74 replies to this topic

[Drizt]

JohnA, on Oct 25 2011, 10:55 AM, said:

i'll check it out tomorrow for you and report back...cant say i have noticed it though, but will double check it now

Hi mate, did you notice it ?

[JohnA]

sorry mate, havent had a chance to give it a shot.
Will be watching on stranger tides tomorrow so will report back then

[JohnA]

Hey Drizt, sorry for the delayed review. No issues that i noticed mate.
Left the menu screen up for a little while also

[Drizt]

Great to hear mate, thanks.

[decaydent]

Apologies for the length of this post, but I wanted to paint as complete a picture as possible.

This may not be the most appropriate place to post this question, but as this is my first post (despite being a recurrent reader for many years) I seem to have limited options.  I also have been considering a 65" or larger screen. I was initially considering a Pana H-P65ST30a but having looked at all the large ones out there I do not like any of the plasmas I have seen - the appearance is a little soft for my taste and the whites just look dirty. I also would prefer to go with something more energy efficient, so am looking at LCD.  I looked yesterday at the Sharp LC70LE735x and whilst the HD content looked very impressive to my eyes, the fta TV feed in the shop looked terrible on every TV I looked at.  A sort of 'crazing effect' (like paint) on faces and text and general softness of the picture were the main issues.  

I always understood that digital TV either gave you a good picture or it failed to give you a picture at all, but the Sony 55hx925 I watched in the same shop as the Sharp had a much worse picture  than the same model I had watched cricket on at the Sony Centre in Drummoyne a few days earlier.  So I take it that the digital TV feed can still give you variable quality.  I should add that I have purchased a Lumagen Radiance mini 3d which is winging its way towards me as I write (together with the gear to enable me to calibrate the TV accurately), which I am hoping will help in improving any TV and other SD source that I feed to my final TV.

The other serious contender is the Sony 65hx925, but I am baulking at spending $10k on a package like that offered by SOny when the only thing I want is a TV with optimum picture quality.  I'm not even much interested in 3D and hence the attraction of the big Sharp.  I have looked at the LG 65LW6500 and find that the blacks are poor and the 3D gives my wife a headache, so not really interested in that.

My questions are these.  How much of an improvement should I expect to get to the source using the Lumagen?  Should I use a low quality DVD (as in early TV series) as the instore measure of what I should realistically get with SD FTA TV? Are there any other actions I can take to reassure myself of the likely quality of the picture once I get a TV home?

Frankly I welcome any constructive suggestions as to which course of action to take or which TV to purchase.  I should add that my viewing distance is about 3.8m and my room has one long north facing wall completely made up of windows to which the TV will be perpendicular, so that in daylight hours it is VERY bright. Finally, I have a large DVD library of mainly older films and intend to retain these as my primary non Freeview content (can't justify the cost of upgrading to BD and many titles are simply not available), although will be getting Austar also next year.. Many thanks.

Edited by decaydent, 14 December 2011 - 09:33 AM.

[Drizt]

Not sure if it helps anyone but my folks bought a Samsung 64D8000 from Myer for $2900 (pick up)

[diesel]

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 10:28 AM, said:

I always understood that digital TV either gave you a good picture or it failed to give you a picture at all, but the Sony 55hx925 I watched in the same shop as the Sharp had a much worse picture  than the same model I had watched cricket on at the Sony Centre in Drummoyne a few days earlier.  So I take it that the digital TV feed can still give you variable quality.  

The other serious contender is the Sony 65hx925, but I am baulking at spending $10k on a package like that offered by SOny when the only thing I want is a TV with optimum picture quality.  I'm not even much interested in 3D and hence the attraction of the big Sharp.  I have looked at the LG 65LW6500 and find that the blacks are poor and the 3D gives my wife a headache, so not really interested in that.

I can't comment on the Lumagen, but in relation to DVB broadcasts, the quality varies in the sense of how it's encoded at the broadcast end. Some shows are real soft, yet on the same service, some look OK. There are also different bitrates amongst the different services provided and this has a big effect on PQ.

