The Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 46" 1080p LCD HDTV is an elegant looking set with its piano black frame. The black finish is reflective, but not annoyingly shiny like a mirror as long as you don't put it directly in front of a light source. It's a serious looking LCD HDTV with its black finish and anti-glare screen. Not only does it look nice aesthetically, but it looks awesome where it counts the most, the picture.
The picture, like the Sony Bravia V2500 models, looks amazing. No annoying glares will ruin your viewing experience and the fogging that hit some of the owners with the V2500 model is gone. If there are any, you must be unlucky. The Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 1080p LCD HDTV has a 60 Hz refresh rate while the higher end models have 120 Hz so the motion blurring will not be as smooth as the more expensive sets. That doesn't mean it's blurry though. It's still pretty smooth during fast action sequences and you probably won't be able to tell anyway when playing HD content.
The Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 1080p LCD HDTV up-scales 480i standard definition content with its Reality Creation Multi Function v1.0 technology and you can see that it truly helps make SD stuff less horrible than it otherwise should be. This basically means watching standard programming is good, but not at the level you're used to when watching with a CRT, but also not as bad as many other LCD TVs.
The black and the contrast is good unlike what has been expected of LCDs. The colors are rich and the picture comes to life more so than other LCD HDTVs. Side by side with the Samsung or Sharp, the Sony looked better. In fact it can even compete with some of the plasma TVs out there. Just switch to normal mode and not use vivid mode and make some tweaks from there to your liking and the image will be near perfect. Try sharpening the image and increasing the black.
Configuring the settings in the Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 1080p LCD HDTV is a breeze with the highly regarded XMB menu system that's also in the PS3. Speaking of the PS3, watching blu-ray on the KDL-46V3000 is simply stunning. If you don't have a PS3 or a Blu-Ray player, you need to get one if you're getting an HDTV. HD-DVD is dead.
The Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 1080p LCD HDTV does not have PIP or picture in picture, but it does have P&P or picture & picture. You can play video from two input sources at the same time, but only from HDMI, TV tuner, and video on the left side of the TV and component on the right. That means no watching HDMI & HDMI at the same time. It's not a deal breaker since the picture quality is way up there.
Sound quality is good should you choose not to invest in a home theater surround sound system, but it does lack some oomph in the bass department. It's much better than many LCD panels out there considering how small the piano black frame is.
I recommend the Sony Bravia KDL-46V3000 1080p LCD HDTV if you don't want to spend a few extra Ben Franklins on the XBR4 and you don't want the older, but still excellent KDL-46V2500. You can't go wrong with this choice and it's one of the best bangs for the buck.
