agreed, that it is a pain to worry about the upscaling and conversion on the BRAIVA, but about 2 weeks ago i bought the new Bravia NX-500 40", and after an exhaustin run to almost countless stores i went for the bravia, and in the size that i was taking, LG and samsung were almost 6-7k cheaper.... and i was almost set on buying one of them, but then i found out the reason y as u said "BRAVIA IS HYPED". On the same file of 695MB that i used for testing was a cut from the movie GHOST RIDER [1080] and another was a cut from INDEPENDENCE DAY [1080][540MB].
In the picture of LG and samsung, about .5 to 1 inch of of the picture is cut-off from the right most border. while the bravia flawlessly coverd the whole scene... if u don't believe me check it out for urselves.. even at the stores where they play the same demo clips on all the models you can make out if u observe closely that bravia never clips out. that is the the only reason why i got the NX-500 and plus... it looks gorgeous!