If you are going for large LED/LCD then I think the best option is to get backlit LED TV. This will reduce 'clouding' issues which are common on large LCD screens, and also improve black level performance. There are only two brands that I know of that sell backlit LED and that is Sony and Sharp. Local dimming backlit LED is expensive to manufacture, hence the high cost of these sets. That said, 3-4 years ago, a 60" Pioneer Kuro was similar money, and I think that level of performance is still relatively expensive - even the Panasonic 65"XV300 is up there.
Unfortunately I think LED does suffer the most in PQ when fed a poor source such as SD FTA.

Some reviews
Sony Bravia XBR-55HX929 3D LED LCD HDTV
Sharp Elite PRO-60X5FD 3D LED LCD HDTV

[diesel]

Drizt, on Dec 14 2011, 10:51 AM, said:

Not sure if it helps anyone but my folks bought a Samsung 64D8000 from Myer for $2900 (pick up)

$2700-$2900 seems to be the new benchmark for the 64" D8000

Edited by diesel, 14 December 2011 - 10:09 AM.

[Owen]

Digital either works or it doesn't as you suspected, however retailers often use a stand alone tuner and an analogue video distribution system to feed the TV's rather than an antenna feed and the TV"s internal tuners, this can result in all sorts of problems. If you cant change channels on the TV that's what's happening.
Its better to take your own video source, DVD's with your own DVD player and or a PVR with a range of recorded TV programs, this allows the source to be consistent when evaluating.
TV setup is very important, attempting to make SD look sharp is a sure way to a nasty picture. How much improvement in overall quality the Lumagen will make is very dependant on how good the TV is to begin with, if the TV is good and well set up the Lumagen cant do much to improve the picture, especially at a 3.8 metre viewing distance.

Unfortunately the TV you want is not available to my knowledge, the 64-65" Plasmas give good picture quality and decent SD performance but wont be happy in your very bright room during the day. The big LCD's will tolerate your sunroom conditions much better but SD performance and overall picture quality will be ordinary, day or night.

[Owen]

diesel, on Dec 14 2011, 11:07 AM, said:

If you are going for large LED/LCD then I think the best option is to get backlit LED TV. This will reduce 'clouding' issues which are common on large LCD screens, and also improve black level performance.

LED edge lighting causes "flash lighting" because the light comes in from the edges like a flashlight, "clouding" is due to LCD panel non uniformity problems and is common on LCD's of any size with any lighting system.
LED back lighting does not improve black level performance unless local dimming is employed, however local dimming brings its own set of problems that may or may no annoy the viewer.

Just about all non local dimming LCD's these days use global dimming or dynamic lighting, this dynamic lighting can be very distracting and annoying as the whole picture gets dimmer or brighter depending on the scene even though the input signal has not called for it, what's worse this unwelcome dynamic behaviour cannot be disabled on some models.
LCD's without dynamic lighting have a consistent and more natural look but dont have good blacks in a dark room as LCD panels have a relatively poor native contrast ratio.
Dynamic lighting of any kind is not desirable as it is a form of distortion, it helps make the blacks in dark scenes darker and gives manufactures an excuse to quote ridiculous contrast ratio numbers that have no relevance to real world viewing as bright and dark content cannot be displayed at the same time. Local dimming is intended to address that problem but to date the dimming zones have been too large resulting in ghosting and problems with shadow detail as dimming a zone dims all the pixels in it whether they should be dimmed or not.

Dynamic lighting is a crappy idea and no substitute for a high native contrast ratio.

Edited by Owen, 14 December 2011 - 01:04 PM.

[pgdownload]

Quote

I always understood that digital TV either gave you a good picture or it failed to give you a picture at all

As mentioned its possible their was an analogue distribution in store of the digital signal. If possible check out what cable is feeding an image to a TV (if its composite (R/W/Y) then this is pretty much the lowest PQ cable.

The digital cliff does perform as you mention. There's a small window between picture and no picture where you'll get sound drop outs, sudden pixelation blooms and image freezing but that's all pretty obvious and nothing to do with PQ in general.

SD DVDs tend to look very good on big screens - even with no upscaling. Most DVD players now days come with basic HDMI upscaling but the Lumagen should be even better. I suspect you'll be well happy with the result.

