Sony Bravia KDL-40HX703

After our look at the EX503 and NX803, it's time for us to move on to Sony's range of Cinematic TVs, and the first off the blocks is the HX703, a more lightweight version of the HX803 and HX903.  Backlighting with CCFL fluorescent tubes replaces the local dimming LEDs, which increases the overall thickness of the TV from 3 to 10 cm.  Some users will be even more disappointed by the lack of 3D.

On the other hand, it has the same Monolithic design as the other new Sony TVs, as well as 200 Hz Motionflow, lots of Internet services and WiFi connectivity via a USB adaptor sold separately.  Its multimedia capabilities are rounded off by support for DLNA networks and the ability to play video via the USB port.

Build Quality and Design

Just like on the NX803, the HX703's Monolithic design, with a single pane of glass covering the whole front surface, is hard to miss.  Of course, using glass is a guarantee of seeing reflections on the screen and getting it covered with greasy fingerprints.  That means you'll need to think carefully about where to put your new TV, avoiding direct light sources wherever possible, as well as children, unless you're willing to clean it regularly.

The ports along the side and at the back include four HDMI inputs, one Component video, two SCART sockets, VGA, an optical audio out and a USB port for connecting external storage devices.

At first sight, you might think you'd be able to hook up just about any external peripheral to the USB port and get on with watching your favourite films.  Alas, that's not the case: like the other TVs we've seen so far in Sony's class of 2010, the HX703 only has a pretty mediocre multimedia player.  It can only handle devices formatted as FAT32 with files of under 4 GB.  In cases like this, we stick to testing DivX video on TVs that don't support NTFS because these limitations mean you can't expect to get much joy out of other file formats.  And when we tried it, we could only get it to work with DivX SD, with no support for HD video.  A real media centre can do a lot more.



If you've read our tests of the NX803 or the EX503, you won't be surprised to hear what we have to say about the remote control, which is definitely not Sony's finest hour.  It's intuitive to use, but its square shape make it hard to hold and the individual keys don't have any backlighting.

Connecting a PC went off without a hitch, but we detected an input lag of 73 ms which gamers won't be impressed by.  It won't have any effect on performance for other people though.

Image Quality: Factory Settings

Sony claims that its 'Cinematic TVs ... combine innovative LED backlighting, advanced Motionflow technology and specially designed screens to bring you cinematic pictures with amazing detail, rich colours and superb contrast.'

After hearing so much about the 'cinematic' properties of this TV, we were very much looking forward to enjoying incredible picture quality that lived up to the hype straight out of the box.  In reality, though, things were very different.

Default colours aren't accurate: average deltaE of 5.1	Luminance histogram using the factory settings

The factory settings were an absolute disaster: colours had a blue tinge and the luminance graph was completely wrong.  To add insult to injury, the sharpness was too aggressive, resulting in a very hard picture without adding any extra detail.  Sony is trying very hard to seduce the general public with an attractive image, but has ended up with a completely unfaithful representation.

Image Quality: Custom Mode

If you do want to see something that's worthy of the name cinematic, we suggest you make a few adjustments to the default settings, starting by moving from 'Standard' mode to 'Custom'—your eyes will be eternally grateful.  This one step corrects all of the problems we mentioned earlier, but the resulting picture still seemed too bright for our liking.  We suggest you turn the backlighting down to 2 to get a brightness of 200 cd/m². 

Configured like this, the HX703 manages an excellent contrast ratio of just over 2 900:1.  The colours are also much more accurate, with an average deltaE of 1.6.  Remember that untrained viewers won't be able to spot any difference as soon as this figure falls below 3.0.


However, although it's a lot less visible, the HX703 does have one problem in common with the NX803.  As the image above that shows how the colour temperature changes across various shades of grey makes clear, the HX703 has a tendency to produce colours that are just a little too warm in lighter tones.

Showing films is just about impeccable.  Ghosting is very difficult to spot as soon as you turn on the Motionflow 200 Hz system.  You can have too much of a good thing though, and if you set it to 'High', the picture is adversely affected, suffering from visual artefacts that detract from the otherwise excellent quality HD display.

Upscaling SD sources to HD still loses a bit of detail, but is much better than on the EX503.  A dedicated device like a DVD player, Blu-ray disc player or PS3 will do a better job.

Clouding visible during tests

Clouding is a problem that can affect LCD displays where the brightness isn't spread out evenly across the whole panel, and occurs when the backlighting isn't even.  It's particularly noticeable when the screen is black or in particularly dark scenes.  As you can see in the photo above, some parts of the screen look lighter than others, even though it should be entirely black.

However, this problem was only visible when we used a test card that was entirely black, and we didn't have any problems with clouding at all when we were actually watching films.

Sound Quality

The sound quality is a little better than average but still a long way from being perfect.  Its main problem is the speakers that point towards the floor, meaning you lose all of the detail in the treble.  The audio certainly isn't the best we've heard, but it's good enough to watch a film without wanting to cover your ears.  We still recommend a real Home Cinema speaker kit if you really want a true cinematic experience.

Energy Consumption

On standby, energy consumption is perfectly controlled as it's below 0.1 W, or less than 15 p a year on your electricity bill if you leave it like that.  Once we'd set the brightness to around 200 cd/m²,  our measurements indicated a consumption of around 109 W.