4066 replies to this topic

[laurie]

This should help those that need to see what Owners have to say about their new toy  :blink:

cheers laurie

[...]

I don't own one but would like to.

Can I post here? :blink:

[AndrewWilliams]

Yep, as soon as you've bought one. :blink:

[laurie]

Maybe you should start the ball rolling Andrew as a happy owner this is my last post here for reasons as per heading  :blink:

cheers laurie

[Dissociative]

i keep hearing that these displays do a poor job of (SD) DTV - are any of you owners finding this to be the case at all?

[HoffY]

In my view i would say they do a good job of SD content. I expected it to be worse.  This is FTA SD i'm reffering to.  Granted if you're sitting at around 2.2mteres from it it will look like utter shite.  But tere is nothing you can really (greatly) do about that as its a 1080p display thats 1524mm in size.  somethings gotta give and its the 1/5th resolution footage that will. :D

If your'e doing to watch a lot of SD then just sit back a bit further till its not noticeable or acceptable.  thats what i have my family members doing.  However after watching smallville then flicking over to SD smallville... even at a far distance i could tell it was... well... crappier. lol.  But still.. does a good a job as one could expect  i would say.

cricket's on now. looks quite ok at 2.5m. :P

PS.  i'm an owner.  i can post here.  double yay :blink:

[AndrewWilliams]

These displays look as good as ANY consumer display of this size on SD content.  Sure you might be able to squeeze an extra tiny hint of detail out of SD by using an external processing setup but frankly it's hard to be so concerned about SD when HD is knocking on the door.

The setup menus are more complicated than your average TV but they also let you customise the picture to your own preference.  DRC, which is really just an adjustable adaptive deinterlacing system, gives you a lot of control over how your SD pictures appear.  It's pretty cool once you get the hang of it and gives my HTPC a run for its money.  I don't know what deinterlacing chip Sony use but it's one of the better ones.

That said, one of the reasons I went for the 60" over the 70" is the fact that there's still going to be a heck of a lot of SD content around for the next 5 years so it's something of a compromise.  At 2.5-2.8m I reckon I've found an ideal distance for both SD & HD content.  For 3-4m viewing I'd recommend getting the 70"

A few other people seem to be having some powering down issues but so far that hasn't happened to me yet (3 weeks of use.)  Functionally, mine hasn't missed a beat and I've got nothing to complain about.

The convergence on my 60" was very good out of the box.  It's out by about 1/3 of a pixel which is completely unnoticeable from 0.5m or more.  The geometry is very good too.  I have about a 5 pixel dip in the centre-top of the screen which sounds like a lot but in practice it's barely noticeable and you have to look hard to see it - even with a PC desktop.

I can't really comment on Xbox 360 performance since I've only tried a mate's briefly when I first got the TV and I wasn't paying too much attention.  From memory, we tried 720p and 1080i via component and both looked excellent.  The VGA input on these TVs is a dud though.  Naturally, HDMI via a PC looks sensational.

Currently I'm planning on giving the dual centre speaker option a go (one below and one above the display) but unfortunately my crappy receiver doesn't have pre-outs so I'm not sure what my plan of attack will be.

For anyone who owns a programmable remote, I can confirm that all of the discrete codes from remotecentral.com for Sony TVs work fine.

That'll do for now but I'm sure I'll think of plenty more to add to this thread.  :blink:

[Riv39]

I have this to say about my 70", if you are viewing off axis (vertical i.e. eye level approx 200mm from base of screen)) then you can expect a colour impurity for approx 60min after power up.  This will show as a pink band on the bottom third of the screen and a green band on the next third.  They both seem to resolve slowly over the first 60min to what appears a normal picture.  The tint is very mild and I am the only one to notice out of my family and again I stress that it only appears to be noticeable off axis when viewing predominately white images or B & W movies.

I don't believe this was apparent during the first few weeks of viewing but i could be wrong as it may have taken me this long to notice it.

Still first class PQ in my opinion........and yes even most SD looks good to me (I let the TV scale the SD broadcast not my C26 Toshiba STB).

[MLXXX]

The MLXXX household is the proud owner of a new 60" SXRD.  There is still much to be explored, but here are some findings so far.

Setting up

Analogue auto-tuning had to be manually activated, as did digital TV auto-tuning. With picture in picture mode, the analogue and digital pictures could be compared side by side.

The external input selector button is a pain as it has to be cycled through starting with legacy inputs; although any unused input can be set to 'skip' (using 'Edit video labels').

Picture quality through the digital tuner set to an HD channel was quite good.

