After the E4000 and W4000 series, it’s now time to test the V4000 which is actually based on the W4000 minus a few functions.
In other words, we can say the V4000 is a W4000 but without:

•    an HD TV tuner and this is the main difference (and defect) of the V4000.  It will not be open to HD digital cable which will come to France at the end of this year and a supplementary external tuner is required.

•    It doesn’t have a 10 bit panel.  The V4000 has an 8 bit which limits the number of shades displayed in color gradations.   On the other hand, we didn’t notice any banding in our tests.

•    There is no USB 2.0 input and therefore it does not support photos stored on external supports (USB keys, hard drives, etc.).

•    It doesn’t have the XrossMediaBar (XMB).  This menu originally conceived for the Playstation 3 was adopted by Sony’s high end TVs.  The V4000’s are more classic although they do use XMB icons without the transparency and scrolling effects.

•    There are no supplementary functions.  The V4000 lacks a few more or less important options (for example, x.v. color support and a brightness sensor)

We were able to test the V4000 in its 40 inch version and confirmed that it did indeed inherit some of the fine characteristics of the W4000 series.

Of course, this wasn’t immediately apparent.  Once again default settings were rather catastrophic and the image was considerably distorted.  First off, we discovered the negative effects of certain filters when measuring various gray levels.  From black up to a 90% white, brightness doesn’t surpass 28 cd/m²; however it suddenly jumps to 300 cd/m² on 100% white.  It’s pointless to show you the resulting gamma curve as it is simply off the charts.  The only positive in this area was black measured at 0 cd/m² which means infinite contrast (but this alone could not produce a quality image).  Moreover, standard colors suffered from the same defect with reds that had a noticeable orange dominance.

Moving into “Movie’’ mode and the deactivation of filters (color correction and dynamic contrast) completely changes rendering.  We then obtain excellent results in all domains:  colors are extremely well calibrated, contrast attains 2150:1, black is deep (0.09 cd/m²) and the gamma curve is consistent at 2.22.

So in practice we find the same qualities that were characteristic of the W4000 series.  HD movies are quite simply perfect and SD sources have the same processing.  Do not hesitate to slightly increase sharpness (to around 16) to gain a little in precision.

Otherwise for SD rescaling, without being exceptional it is nevertheless amongst the current best.  Moreover, it is comparable to that of the Sony W4000’s in every way.

The panel’s viewing angles allows for roughly 6 viewers from a distance of 3 meters while others on the sides will lose a little in contrast.
Sound is good for a TV and even above average although it is far from home cinema system quality.