Comment by amiga-workbench

I don't think the bad sound is necessarily deliberate, its more of a casualty of TV's becoming so very thin there's not enough room for a decent cavity inside.

I had a 720p Sony Bravia from around 2006 and it was chunky. It had nice large drivers and a big resonance chamber, it absolutely did not need a sound bar and was very capable of filling a room on its own.