That said FTA SD can be a bit variable on such a large screen. Even more so will be even lower bit rate Austar SD channels. How much they can be scrubbed up by the Lumagen is debatable (the phase can't polish a ... comes to mind) That said most posters with said combo (PayTV and Big screen) seem happy enough with the result - there seems to be an underlying accpetance that PayTV is about the content not the quality

I agree its almost impossible to get a definite answer to how will this TV look in my home but you can be pretty assured that almost any TV will look better at home than in store. Best you can do IMO is see if there's any really objectionable qualities in store that you can't adjust out and then rely on various posts about how others thought once it got home.

End of the day, with your budget and the quality of TV tech these days (and the dedicated upscaler) you're unlikely to take home something you won't find pretty amazing to watch. Also remember that our eyes seem to take a few days getting used to new TVs and the brain starts filtering out annoyances rather than being drawn to them.

Regards

Peter Gillespie

[jliang70]

diesel, on Dec 14 2011, 11:08 AM, said:

$2700-$2900 seems to be the new benchmark for the 64" D8000

The price on these TVs are lowering very fast just saw one guy posted $23?? figure on this TV.  I got the 59'' D8000 it is a lovely TV provided calibration is done properly.  This TV has two initial settings ' Home' and 'Store'.  Most store use 'Store' setting which had contrast set around 95 out of 100, brightness around 70 out of 100, greyscale and CMS largely sat at default with that you get a bright picture and oversaturated colour.  On my own set the HD channel in the morning can look down right awful but look great with some of the newer programs in the evening.   So PQ on FTA HD channel will vary depends on the programs and a video processor will make some poor quality program more watchable but won't polish the turd.  What you buy  will depend on your viewing habit for me I watch most of my stuff at night so I would not spend more than $2500 on a TV and if I want to experience movie in a larger screen I would use my JVC projector.

[decaydent]

Thanks everyone for your responses. Hmm, I'm struggling a bit with inserting quoted text, so I'll just have to get by without.

Firstly thanks for confirming my suspicion re free to air feed.  The HN where I saw the Sharp 70" cannot have used the analogue distribution system as I was able to change channels on a number of their TVs, including the Sharp.  In addition, Owen, as I said I have seen the Sharp yesterday in HN Fyshwick and will be viewing the 65" Sony in Sydney later this week, so both TVs are definitely available - just apparently in short supply.

However, it seems the news is not good, in that my expectations have been dampened by the general comments above.  If the quality I was seeing is really representative of (although maybe a little worse than) what I can expect when I get the TV home then I'm beginning to wonder whether the upgrade is worth it.  I am going back tomorrow to Fyshwick with a couple of DVDs and player to take another look at the Sharp.

"SD DVDs tend to look very good on big screens - even with no upscaling. " I'm a little perplexed why a 576i DVD would look significantly better than a 576i TV broadcast, but I presume it relates to the "encoding at the broadcast end".  But I understood that the Lumagen basically 'unpacked and repacked' the signal to optimise it and was thus anticipating a better outcome.

Owen, I was initially going to go down the Pana 65ST30 path with the Lumagen as you recommended in another place.  But to be frank, the whites on all the plasmas I have looked at closely seem much closer to beige in colour.  As this has been a fairly consistent theme, I presumed it could not be simply a poor setting on a few TVs... Although maybe they are unable to perform well with all the ambient light in a store showroom?  Am I reading you correctly in that you are sticking with the plasma option providing the best outcome here?  I'll just have to stick to night time viewing I guess.  

On the subject of projectors, the Chancellor of the Exchequor in this house has ruled that option out absolutely. She has also a fairly strong negative take on the plasmas which is one of the reasons why my efforts have been more focused on LCD options.  However, I took a friend with me who is a plasma afficionado last weekend and he agreed that the smaller Sony 55hx925 had a better overall picture than the Pana 65VT30 next to it.  But of course that is an in store assessment with all the problematic variables entailed, and just 2 opinions based on personal preferences.

