One of the hottest items this Christmas is no doubt HDTVs, and the bigger the better. My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas but that sure didn’t stop my parents from jumping head first into the Holiday spirit this past weekend by purchasing a SONY Bravia 46-inch LCD 1080p screen.

Their old set was an 11 year old big screen Quasar, so this was a major step up.

And I’ll tell you what, it’s a beauty. I have an HDTV - half that size - at home which I picked up a year ago, and this one blow that away. The picture on HD channels is incredible, and even the quality on the non-HD channels is superb.

How my parents settled on that model I’m not sure, but it was either the SONY 46 or a similar Samsung model I was told. So if you are in the market for a big HDTV and have about $3,500 to spare (I don’t!), check out that SONY 46.

Along with the excellent picture and terrific sounds, the TV offers a number of inputs and outputs. I think you can hook you the microwave, telephone and the dishwasher to the TV and still have enough outlets for the home theatre system, Playstation 3 and DVD. (Unfortunately I didn’t try hooking up any those devices, so who knows, maybe the TV ain’t so hot with the blender plugged into the back.)

From my count I saw three component inputs and two HDMI inputs along with a bunch of other jacks which I know not what they do.

Anyway, when it came time to do the installation, the folks called on me to come up a few days early for the x-mas vacation. Sure enough, Sunday was install time. And if you’d like to read how I installed this model (though who knows, maybe I didn’t even do it right?) just continue reading.

Installing an HDTV might seem pretty daunting at first, but in most cases if you can hook up a DVD you can probably hook up an HDTV.

The SONY set is pretty well put together and very sharply designed. When I arrived my parents had already enlisted a friend for the initial set up. What was funny was to listen to them praise the clarity and quality of the picture, which I kept reminding them, much to their disbelief, wasn’t even in HD yet. (Though I must admit, the picture was excellent so maybe it was?)

The folks still had the standard cable set top box figuring that was all that was needed. After arguing that the picture would look even better with an HDTV box showing true HD channels, they finally listened and we headed to Time Warner Cable to pick up our 8300HD Explorer set top box.

The major difference in installing the HDTV set top cable box vs. your standard one is the addition of three composite wires and two audio wires. That’s basically it, at least it was when installing the SONY 46 to an 8300HD Time Warner box, so your mileage may vary, of course.

All you have to do is plug in the coaxial cable (this is the main cable wire coming into your house) into the back of the set top box (not the TV) and then properly connect the component video wiring, which in my case was the three wires included with the box, from the back of the set top box to the back of the TV on the HD/DVD IN panel. The jacks on the wire are color coded (green, blue, red) and should match the corresponding colored component jacks on the set top box and the TV panel. The TV jacks are labeled “Y”, “Pg” and “Pr”. (What those mean I have no clue!)

Once the video is hooked up, onto the sound. If you don’t have a home theater system, then you can simply plug in the two audio wires from the red and white set top box jacks to the matching red and white jacks on the TV. In my case for the Sony Bravia 46, these were located just below the three composite video jacks in the “HD/DVD IN” panel #5 on the back of the TV.

Note that the “cable out” jack on the set top box and the “cable in” jack on the TV are both left unused.

The last step was the only issue I have with the TV, and that is in properly configuring the video inputs through the programming menu.

In our case, we plugged the component video and audio wires into panel #5 on the back of the set, so the TV video needed to be configured to reflect that input device. On our TV the remote only initially toggled between a DVD input and the cable input, leaving out input device #5, among others. So you have to manually go into the menu and configure the video input for #5 by unselecting “skip” and setting it to “cable”. Now after toggling the “TV/Video” button on the remote to #5, you should be good to go.

Again, for around $3,500 it may be out of the price range for many, but if you going to splurge once every ten years or so for a set, so far this one is a pretty good choice.

(Friendly reminder, the installation I’ve outlined above is for a Sony Bravia 46 LCD with an 8300HD Explorer on Time Warner Cable. Always check you instructions first! )

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:08 am and is filed under TV.