15-Year-Old Sony Trinitron Broken. Time for a Bravia?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I agree wholeheartedly. We were in a similar boat to you. Recently replaced 2 Trinitrons. We are not overly heavy/sophiticated viewers. Of our 2 new sets, one is a Bravia, the other is not. I don’t even remember the brand offhand. Sharp? Sanyo? In no way do I consider the Sony better than the other set. I think you can compare based on the specs, and then go for the one with the best price.

Re: size, as recent converts to the rectangular aspect, IMO a 32" flatscreen will seem to have a considerably smaller picture than - say - an old 29" trinitron. We have a 36" and a 40". Neither of them seem “too big.” The different brands have different outside dimensions. Our 36" fits in a cabinet that used to hold our 29" trinitron.

22

www.displaywars.com is a good site to compare screen sizes.

23

While that is a good start, it does not necessarily tell the whole story, as not everything you view will fit the widescreen aspect. So you may end up with vertical bars on the sides, and a significantly smaller image on the “larger” widescreen.

24

I have a 52" flat screen and I love it! :cool:

if your room is too small, buy a new house. :eek:

25

Actually, Bravia is just the name of the line of LCD flat panel TVs by Sony.
ALL of them are Bravias. If you want their top-of-the-line Bravia you would be looking at their XBR8 series. Their bottom-of-the-line Bravias would be the S series.

26

Actually the S-series is the middle of the line. Below it are N, M and L series. Amazon has a comparison table (about halfway down the page).

Getting back to the OP, have you actually looked up the specs and compared the height to the available space? Also if the 40" is slightly too big, maybe the 37" would work?

I’m happy with my 32" Bravia (S-series, 720p). But it’s a pretty modest size, and I’d probably upgrade to a larger one if I watched movies on it regularly.

27

Thanks for all of the comments so far. I’ve given the thread URL to the wife, too.

Our Trinitron is a 21" rather than a 29", and my friend’s 32" Bravia screen does look much bigger than our Trinitron. This is the same friend who had the same Trinitron we had, and he’s happy with the 32". I’m not sure why he didn’t get a larger one at the time – probably the cost; he paid 50,000 baht for his S-series 32", and it’s half that now – but he has the space for a larger one. Watching his set, the screen appeared noticeably bigger.

Yes, we’ve done some measuring based on the specs, and the 40" is going to cause some problems. The 37" is not available in Thailand; didn’t even know there was one. The choice is the 32" or the 40".

The X series. That one looks good but has no 32", at least not in Thailand. The smallest is the 40", but that’s 90,000 baht. We simply don’t want to spend that much on any size.

The latest news is Sony called. The Trinitron is fixed. Total cost, including labor and pick-up and delivery service, is only 1830 baht. That’s about US$51. But it sounds like they really had to search for the necessary part(s), and they said they could not guarantee how long it would last and that in the near future they might not be able to find parts. So the Trinitron has a brief reprieve, but we’re going to go ahead and get a new one in the next couple of months. We’ll be away for a bit in May, and we’re thinking we’ll take care of it soon after we return. That’s a couple of months, and maybe the price will be a little better even; they seem desperate for buyers. That will give us a little more time to mull this over, too.

28

I guess my query (if I can piggy back on Siam Sam’s thread)- what features does a Bravia have -especially connected to a Sony DVD recorder- that another name LCD would not have?

29

I can’t think of any off the top of my head, except for your remote controls would likely be able to operate either appliance (albeit with maybe some limited functionality). This is moot though if you have a universal remote. I don’t have one, but a friend gives a glowing review to the Logitech Harmony (can’t remember which particular model).

FWIW, we have a 42" Sharp Aquos 1080p lCD and it is a great TV. Every so often you will see them advertised at excellent prices through some of the major chains. We picked up ours through Retravision for $1500 about a year or so ago, and friends recently bought the updated model for the same price.

30

Some of the Bravia sets come with Bravia Link or Bravia Sync - IIRC correctly this means that you can e.g. prod one button to turn on the DVD player, surround sound amp, TV, and witch everything to the correct settings to watch a movie. It’s probably only available for the higher-end kit, and you’ll need everything to be compatible, meaning an all-Sony (and probably all-current) setup. Some of these manufacturer-integration schemes are quite clever (e.g. they’ll display the audio settings from the surround sound unit on the TV screen) but I don’t know if Bravia Link is that smart.

As TastesLikeBurning says, you can probably get a similar effect using a remote that supports macros (and a good deal of faffing about to get it to work).