It's all a bit disheartening really.  Maybe I'll just have to stick to my trusty old 36" HD Toshiba CRT... Although I really wanted to get something of an appropriate scale for my viewing area. Still I'll go through the process of trying to rule one or other of these TVs in and see where that takes me. I'll report back on the weekend.

Thanks again,

David K

[jliang70]

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

Thanks everyone for your responses. Hmm, I'm struggling a bit with inserting quoted text, so I'll just have to get by without.

Firstly thanks for confirming my suspicion re free to air feed. The HN where I saw the Sharp 70" cannot have used the analogue distribution system as I was able to change channels on a number of their TVs, including the Sharp. In addition, Owen, as I said I have seen the Sharp yesterday in HN Fyshwick and will be viewing the 65" Sony in Sydney later this week, so both TVs are definitely available - just apparently in short supply.

However, it seems the news is not good, in that my expectations have been dampened by the general comments above. If the quality I was seeing is really representative of (although maybe a little worse than) what I can expect when I get the TV home then I'm beginning to wonder whether the upgrade is worth it. I am going back tomorrow to Fyshwick with a couple of DVDs and player to take another look at the Sharp.

"SD DVDs tend to look very good on big screens - even with no upscaling. " I'm a little perplexed why a 576i DVD would look significantly better than a 576i TV broadcast, but I presume it relates to the "encoding at the broadcast end". But I understood that the Lumagen basically 'unpacked and repacked' the signal to optimise it and was thus anticipating a better outcome.

Owen, I was initially going to go down the Pana 65ST30 path with the Lumagen as you recommended in another place. But to be frank, the whites on all the plasmas I have looked at closely seem much closer to beige in colour. As this has been a fairly consistent theme, I presumed it could not be simply a poor setting on a few TVs... Although maybe they are unable to perform well with all the ambient light in a store showroom? Am I reading you correctly in that you are sticking with the plasma option providing the best outcome here? I'll just have to stick to night time viewing I guess.

On the subject of projectors, the Chancellor of the Exchequor in this house has ruled that option out absolutely. She has also a fairly strong negative take on the plasmas which is one of the reasons why my efforts have been more focused on LCD options. However, I took a friend with me who is a plasma afficionado last weekend and he agreed that the smaller Sony 55hx925 had a better overall picture than the Pana 65VT30 next to it. But of course that is an in store assessment with all the problematic variables entailed, and just 2 opinions based on personal preferences.

It's all a bit disheartening really. Maybe I'll just have to stick to my trusty old 36" HD Toshiba CRT... Although I really wanted to get something of an appropriate scale for my viewing area. Still I'll go through the process of trying to rule one or other of these TVs in and see where that takes me. I'll report back on the weekend.

Thanks again,

David K

I have not used Lumagen processor but base on my experience with four different older DVDO video processor,  most of the processors will do a better job in deinterlacing (line doubling) of SD-DVD than the image processor in a TV.  I personally find it is very difficult to evaluate a TV in store,  I am pretty sure most of the TV you see in store have just the default settings.  As I recall in my last visit to HN I actually checked the in store settings on both Samsung  D8000s and Panasonic GT/VT the contrast and brightness settings were set way too high,  the colour space ( for CMS calibration ) is set to auto, greyscale adjustment remain untouched.  I will be very surprised the sets you demoed are calibrated correctly.  This sort of setting looks really appealing under the light in a store environment but what you lost is fine details such as skin tone and texture and all the sets have a similar cartoonish look.  Overall I find uncalibrated display hard to watch and making purchasing decision very difficult.  I agree with the others plasma really work its magic in the dark/light controlled environment.  Under light the LCD/LED are better options.  I am in similar situation as you with regard to Lumagen and I think it will be a worthy addition to your set up,  apart from its deinterlace/upscaling capablity, Lumagen also give you the capablity of fine tuning the colour with its colour management system, gamma tracking and 21 point greyscale adjustments,  auto calibration is also possible with Lumagen if you decide to buy it with auto calibration pack from Chromapure or Calman.

[SLE355]

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

"SD DVDs tend to look very good on big screens - even with no upscaling. " I'm a little perplexed why a 576i DVD would look significantly better than a 576i TV broadcast, but I presume it relates to the "encoding at the broadcast end".  But I understood that the Lumagen basically 'unpacked and repacked' the signal to optimise it and was thus anticipating a better outcome.

