I went to a Circuit City recently to browse their HDTVs.. I found my favorite Sonys and Samsungs and tried to admire them for awhile.. but couldn't. They were hooked up to BluRay players. The Sony was playing Night at the Museum, and the Samsung was playing Casino Royale.

Something that really bugged me, in particular about the Sony, is how... cartoony it looked. I think it was something to do with the motion that just made it look like a poorly filmed cartoony movie. It was really distracting and I just couldn't enjoy it. However, I know these very models are very popular in the HD world (the Sony was an XBR4). Did they just have them calibrated very poorly? Or is this desired in the HD world, something I just need to get used to?

I don't know how to explain it any better than that.. I want to say it was just how the objects were moving against the background. It just looked weird.

The TV is sent from the factory to look very bright for a showroom environment, thus destroying the integrity of the original image. Most Sonys look very good after a proper calibration. The XBRs and higher end Samsungs are both fantastic after they are done. To answer your question, yes, they are in desperate need of calibration to get the most accurate image possible.

also, on the Sony, they may of had the motion enhancer set to "high", which IMO makes everything on the screen look like its floating around, almost CG

This is certainly a calibration issue. This may make some of it more clear to you, Kenaf:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13698499#post13698499

Something that really bugged me, in particular about the Sony, is how... cartoony it looked. I think it was something to do with the motion that just made it look like a poorly filmed cartoony movie. It was really distracting and I just couldn't enjoy it. However, I know these very models are very popular in the HD world (the Sony was an XBR4). Did they just have them calibrated very poorly? Or is this desired in the HD world, something I just need to get used to?

There certainly might have been calibration issues involved in your less than satisfying experience, but the particular problem you describe sounds more like sony's "Motionflow™ 120Hz" technology. From the 60 (or 24) frames the Blu-ray player puts out, the TV produces another 60 "artificial" frames to show the movie at a frame-rate of 120 hz. It makes horizontal pans look less jerky, but gives the movie an odd sense of "hand-held documentary", that I think is what you describe as cartoony.

the Samsungs have it too, they just call it Motion Plus.