31

I don’t think it’s necessary for everything to be Sony-only, as long as your devices support something called “Consumer Electronics Control”. So if I’m watching cable TV and stick a DVD in my DVD player and close the door, the disc automatically starts playing and the TV switches to the DVD input.

I bought a Sony Bravia set a few months ago (a 46" Z-series) and the one thing I was disappointed with was the lack of internet capability. The TV does have an Ethernet port but doesn’t have as much internet capability as other brands of TVs. (For example some other brands let you watch Netflix or YouTube or Amazon video.)

32

Thanks Slaphead. I bought a Sony DVD recorder a month or so back and it had all this “supports Bravia” all over it. I don’t really need a new television but who knows. Dewey Finn- I watch television to get away from my computer. That being said watching You tube on Television… - do you just run a long cable from the computer to the television set?

33

Feel free to pigggyback. I like information about this area.

We’re going to try to wait until June to get the new set, so we can say we had the Trinitron a full 15 years. We feel we owe it to the old girl. Really love that TV sniff.

Our DVD player is a Panasonic, about four years old. We’re not really interested in Internet capabilty in a set ourselves.

34

They just returned the Trinitron. Works like a charm. There is a three-month guarantee on the actual parts they replaced. Anything new breaking down will be extra, of course, but we’d take that as a sign to ditch the thing finally anyway. And three months will take us into June and the set’s 15th anniversary. Our target for a Bravia.

35

Check out Samsung. They make gorgeous screens, and are generally cheaper than Sony. Some consider them the best LCDs in the world.

36

Things are moving on the TV front. Prices have plunged from just a week ago, and the wife is now coming around toward a 40", two events not entirely unrelated, although we may end up spending more than planned.

We looked at TVs yesterday (Saturday). Sony has dropped many of their prices from just a week ago, to beat the competiton in this bad economy. The 32" W Series that was 38,000 baht a week ago – minus a 2000-baht discount, making it 36,000 baht – is now only 29,000 baht! But no rebate.

And the 40" W that was 67,000 baht is now … 40,000 baht! Just above what we thought we would be spending. What’s weird, though, is we asked why so much off, because that’s quite a discount. It seems for the earlier price, they “threw in” a set of home-entertainment speakers with the set; now the new 40,000-baht price is for the set alone, no extra speakers. We didn’t know about that before and don’t care about it. So the wife started thinking: “Well, since that’s not too far off of what we were thinking of …”

But wait! There’s more: We’re looking at the 40" W, and it’s flanked by the 40" Z and X. Side by side, there is a noticeable improvement in those two screens over the W. Very noticeable. A sharper contrast. The 40" X has not come down in price, it remains 90,000 baht (US$2500). We can’t really justify spending that much. BUT the 40" Z, which was 80,000 baht a couple of months ago and 70,000 baht a week ago, is now … 65,000 baht ($1800). Hmmm. Well, maybe we can go that high. We both really like the picture.

On top of that, the salesman pointed out that the 40" Z’s picture was actually of the same quality or even better than the 40" X. Looking at the specs, it seems to be true. The 40" Z has a contrast ration of 80,000:1, while the 40" X has only 50,000:1; the X does win out in this regard from the 46" on up, with a contrast of 1 million:1. I think the X also has some sort of backlight feature the other models don’t have, but we don’t care about that. It looks like the real reason the X is so expensive is it has a lot of extra toys on it. Digital-camera photo uploads, a setting that allows the screen to show a “framed picture” when not being used as a TV, stuff like that, none of which we really care about, at least not about paying extra for.

So now we’re thinking we should move fast lest they sell out or the prices go back up. They couldn’t say how long those prices would be good, although with the state of our economy over here right now, probably a while. Now we’re trying to decide for sure 32" or 40". The wife has dropped her demand for a couch, at least for the near future. We’re thinking maybe just get the beast in here and then work around what to do with everything else.

It may not be necessary to change the stand either. The 40" Bravia is exactly 1 meter wide (pardon me for going metric), and the stand is exactly one meter wide. At least it would not overhang.

We may be getting this very shortly.

37

Update: The wife just said okay, let’s do it! We’ll go for the 40" W. Whoo hoo! :smiley:

38

Siam Sam- could you either post back here after a few weeks or PM me just to let me know how it is going? You have almost talked me into one.

Leander, I used to have Samsung everything from VHS recorders on and have had a few of their televisions. However, after a difficult time with one of their DVD recorders, where they refused to acknowldege a problem, I am a bit wary.

39

Will do. :wink:

40

Sorry. Screwed THAT up. It’s the 40" Z we’re going for. 65,000 baht (US$1800) now and a picture just as good as the X. The Z – 40" … THAT’S the one.