Sony flat screen TV is impressive but expensive

In the toybox of "Things We Should Have by Now" there are plenty of devices left. The rocket-propelled backpack. The jet car. The video phone.

However, my favourite has to be the flat screen TV. Look, they said, You can hang it on the wall. You'll be able to leave it on all the time and use it instead of looking out the window!

But you first have to get past the whopping pricetag. Plasma screen TVs have tipped the scales at over $10,000 without a problem and the size of the screens, typically over 42 inches, means you need quite a large room to make them work. Best to move the car out of the double garage and plonk the comfy seat at one end with the screen at the other.

But there is a solution - the liquid crystal display. LCD screens have been embraced by the PC industry and the demand has seen the price drop to the point where TVs are a somewhat more realistic price.

LCD screens are typically smaller than plasma screens, but small is a relative experience when you're talking about a 32-inch monster. LCDs are also less able to deliver sharp contrast, particularly in low-light situations, so if you're after that perfect picture you might want to save your pennies for a plasma instead.

I'm not so picky. I'm a sucker for big and colourful so when Sony sent me its prosaically named KLVL32M1 Wega TV to try out I was happy as a dog with two tails.

Let's start with the basics. It's not a small TV. It's 32 inches corner to corner with a viewing aspect of 16:9. That means widescreen movies play quite happily and you get to see all the action. It's also quite smart, so if a TV show isn't up to widescreen capabilities it will reduce the screen size rather than stretching everybody to fit. That's only funny the first time you try it - it gets old quite quickly after that.

The TV itself looks great - all curved edges and a nice stand. You can actually hang it on the wall if you want to buy the optional wall hanging bracket thing but I was happy enough to stand it in the corner.

Ours is not a large lounge but when the TV was on it dominated the room. When it was off, perhaps because it was flat and pushed back farther, it was less of an intrusion than our old 21-inch, which was interesting.

The back of the TV has enough ports for an entire fleet. You can plug in the aerial, regular cables and the new and exciting-looking SCART cables that seem to want to do everything all at once.

The product ships with regular old cables rather than the SCART so I didn't get to play with that, which seems a shame. I'd like to see the TVs ship with all the cables you need.

There are even secret ports on the front, hidden behind a drop-down flap, for those removable devices like game consoles or digital cameras. That's nice as it saves you scrambling around behind the beast.

Having said that, the TV is pretty easy to move around. It's well balanced despite its 18kg heft, and being mostly flat it's a doddle to pick up.

Tuning the TV is relatively straightforward, once you figure out where in the enormous manual the instructions are. Sony does like to give things strange names and to rely a lot on pictograms rather than words, which slowed me down somewhat, but once I got the hang of it the TV literally tuned itself.

I told it to move programmes around, which it did happily, and we were away. You can set various dynamic picture modes (sport, movies and so on) if you feel the need, but basically everything looks gorgeous unless you, like my daughter, like to stand with your nose almost touching the screen.

The viewing angle is quite incredible as well. For anyone used to the old LCD screens that required you to stand directly in front for the best view, these new machines will be a welcome surprise. The Sony Wega boasts a 170-degree viewing arc, so unless you're round the back plugging things in you'll be getting as good a view as possible.

It also has very nice built-in speakers, although you can of course plumb it in to your home theatre set-up if you have such a thing.

It even has Teletext, which is great if you've got a noisy toddler in the house while you're trying to watch the news, although it seems a bit odd having such a 20th century service on a 21st century device.

The remote is a monster, of course as they tend to be these days. You will need to read the manual to work out where the basic functions are but beyond the volume and channel buttons I ignored the rest once the TV was tuned. I'm sure they're there for a reason but frankly it wasn't for watching TV.

The biggest sticking point has to be the price, however. Giant TVs aren't cheap and at $6499 this isn't the cheapest 32-inch LCD on the market today. As the price of plasma screens fall below $5000, that's sure to drive the price of LCDs down to a more reasonable level, but even given the amount of TV I watch I'd baulk at paying so much for the goggle box. You could buy a regular TV and have enough left for a piano. Now that's entertainment.

Sony Wega KLVL32M1 Pros

* Great picture

* Easy set-up

* Future proof for high definition TV

* Nice sound quality Cons

* Price, but hopefully not for long

Herald rating: 7/10 (higher if the price was lower)