I changed the picture setting from vivid to standard, and the 'advanced iris' setting from auto 2 to auto 1.

I disabled DRC mode, as I found it interfered when I was trying for good resolution with PC input through HDMI.

My PC has a DVI video output.  For about $15, I acquired a DVI  to HDMI adaptor.  I then used an HDMI cable to connect from the PC to the TV.  (Alternatively an HDMI to VGA adaptor could have been used at the TV end, plus a DVI cable.)

Screen geometry
The first few seconds of viewing was of the tennis, and MLXXX's eagle eye immediately saw that the tennis court lines on the left hand side had a slight curve.   :blink: However over subsequent hours of general video viewing, this was not noticeable.

Measurement revealed relatively minor discrepancies.

In the diagram below, the outer rectangle represents the 1920x1080 picture with no overscan.  Points A to E make up an inside rectangle (the brown dots), and are the outermost points of what can actually be seen on the screen.  (There is significant overscan, as is the conventional practice with all televisions.)

|...............................................................................
.........|
|..A......................................B........................................
C..|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|..D................................................................................E..|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|...................................................................................
.....|
|..F.........................................G.....................................
H..|
|...............................................................................
.........|

I'm a little unsure of the pixel measurements horizontally but as best I could establish, the figures are as follows:

A is 33 pixels down, and 50 pixels in from the left.
B is 29 pixels down.
C is 33 pixels down and 50 pixels in from the right.
D is 49 pixels in from the left.
E is 47 pixels in from the right.
F is 25 pixels up from the bottom, and 52 pixels to the right.
G is 30 pixels up from the bottom.
H is 30 pixels up from the bottom, and 49 pixels in from the right.

So of a 1920x 1080 picture about 1820 x 1020 pixels can be seen, representing an overscan factor of around 5%.  Here is how my test pattern looked:
http://www.dtvforum....t...ost&id=2359

[Edit, April 2012. How the screen looked can now be found at http://www.dtvforum....ndpost&p=560794 ]

The digital camera used contributed its own geometrical artefacts.

It will be noted the 'horizontal shift' on the SXRD is set at 1, which seemed equivalent to about 6 pixels.  Before that adjustment, the whole picture was a little left of centre.

Convergence
I tried to take photographs of a convergence test pattern but it proved too difficult.  A verbal description will have to suffice.  Green appeared to occupy one pixel width, blue 1.5, and red almost 2.  But red only did this horizontally, not vertically.  More experiments needed.  Convergence was affected by the sharpness control and the noise filter.  Surprisingly a high noise filter setting gave better results.  Not surprisingly, a higher sharpness gave a sharper result.


Colour
The colour was not as good as I have seen from this model, and I will need to investigate some of the settings further.  [Superior colour is what persuaded me to buy this model, particularly with Blu-ray or other high bit-rate 1920x1080 material.]


Overall impression
The Free to Air HD channels looked surprisingly good, and the large screen adds enjoyment.  There is a lot of detail of in the picture for inquisitive eyes.  In comparison, standard definition usually looked rather poor.

The sound was passable, better than other modern sets I have heard.

Over the next day or two I'll be setting up other equipment, including a surround speaker system.

If I can just succeed in getting the colour adjusted, this purchase will have met my expectations!   :D

*****************************************************************
Setting up a PC desk-top
My graphics card uses the ATI Catalyst Control Centre ('CCC') software.  The CCC offered standard 1920x1080 HDTV modes, but in addition a custom HDTV resolution of 1776 x 1000.  I tried that but it left a noticeable black border.

With the help of Powerstrip (easily downloaded from the net), I ended up creating my own custom resolution of 1824x1010.  I had to use 1010 rather than 1020 because for some reason the picture had a slight bias upwards, and unlike the 'horizontal shift' in the SXRDs menu, there is no 'vertical shift' for digital inputs.

Once the custom resolution was set up, it could be accessed without needing to run Powerstrip (although the CCC is only letting it run at 60p rather than 50p, at this stage).

In setting the custom resolutions, the following guidelines were adhered to:
Total horizontal pixels 2640 (including synch pulses and front and back porch).
Total vertical pixels 1125 (ditto).
Horizontal synch pulse width 40.
Refresh rate 50Hz (not interlaced).
The above should result in a pixel clock of 148.5 MHz.
The SXRD reports the above as 1080p even though there are fewer active vertical pixels than 1080 and fewer active horizontal pixels than 1920.

Here is a picture of the desktop fitting on the SXRD (also showing the Powerstrip settings):
http://www.dtvforum....t...ost&id=2361

Edited by MLXXX, 15 April 2012 - 07:17 PM.

