I bought Sony KLV-40V550A 4 months back(July 09). This is a 40" Full HD LCD TV from PAI electronics in Indira Nagar, Bangalore. The sales person in PAI, was quite knowledgable(unlike most shops) and explained all details, especially the difference between LG and Sony. They delevered the TV on time at home.
Overall performance of the TV is quite good, but I think it is overpriced compared to competition like LG(Sony costed~ Rs 78K, you can get a 46 " LG with 10bit+100Hz for that price)
The picture quality is quite good, if you feed a good enough input(form a upscaled DVD player or blue ray). The performance with std def(Tatasky) is however below par for many channels. I think it may be mostly due to the problem of the tatasky quality on certain channels. Star movies, Asianet etc however are quite nice. The TV shines when it comes to displaying text and graphics. Peoples faces tends to be smooth and lacking details(again, blame it on the input).
The photo viewer is excellent(reads directly from any USB memory, not just from Sony make as mentioned in the manual). Good resolution and extra sharp contrast for photos.
The main drawbacks are:
Poor viewing angle compared to LG TV
Only 8 bit panel, no 100 Hz(did not see much difference in actual moving pictures though)
Too reddish color cast(for std definition inputs) can be corrected by manually adjusting while balance
Sound is not great(any way, you can’t expect a lot from those tiny speakers)
Having said that, the overall image quality is very good as long as you feed a decent resolution input(beats LG here).