Talk about bias in this thread. First of all, Sony and Samsung share the same plants. Many of the screens are exactly the same. The difference is the in-house electronics behind the screen. The XBR4 looks great, but if you take it down a notch, and skip out on the useless features, i.e., 120hz, a backlit remote, xv color, deep color, and a side mounted HDMI (who wants an HDMI cord sticking out the side of the tv?), you have the V3000 models. 46" V3000 can be had for 2199 Canadian, compared to the 3699.99 of the XBR4 in the same size. It is also more likely to fit into an enclosed space because it doesn't have the floating glass.
People ranting about Samsungs are crazy. They are great TVs, very comparable to the Sonys, but the 500,000 contrast ratio is ridiculous. It's just crushed blacks, that's it. Meanwhile, cheaper 1080p Samsungs (the 61 series) have the old LCD backlight that does 75% of the NTSC color range, while the better backlights (on the better Samsungs, and all Sonys) does 92%. The difference right there is night and day.
Samsungs new high-end uses LED local dimming for a staggering claimed contrast ratio, all Sonys use 10 bit panels to increase the contrast. Real-world difference? Not as much as you would think. In my honest opinion, the best value for LCD flat panels are the 1080p Sony V3000, and the 1080p Samsung 65 series. There are subtle differences, but both panels are fantastic, well-priced, and don't have flavor-of-the-week features that are over-rated and inflate the price.
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