After months of research, viewing sets and constantly checking prices, I'm the brand new owner of Sony 52XBR4 LCD. Came down to that or the Pioneer Kuro's, but I think LCD suits my needs better.

Sony dropped the MSRP $500 on Friday and Fry's had it on sale for $3300 today so I had Best Buy price match Circuit City's 110% price match of Fry's. Got it for $3250+tax with no delivery charge. My wife had a triple reward zone coupon so that works out to 6% back which will go to a PS3 most likely. Delivery date for the set is Tuesday!

Time Warner is coming out that morning to install cable cards in my new TivoHD as well, so I'm super excited. I'll be posting pics of everything, just so everyone else can share in my joy (and I love see other people's setups as well).

Holy crap man . I've redone my living room twice in the last two years and can't find a way to justify it again, but that sounds awesome. Looking forward to pics and the review of the TV. That model is the only one that might sway me of my SXRD loyalties.

I'm lucky in that I have the world's coolest wife. I put her through school so now that she's employed she said I could get whatever TV I wanted. Seems like a fair trade to me

The TV arrived yesterday and it's beautiful. I'll post more pics later as I forget to take the memory card out of the camera.

My Old setup:


Closeup of components and some dusty shelves:


Setting up the new audio stand. My dog will be replacing the VCR.


Setting the receiver up:


The full setup, waiting for the TV. The 2nd to bottom shelf of the audio stand has my new TiVo HD.

Are you going to make full use of this new spiffy tv by adding HD DVD or Blu-ray capability?

Completely off topic here, but that is one cool looking dog. What breed is he/she? Those are great ears...

He said he's probably getting a PS3, so that sounds like a yes.

I prefer to stick to SD.

Actually the PS3 will probably be coming for Christmas. For the moment I'm gorging on the limited HD content that I can get. I now fully understand the joys of Discovery HD Theater.

That's Charlie and he's some kind of random terrier mix that we got from a rescue organization. He looks amazingly cute and cuddly in that picture. He has one normal ear and one flopsy ear although both are standing up there.

Unfortunately he's got some bad brain damage due to years of bad seizures before we got them under control. This leads to some crappy behavioral problems which have just recently started to manifest in his inability to let me watch football games with the sound on or my wife to play video games with the sound on. He goes completely nuts and I have to toss him outside or in his crate.

More pics:

The box is big!:


Upgrade comparison:






Me trying to get artsy, but the logo doesn't show up that great:


Last night's Life:

Just beautiful! Congrats!

I have that same tv stand and love it! Where did you get the audio stands? Do they match the tv stand?

Thanks

The audio stand is actually two of these stackable stands:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1142302233933

They look and make of them is VERY similar to the TV stand even though they aren't from the same product family. There isn't a matching audio stand for the TV stand which is this one (Bush makes a bunch that are similar):
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1138085296252

The only real difference is that the TV stand is glossy black metal and the audio stand is matte black. The glass is exactly the same and the cable management area is similar enough so that you can't really tell the difference. They look really well together and from across the room you can't tell they aren't a matched set. The only thing I don't like about the audio stands is that the connectors for stacking are a crappy plastic and don't fit that great in the holes.

That's an amazing setup. I can't believe I want to upgrade my 50" SXRD after barely a year, but I have no damn patience. You got that for $3250 huh... I might need to start buttering up the wife, that looks ridiculously good.

So far I don't have any real complaints other than A) Standard Def looks terrible and B) there are so many damn options that I don't have time to go through everything to determine what really looks best. I want to watch the TV, I don't want to spend a couple hours playing with settings

Black levels are very good for LCD and I haven't noticed much if any motion blur on HD sources. I've been watching basketball (as you can see) and I watched part of the GT-VT football game last night and still didn't see anything. I did watch Scrubs last night in SD and noticed some horrible motion blur in a couple scenes. No idea why I would see it in SD but not HD.

You need to calibrate that baby. It looks a bit off in color, although that could be the camera or web. Got access to HDNet?

I'm in the process of calibrating it, but it actually looks pretty good. I took these pictures with my wife's brand new Canon XTi DSLR and we're still getting used to how it works. The last two pictures from straight on don't look that great because A) Life uses a non-standard color palette ala CSI and B) I was trying to turn off the flash and use a longer shutter speed which didn't work all that great with the light streaming in from the side door/window.

I think the conversion that Photobucket does isn't the best either (as you can see from some of the bad aliasing in some of these pictures).

Yeah, the cheap photo sites will alter it down to their standard. If you aren't used to SLRs, it is tricky at first. The lens is the real issue, you definitely get what you pay for.

What a coincidence. I'm about to take the plunge for the exact same model, but I'm going with a 46"

After price matching and talking the guy down, I got it for 2,585, then factor in a extended warranty and Tax. My final total is going to be 3,234. Which is about the same as yours before tax. So you got a great deal.

I think you're going to love the set. I only have very few, very minor complaints about it. Don't regret my purchase at all.

Same here. Wanted the 52", but it's just too big for my setup.

Congrats on the set Mordred, looks great.

I think so too. I haven't heard/read any major complaints from anybody on my side.