[AndrewWilliams]

MLXXX, on Jan 3 2007, 05:03 AM, said:

I disabled DRC mode, as I found it interfered when I was trying for good resolution with PC input through HDMI.

Are you using 1080p?  If not then you probably should.  DRC isn't even an option when you're running a progressive mode.

[MLXXX]

AndrewWilliams, on Jan 3 2007, 12:41 PM, said:

Are you using 1080p?  If not then you probably should.  DRC isn't even an option when you're running a progressive mode.

I disabled DRC very early on when I was using the default 1920x1080i provided by the CCC software for my PCs graphics card.  I then input a custom resolution and operated at 1080p [actually 1010p active pixels].  Checking a moment ago, I see you are quite right: the DRC option is greyed out.

At 1080i there was a small amount of line twitter in isolated parts of the picture, which disappeared on changing to 1080p.

[MLXXX]

Day 2 with set

Great viewing from Toppy

Hooked up the Topfield SD PVR, and checked out some old recordings.

Surprising clean picture, even though only SD.

It was a revelation re-watching some of the recorded programs.  On the 60" SXRD, details in the background previously overlooked just jumped out of the screen.  [Previous set was a 30" HD CRT with unspectacular visible resolution.]

The difference was so great, more of the old recordings will need to be watched again!

Viewing distance

In another thread, I mentioned a viewing distance of 1700mm. Since then the TV has been moved to a different spot in the room.  Currently the viewing distance depends on whether the viewing is at the edge of the seat!  (1.7m), or relaxing into the couch (2.2m).

DVDs

Quality of DVD playback varied.  Some were poor - a large screen shows up deficiencies. Most of them came up well, though lacking the clarity of an HD DTV broadcast.  Some of the DVDs will now need to be watched again, to appreciate the extra detail, now clearly visible.

Playing back movies with the PC from its DVI port through a DVI to HDMI adaptor

This worked well after reducing contrast, and setting the 'black corrector' in advanced adjustments to off.  The PC would have been outputting a full range of intensity levels, 0 to 255 to its DVI port, rather than the conventional 16 to 235 from a stand-alone DVD player.

Again there was so much detail visible on the 60" screen, e.g. furnishings, costumes, scenery, facial expressions; that had previously simply passed unnoticed.

Colour
The colour seemed slightly better on day 2, perhaps due to slight ageing of the lamp, perhaps simply due to my getting used to the set!  I have not gone into the advanced adjustments menu to adjust colour 'bias' and 'intensity'.  That will be an activity for another day.

[Owen]

Congrats on your acquisition mate.

Now that you have a BIG 1080 display you have discovered that it is a VERY different ball game to your 30” TV or PC monitor. You see things that you just don’t notice on the small screens.

I’m am sure it will alter your outlook on HD and resolution issues. :blink:

[dlenaid]

We have the 70" TV and think it is a good set. But think we bought the wrong TV. It is not good for standard television which is what we watch all the time. We have moved  sofa back so we cannot see all the rubbish in standard definition telecast but now we cannot enjoy it with Blu-ray and high definition telecast. But not much high definition telecast on TV and we only have two Blu-ray discs. For even high defintion TV and discs it will shows all rubbish in the picture.

I think it too small a television for high definition and too big for standard definition.

[Greebs]

Well, I finally got around to hooking up the PS2 (via component) to my 60" today. At first I thought it was terrible, but after turning off BNR noise reduction (changed it to medium), it was pretty good - with BNR on it was very ghosted - looked like a bad analogue signal and I thought the cable might be a bit dodgy at first. Certainly not anything like hi-def gaming, but it did a pretty good job of upscaling the 576i input. Was better than I expected to be honest.

[Nullack]

dlenaid, on Jan 4 2007, 07:54 PM, said:

We have the 70" TV and think it is a good set. But think we bought the wrong TV. It is not good for standard television which is what we watch all the time. We have moved  sofa back so we cannot see all the rubbish in standard definition telecast but now we cannot enjoy it with Blu-ray and high definition telecast. But not much high definition telecast on TV and we only have two Blu-ray discs. For even high defintion TV and discs it will shows all rubbish in the picture.

I think it too small a television for high definition and too big for standard definition.

If you have found my settings to not be effective using the internal Bravia scaling engine, maybe you could try using an external HD scaler? They are expensive but you might be able to trial one from a hifi store or something? It's also been said the shortly to be released Denon receivers will have the terenex chip in them. This would be killing two birds with one stone - top class external scaling with decoding support for the new HD audio formats.