My guess would be the DVD having a higher bitrate.

[Owen]

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

Owen, as I said I have seen the Sharp yesterday in HN Fyshwick and will be viewing the 65" Sony in Sydney later this week, so both TVs are definitely available - just apparently in short supply.

The problem is neither set fulfils the requirements of excellent picture quality in both bright and dim environments as well as good performance with free to air TV and DVD's, thats why I said the TV you want is not available, know one currently makes such a TV.

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

However, it seems the news is not good, in that my expectations have been dampened by the general comments above.  If the quality I was seeing is really representative of (although maybe a little worse than) what I can expect when I get the TV home then I'm beginning to wonder whether the upgrade is worth it.  I am going back tomorrow to Fyshwick with a couple of DVDs and player to take another look at the Sharp.

Make sure you view from 3.8 metres, not less.
Plasma's will never look good under bright store lighting but will look great in a more appropriate environment. LCD's are the opposite, they look relatively good in a bright environment but in a dim environment they don’t compete well with Plasma.

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

"SD DVDs tend to look very good on big screens - even with no upscaling. " I'm a little perplexed why a 576i DVD would look significantly better than a 576i TV broadcast, but I presume it relates to the "encoding at the broadcast end".  But I understood that the Lumagen basically 'unpacked and repacked' the signal to optimise it and was thus anticipating a better outcome.

DVD has a much higher available bite rate than TV but content shot on video cameras (most TV shows) can look clearer than DVD's that are normally film sourced.
Film source content is very simple to deinterlace so the Lumagen cant do a better job than most TV's or half decent DVD players. Deinterlacing true interlaced content from a video camera is much more complicated to deinterlace so the Lumagen may be helpful with that source.
The Lumagen may or may not be noticeable better for scaling, its depends on how good the TV is.
The Panasonic's are likely to gain significantly from the Lumagen, as video processing is not strong.

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

Owen, I was initially going to go down the Pana 65ST30 path with the Lumagen as you recommended in another place.  But to be frank, the whites on all the plasmas I have looked at closely seem much closer to beige in colour.  As this has been a fairly consistent theme, I presumed it could not be simply a poor setting on a few TVs... Although maybe they are unable to perform well with all the ambient light in a store showroom?  Am I reading you correctly in that you are sticking with the plasma option providing the best outcome here?  I'll just have to stick to night time viewing I guess.

The “beige” whites you observed are simply due to less light output and the fact that Plasmas have a lower output with a full white screen that a normal scene. Under more conducive ambient lighting Plasma whites are not a problem and in a dim to dark environment they are WAY too bright requiring the contrast control to be turned down a lot to avoid eye strain.

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

On the subject of projectors, the Chancellor of the Exchequor in this house has ruled that option out absolutely. She has also a fairly strong negative take on the plasmas which is one of the reasons why my efforts have been more focused on LCD options.  However, I took a friend with me who is a plasma afficionado last weekend and he agreed that the smaller Sony 55hx925 had a better overall picture than the Pana 65VT30 next to it.  But of course that is an in store assessment with all the problematic variables entailed, and just 2 opinions based on personal preferences.

The smaller 55” will always look sharper than a 65” at the same viewing distance when viewed side by side, but since you wont be viewing two TV's side by side in your home thats irrelevant. The larger screen will be much more involving to watch, especially at 3.8 metres which is a long way back.
The LCD will also have much better contrast in a retail environment, but under more friendly lighting the Plasmas higher native contrast comes into its own.

decaydent, on Dec 14 2011, 04:20 PM, said:

It's all a bit disheartening really.  Maybe I'll just have to stick to my trusty old 36" HD Toshiba CRT... Although I really wanted to get something of an appropriate scale for my viewing area. Still I'll go through the process of trying to rule one or other of these TVs in and see where that takes me. I'll report back on the weekend.

