Apologies for the delay, but the Sony KDL40X3500 review is now complete.
I haven’t received this much grief over a single review since I started this website. Some suggested that I was enjoying the TV so much that I forgot totally about writing the review. Some insinuated that I betrayed the trust of those who donated (my heartfelt thanks again) for the fundraising. A few challenged me to publish the settings to prove that what I write about the picture quality is true. Others emailed/ PMed me repeatedly urging me to release the review.
My reviews take a lot of time and effort, pure and simple. For each review I need to spend time on:
- Product photography, including cropping and resizing. Each review will typically contain between 15 to 30 photos… and unlike other websites/ magazines, stock photos are seldom used in my reviews.
- Calibration including screenshots of CCT and CIE charts. Depending on the difficulty on the HDTV in question, this can take a lot of time until the early hours of the morning. If it’s a plasma some time will be needed for run-in before calibration.
- Benchmark testing. I usually go through the checklist at least twice (sometimes more when the results are ambiguous) to make sure I don’t get it wrong.
- Write-up of review. This consumes the most time as I always strive to present a coherent flow rather than come across like a rambling madman (which is what I’m doing now haha). I still code all the reviews manually in HTML (don’t earn enough to pay a programmer to design a CMS).
- Upload of review to server and proofreading… it’s amazing how many times you need to read your own writings to pick up any mistake.
And this is excluding the time I need to post announcements like this, design and send out VIP polls, search for the cheapest deals (when I buy the TV to review), demo the TV when selling it as second-hand, etc.
Andrew Fee asked me recently what motivates me to continue to buy the HDTVs myself to review. I wish I knew, especially when my hard work is plagiarised without permission, when people copy and paste my content wholesale on public forums (snippets are fine) therefore tripping Google’s duplicate filter and getting my web page penalised, when other reviewers get away with 1 or 2-page reviews, when the honesty of my reviews (have you seen more negative points in each review anywhere else?) scares most manufacturers from ever sending me any review samples…
Till next time.
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