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The Sony KDL-32V5810 is one of the first of the electronic giant’s HDTVs to come with a built-in Freesat tuner, allowing you to hook it straight up to your satellite dish for a natty selection of cost-free digital channels – including BBC HD and ITV HD. So how does it shape up? Read our full Sony KDL-32V5810 review to find out.
The Sony KDL-32V5810 comes with a rather hefty price tag for a 32-inch LCD television. For a similar sum you could nab yourself a very respectable 42 or 40-inch model with a full HD resolution – but of course, it wouldn’t have this model’s selling point: Freesat.
The Freesat tuner is a snap to set up. We just whacked in one of the cables from our Sky dish, navigated to the menu option (easily found thanks to the Sony KDL-32V5810’s PS3-derived XrossMediaBar user interface) and hit the autotune option. A minute or so later, we had access to all the channels, radio stations and clear, well laid out EPG. Sweet stuff indeed.
The Freesat signal is clear and completely break-up, and to our eyes at least seems marginally superior to the quality of Freeview. Of course, the real coup is the addition of the two HD channels, which look fantastically sharp, detailed and bursting with nicely saturated colour, even on the Sony KDL-32V5810’s relatively small screen. The screen is a full 1920 x 1080 panel, however, so you don’t miss out on a single pixel of that HD signal.
Read our Sony KDL-52Z5800 review now
All-round picture quality is strong, if not outstanding. Black levels can be tweaked until they’re very good, but occasionally the picture simply seems dull and a little flat – it’s very dependent on the source. Motion is generally smooth but with very little blurring evident at times, which isn’t all that surprising considering the Sony KDL-32V5810 comes equipped with Motionflow 100Hz. It handles games without any noticeable ghosting or smearing.
Sound quality is reasonable and there’s decent connectivity too: four HDMI inputs plus a USB port for media playback and an Ethernet port for DLNA functionality, not to mention Applicast Internet-based services.
All things considered the Sony KDL-32V5810 is a strong all-round performer that should go on the shortlist of anyone looking for a compact Freesat-equipped HDTV. It’s not the best performer we’ve seen recently, but it handles most content well and its range of media compatibility doesn’t hurt.
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