[MLXXX]

Owen, on Jan 4 2007, 02:46 PM, said:

Congrats on your acquisition mate.

Now that you have a BIG 1080 display you have discovered that it is a VERY different ball game to your 30” TV or PC monitor. You see things that you just don’t notice on the small screens.

I’m am sure it will alter your outlook on HD and resolution issues. :blink:

Thanks mate.  At least I'm getting 1:1 pixel mapping on this set, albeit with overscan.   :D

dlenaid, on Jan 4 2007, 06:54 PM, said:

We have the 70" TV and think it is a good set. But think we bought the wrong TV. It is not good for standard television which is what we watch all the time. We have moved  sofa back so we cannot see all the rubbish in standard definition telecast but now we cannot enjoy it with Blu-ray and high definition telecast. But not much high definition telecast on TV and we only have two Blu-ray discs. For even high defintion TV and discs it will shows all rubbish in the picture.

I think it too small a television for high definition and too big for standard definition.

Hi dlenaid.  People tell me I'm very critical of picture quality, but I have found the performance of my 60" SXRD quite good on all standard definition channels except SBS.

I wonder if you could advise:
*Which standard definition channels have you been watching?
*What viewing distance are you using to watch them?
*How do you rate the picture quality you are getting from your ordinary DVDs?

SBS high definition is not that much better than their standard definition.  I understand SBS's budget is limited and they do not invest a great deal in their transmitting equipment.  They even seem to broadcast at low signal strength (at least in Brisbane).

I've compared the picture from my Topfield standard definition PVR through component, with the SXRD's internal tuner, and the SXRDs is a little better; but you have the 70" model so there would be no internal tuner.

I note that you were using a Sony HD PVR, and someone suggested an LG as it supposedly has better picture quality.

It does surprise me you are finding the SD transmissions so poor, unless you mainly watch SBS.

MLXXX, on Jan 4 2007, 03:56 AM, said:

...
Colour
The colour seemed slightly better on day 2, perhaps due to slight ageing of the lamp, perhaps simply due to my getting used to the set!  I have not gone into the advanced adjustments menu to adjust colour 'bias' and 'intensity'.  That will be an activity for another day.

Since I wrote the above, the set has been in use for a further 7 hours or so, doubling as a computer monitor in addition to its function as a TV.

I am finding the colour even better this evening.  It is beginning to attain the uncanny realism I saw in the showroom.  Ultra High Pressure lamps are supposed to vary with age, losing brightness, but I am surprised at how much variation I have noticed so far in the colour.  My partner has also noticed the improvement.  This is a most interesting phenomenon.  When these sets are reviewed, I wonder whether the manufacturer supplies a set with a lamp that has been 'run in'.

[pietro]

Well I am now an SXRD owner…the 70”.  I had to dispose of my Tosh DLP, even though I loved the PQ.  Castel couldn’t guarantee me a set without the diagonal lines on the screen, which were unacceptable.

To me the glory of the SXRD is the colours…….rich and deep. The clincher was the Edinburgh Tattoo…..absolutely superb colour, especially reds which had no hint of over-saturation. The Tosh was poor on reds and yellows, though I wasn’t able to have it calibrated.

I think the SXRD takes 70-80 hours to settle in;  I was underwhelmed with it for a couple of weeks as it didn’t seem to have the amazing clarity and impact of the DLP. However with much tweaking, and no doubt more to come, I am very happy with it, especially on good HD. Others have complained about the SD on FTA and I have decided that since some SD looks almost as good as HD (eg. ROME) then the problems are more source related.

But mine definitely has an issue with convergence. See Could other owners please have a look and see how their sets compare. When watching the cricket (I sit at 4m) I can often see a red edge on the right of the white outfit, and a green edge on the left. Maybe because I have had 3 CRT RPTVs before I am very prone to noticing any convergence problems. I believe that with any RPTV with the 3 colours separated there will always be a problem to some degree. That was one area where the DLP was perfect.

But, since I live in the country I believe I have little hope of getting a Sony tech who has any knowledge of SXRD convergence. Also, after reading some of the AVS forums, some people who have fiddled with convergence have ended up with green faces or other colour problems on the set. And I think the colour on mine and the even lighting of the screen are spot-on. So I should probably stick to the devil I know.

The SSE is quite apparent, especially on bright whites and on skies. Also sometimes on faces. But I’d rather that than SDE.

The fan-noise is also quite noticeable. The manual says this is possible when the ambient noise is low. My background noise is very very low. So I might have to put up with that as well. As a matter of interest does anyone know if the fan can be replaced in the home?

