-- Scot Finnie

Large-screen LCD HDTV: 46-in. Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR2

Wow! Large-screen LCDs have come a long way over the past year. We put Sony's Bravia 46-in. LCD KDL-46XBR2 through two separate comparisons with plasma, comparing both conventional and HDTV content. Here's what we found: When displaying HD 720p content over cable, the Sony is only a quarter-notch below the best plasmas (such as the Panasonic TH-50PX60U). That's very good company indeed.

The problem with LCDs is their tendency to pixelate high-definition images. You're suddenly conscious of the tiny squares that make up the image you're looking at. It may last only a second or two, but it's jarring. With its current crop of LCDs, Sony appears to have nearly vanquished this problem. Part of the improvement is the higher 1920- by 1,080-pixel resolution 1080p sets deliver. But there's more to it than that, and it's a good thing.

Another strength of the KDL-46XBR2 is its brightness. That helps the Sony deliver slightly better standard TV picture quality than plasmas we've compared it with. Technically a 1080p LCD has a tad more to overcome when rendering standard TV than a 720p plasma. But it's all in the conversion algorithms each maker uses. LCD's problem with converting standard TV seems to be muddy colors and a loss of crispness.