti-reflective coating applied on the front of the unit, which greatly reduced reflections.

The Grand Wega could also reproduce impressive blacks -- strong contrast is another of this set's strong points. Playing the recent film Man On Fire through a component-connected DVD player was a joy -- the Sony was able to subtly reproduce the dark and light shades of the movie, and handled the jagged cuts and rapid movements of the action scenes admirably.

On picture quality and design terms, the Sony KFWS60SI is easy to recommend. At AU$7499, its quite competitive against the bigger and better specced Toshiba 62JM9UA, but a few minor caveats do remain. As we mentioned earlier, you'll need to factor in a few hundred dollars extra in your budget for a digital television tuner (trust us, you won't look back). You'll also need to keep in mind that you will at some stage have to shell out money for a replacement lamp for the television. Sony rates the lamplife of the KFWS60SI at 8000 hours, or roughly two to three years of average viewing. Replacement lamps cost roughly AU$500, and can be installed manually by the user. Finally, you'll need a decent sized room to enjoy the picture quality of this Sony. With such a large screen size, you'll need a correspondingly large room where you can sit at least two metres away from the television.

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