As a fellow 36” HD CRT owner I can assure you that just about any Plasma will eat the Toshiba for breakfast on a size corrected basis and at 3.8 metres a frankly cant believe you have put up with it for so long. I view our little CRT from 1.8 metres and its still small and un involveing to watch compared to the 70” Sony at 3 or even 4 metres. At 4 metres the 70” is not a very big TV.

There is no doubt that a 65” will look soft compared to the tiny CRT, but you will be shocked by how much more you can see in the picture that simple goes unnoticed on a small screen. You don’t notice the softer picture after a while and as long as the picture is clean and artefact free even low quality SD not ugly. This is an area where LCD's normally fall down as that are notoriously unforgiving of poor source, which as far as I am concerned is a major limitation. The Lumagen cant turn an LCD into a Plasma, the “look” of LCD is fundamentally different, you either like the LCD look or you don’t.

[decaydent]

Thanks for all that material, Owen - I have some thinking and testing ahead of me now! I misunderstood your earlier allusion to "this TV is not available". To be honest, the reason I have put up with the CRT is simply because I have not seen anything that I like better.  And maybe part of that is the magnification of errors that comes in larger screens.  I must confess that I do prefer the LCD "look" ahead of plasma, but as the only opportunity I have had to view either in the larger size is in showroom environments and many suffer from setting issues such as black and white "crush", it is not the most helpful place to look at them.  I am frankly surprised that shops sell any large displays, given the poor environments in which they are generally shown.

Anyway thanks again and I'll report back on the outcome of my deliberations.

David

[Owen]

May sure you evaluate the D8000 Samsung Plasmas, the default setup on the Sammy is more LCD like and will give you more insight into how different setup affects the picture.

Most TV's and LED LCD's in particular have a very blue colour balance which makes whites look "whiter" but is actually very inaccurate. The Sharps I have seen have been particularly bad in this respect so be mindful that after calibration the Sharps will look VERY different to the default settings.

Panasonic Plasmas have a significantly different gamma curve to most TV's which gives them elevated shadow detail but tends to make the picture look a bit flat and lacking in punch compared to the stark overblown contrasty look of most LCD's with their bright whites and dark shadows. This is just a difference in setup as after calibration these differences pretty much disappear in a suitable viewing environmnet.

[type_raver]

Its interesting to hear your feedback on this, ive only started expressing interest as i saw the panasonic 65' in action (JBHifi) and thought it was great.
One thing lacking in all the feedback, is how things look in motion. In my opinion, LCD is clearer on a static image, slow moving picture. But Plasmas seem natural in all motion scenarios.

Though im curious out the "floating brightness/blacks" issue. What is it, whats an example of it and to confirm, has it been addressed?

[Owen]

LCD's generally seem pretty good with regard to motion blur these days, its no longer a significant issue.

LCD's used to use constant lighting and had constant black and white levels, however times have changed and its now hard to find anything except basic LCD with constant lighting, they have gone for dynamic lighting which changes with the average picture level of the video. On bright scenes the whites and blacks get brighter and in dark scenes the whites and blacks get darker.

Plasma's have always had a floating white level to some extent, on very bright scenes with large areas of white on screen the white level drops but black level stays the same. If contrast is kept low for viewing in a dim environment this effect can be minimised or even eliminated and is not a significant issue, its only when the panel is driven hard with high contrast settings to get a very bright picture that it becomes a problem.

Black levels on Plasmas in the past has been very consistent and didn't change with picture content, however some newer models do have a black level that changes (floats) with average picture level. This is a deliberate design decision on the part of manufacturers. Such "dynamic" behaviour can be used to save power or to make the average picture level brighter as many people seem obsessed with brightness. Its a bad move IMHO as dynamicly changing picture levels is a form of distortion and can be quite annoying. I guess they figured that since LCD's use it and people dont seem to mind Plasma's can as well. It's a race to the bottom as far as I am concerned.

I am not sure which Plasmas are currently affected by floating levels but as I said just about all LCD's are and this "feature" may or may not be user disableable.

Edited by Owen, 15 December 2011 - 07:18 PM.

[decaydent]

Well, I have done the deed and ordered a Pana P65ST30a.  

