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Also markedly improved over previous Bravias are the 32D3000’s colours. They’re marginally richer and cleaner, and tend to look more natural thanks to a wider palette - even during tricky dark scenes like those in the Precog’s sleep chamber in Minority Report. Furthermore, colour blends seemed to be fractionally finer.

The last big performance ‘tick’ registered by the 32D3000 concerns its HD detailing, as it produces as crisp and textured an image as we’ve seen on a 32in TV. Or at least that’s the case when things aren’t moving around too much…

For while the Motionflow +100Hz system markedly improves upon the quite blurry motion seen on the first Bravia range, objects still noticeably lose resolution if they start travelling at a real rate of knots. What’s more, although the effect is nowhere near as defined as with the disappointing Sharp 100Hz TV we reviewed recently, we also spotted signs of shimmering noise around the edges of moving objects too, as if the Sony processing engine can’t always keep up with the action.

There’s another, slightly more controversial reason why we haven’t given the 32D3000 a higher overall mark than eight, too, namely that the TV isn’t big enough to get the most out of all the picture processing finery it contains.

What we’re getting at with this is that even with our face stuck pretty much right up against the 32D3000, we just didn’t feel that we were fully appreciating the potential benefits of, say, the extra colour subtlety made possible by the 10-bit engine; the extra clarity made possible by the 24p True Cinema engine; the extra shadow detailing made possible by the impressive black levels; or even to some extent the extra motion clarity made possible by the Motionflow system.

Verdict

In terms of features and specifications the 32D3000 is a huge step forward from previous Bravia LCDs - and there are definite picture performance benefits too. Yet we just can’t shake the feeling that with some of the features appearing somewhat wasted on a set as small as this, perhaps the 32D3000’s slightly premium price is more than you really need to pay for a good 32in TV.

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