As far as settings go, I started with OZHTfan’s posted settings and tweaked from there to try to get the best and most detailed picture on HD, which after all is why I bought the set. I have my Tosh J35PVR set at 1080i as to me it scales better than the TV. I  wonder whether different STBs and PVRs would have different PQ?  So:

HDMI 1
Iris auto 2
Contrast (Picture) 83
Brightness 53
Colour 43
Black corrector off
Detail enhancer medium
Edge enhancer off
DRC Mode 1
DRC palette 33/33. (Still needs a lot more experimenting with this)
Sharpness 40
BNR on sometimes (helps mpeg blocking)
Warm 1
Low power.

All others at default.

I’m also quite happy with the results on Austar. I can post my settings if anyone is interested.

Despite Owen’s thoughts about brightness I find the Sony on low power similar to the Tosh on low lamp setting. Plenty of brightness during the day but not excessive at night. The blacks are similar, though I can’t help thinking the DLP is slightly better.


If anyone is interested is a pic of my HT. Yes the centre speaker is on the shelf below. I would have thought modern tweeters would have a wide angle of dispersion anyway. And the stand is the Toshiba DLP stand.

Sorry for the size of this post.

EDIT: Problems getting the pics into my previous post:

Convergence:

here is a pic of my HT. Yes the centre speaker is on the shelf below. I would have thought modern tweeters would have a wide angle of dispersion anyway. And the stand is the Toshiba DLP stand.

Sorry for the size of this post.

EDIT: Problems getting the pics into my previous post:

Convergence:

here

HT setup:

[url="http://files.myopera.com/pietro99/albums/23707/MY%20HT.jpg"]here

[blacknbrindle]

Well i finally took the plunge and ordered my 60 inch today , hopefully take delivery some time around mid next week if all goes well .
Will have to take down all the settings you guys have posted on here so i can have a play when the set arives . Good thing i started my holidays as of today so i have plenty of time to play around with the set and calibrate it to my liking . Glad i found this site as its helped make my decision making process much easier .  :blink:

[AndrewWilliams]

Pietro, it definitely looks like you've got some convergence issues there.  Luckily it can be fixed via the service menu.  You can move the RGBs in 1 pixel increments.

[pietro]

AndrewWilliams, on Jan 5 2007, 06:30 PM, said:

Pietro, it definitely looks like you've got some convergence issues there.  Luckily it can be fixed via the service menu.  You can move the RGBs in 1 pixel increments.

I think it was Dr Smith who has had convergence altered. Have any other owners had this adjusted? It is disappointing that the set can have problems.....so many early  reviewers said SXRDs didn't have any such issues.

[houng]

Pietro

Interesting to get a review from someone who has had the Toshi 72" DLP and based on this I won't be moving to the SXRD if I can get the diagonal line issue fixed -  I'm  very surprised Castel told you they couldn't guarantee a fix for this fault.

[pietro]

Huong

They don't seem to have a fix. Even new light-engines from Singapore couldn't be guaranteed to be fault free they said. Although they said 99% of people don't notice. I can't believe that.

[houng]

pietro, on Jan 5 2007, 07:51 PM, said:

Huong

They don't seem to have a fix. Even new light-engines from Singapore couldn't be guaranteed to be fault free they said. Although they said 99% of people don't notice. I can't believe that.

Pietro,

thanks, oh dear, the fault is so obvious I can't believe what Castel  told you. I will contact them next week.

You commented the SXRD was noisy - how does it compare to the Toshi which was my only other criticism of it.

[drsmith]

pietro, on Jan 5 2007, 06:47 PM, said:

I think it was Dr Smith who has had convergence altered. Have any other owners had this adjusted? It is disappointing that the set can have problems.....so many early  reviewers said SXRDs didn't have any such issues.

It was.

Looking at the convergence image from your earlier post there does appear to be a problem with convergence, however a better indication of any convergence error will be obtained by displaying a PC desktop at the SXRD's native resolution (1920x1080) via DVI from PC to HDMI on the SXRD.

This display offers 1:1 pixel mapping at native resolution, so an image of text from a web page at native should reveal far more on any convergence error than your above image.

I only had a one pixel convergence error with one colour, but yours may be more pronounced given that it can be seen on the picture menu and that you notice a problem from a normal viewing distance. I had a service tech correct mine via the service menu under the Sony warranty.

I find the fan to be very quiet on the normal setting, but if the cooling mode is set to high the fan operates at a higher speed and is somewhat noisier.