Sony KDL-46Z4100 A combination of bests (in product quality and buying experience)

Let me start off by saying that my previous TV set was a 27 CRT from Panasonic. It was a great TV that I had purchased 5 years ago on sale for $190 at Circuit City. It still amazes me that after 5 moving (inter/intra cities and states) and after 4 TV stands this set stands like a rock (No really! It is that heavy).

Anyway, my quest started off with the first question that almost anyone would have at the beginning. Plasma vs. LCD. After reading tons of articles, comments and reviews on this subject I concluded that both were superior technologies and one couldn't go wrong choosing either one. It was a personal choice then.

Contradictory to my opinion "personal choice" really isn't that easy as it sounds. This being my first HDTV I had a whole bunch of questions creating chaos in my mind with zero answers to fight them off.

My requirements list looked something like this:

* Budget < $2000 (incl. tax, shipping and other basic cables)
* Size > 40 inches but less than 50 inches
* Preferred the best or second best brands in that technology. This is usually debatable but my choices were pretty clear with Sony and Samsung as one and two for LCDs and Pioneer and Panasonic for Plasma's respectively.
* Low power consumption
* Low heat emissions
* Deep blacks (as much as possible)
* Reasonably good speakers
* 120 Hz for a LCD

Luckily, some very personal choices like low electricity consumption and less heat emissions nailed my choice to a LCD pretty quickly.

So I started looking in to the Sony and Samsung lineups. Amazon had certain TVs with 5 stars based on 400+ reviewers. But once I checked them out at Fry's it was clear that they had a reflection problem. My living room has two huge windows and that would make it impossible to ignore it. Even otherwise when I looked at a Sony and its Samsung counter-part it was pretty clear that Sony was way ahead in clarity (No, I do not own a single Sony product).

From that point I concentrated solely on finding the best possible Sony for my budget and other requirements. In about an hour it was clear that the XBR line-ups were out of my price range. So I started delving into the Z-series which is the top of the line non-XBR set from Sony. In fact I think Sony never made a 46+ on this series to avoid XBR's sales drop. The S-series seemed to lack many of today's technology and the W-series was just today's technology that would be outdated in six months. The V-series fit somewhere in between. So clearly Z-series was the one.

My research made it easy to narrow down the retailers to Costco and Amazon. This is heavily biased and can be debatable again. For that very reason it is pointless to list my reasons on picking these retailers here.

Costco seemed to promote Sharp, Samsung and Vizio and hardly had Sony in its lineup. Amazon on the other hand had the Z-series for a huge discount (30% for the black which was my preference). While I debated and kept reading articles on the "best time to buy a HDTV" it became clearer that the answer could only be "when you are ready to buy". So I placed the order on Amazon.com

I am waiting for my set to arrive. Will update on the experience once I get through it.

UPDATE:
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In my last post I wrote about my experience in ordering a Sony LCD from Amazon.com. I had ordered a KDL-46Z4100 (black) from Amazon on the 29th of October and the delivery estimate was the 8th of November. They did better ... it was delivered on the 5th.

The logistics was handled by Eagle/CEVA and they called up and gave us a time range of 9 to 1. It was delivered around 12:30. I was happy with the way everything was handled and would definetely recommend Amazon/CEVA after my experiences.

Note: CEVA delivery guys said that even though Amazon promises white glove delivery which includes setting up the TV on its pedestal CEVA does not authorize them to do it. It was not tough to get it on to the pedestal but I was a bit curious to know why Amazon doesn't mention this online.