We looked at the Sony KDL65hx925 this morning and it was certainly the best TV I or my wife have seen in the >55" size range.  The picture quality of even the worst of standard definition Tv we could throw at it (NTSC derived 576i) which looked quite ghastly on the Sharp LC70LE735x and only slightly better on the Panasonic, was quite tolerable on the Sony.  The colours looked good with the viewing mode set to Cinema and with the showroom lights dimmed (it was in a separate cubicle at Sony Centre), great blacks and whites, no problem with motion after reducing the Motionflow setting and it was an altogether pleasing product.  

You might then ask why we did not buy it.  I was already baulking at spending $10k on a 'TV plus' package (most of the 'plus' being items I did not want) which was nearly twice the price our American and UK brethren have to pay for the equivalent TV. Part of the package was supposed to be free installation and delivery, but when I broached this with the Sony salesman I was told that, because we live outside the metropolitan area, we had to pay for delivery and no installation was available (not that I cared about installation.) But the fact that Sony can be so mean minded about delivering an already overpriced $10k TV was the final straw for me, and we left and made the 3 hour drive back home.  Not a particularly rational response, but so be it - one that I do not regret. We were very 'unhappy' - to understate our frame of mind exponentially.

The Sony guy did make one interesting statement as part of a defense of the price of this product.  He claimed that Sony make the 65" display themselves now (and in fact many of their other screens) as well as most of the other components that go into these TVs and then ship them to Malaysia for assembly.  This was news to me if true. I thought Sony were no longer manufacturing screens.

I talked to the guys at HN Fyshwick about the strangely poor free to air TV quality being demonstrated in their showroom.  They claimed that they have one antenna and a raft of 'antiquated' amplifiers which lead to the poor image quality being shown on all their sets.  Apparently many purchasers tell them that when they install TVs at home using a good antenna feed, the picture does improve noticeably and thus I can expect an improvement on my own antenna. But only time will show whether that is true or not. I'm relying on the Lumagen to help improve the Panasonic picture to an acceptable level on poor free to air feed, but if my antenna ends up providing a superior outcome by itself, then all the better.  It all sounds a bit dodgy to me for the reasons outlined by many of the earlier posters above, but one can hope...

Neither the Sony or the Sharp LCDs seemed to have any problem with motion, although the Sony did evince marked blurring watching sport in the initial store motionflow setting (I presume the default.)  But once this was turned down to the setting above "off" (can't remember what it was called) motion watching a game of grid iron seemed fine to us.  In fact, our initial fiddling with the Sony was to turn most of the so called 'smarts' off or to a low level and this seemed to produce a better overall result.

Either way, I am reasonably confident I have made the most sensible purchasing decision I can.  The Pana ended up being the cheapest of the serious contenders (less than $3k) and the most pleasing overall to our eyes after the Sony. We looked at the Samsung PS64D8000 and it did look a bit whiter and brighter than the Pana, but it didn't seem quite as good in the black and we both just liked the Panasonic picture a little more overall for no reason that I can describe in any tangible way. The Pana VT30 handled poor source material a little better than the ST30, but I am expecting the Lumagen to be able to produce a better result on the cheaper set. The Sharp was good with decent source material and I would have been very happy to own it if it had been able to handle rubbish input in a tolerable manner.  But unfortunately it failed even using a poor quality DVD (we used the start credits of season 2 of Doctor Finlay and some of the text was almost unreadable at 4m - just a crazed and broken mess, in my best technical terminology...) The Samsung UA60D8000 had real colour issues to my eyes and even fiddling with the general mode settings I couldn't get a result that I would have been happy to live with; and it was pretty much as bad as the Sharp in handling poor source material producing a multitude of screen artifacts that made viewing quite difficult.  Of course much of this could be attributable to the poor antenna setup in the HN showroom in the unlikely event that the explanation above is true, but I was not prepared to risk it.

Anyway, I've probably waffled on too much already. I am most appreciative of the input of all those of you who responded to my initial distress call and I hope to be happy with the final outcome when installed in my home...

Thanks,

David

[type_raver]

Owen, on Dec 15 2011, 07:10 PM, said:

LCD's generally seem pretty good with regard to motion blur these days, its no longer a significant issue.

LCD's used to use constant lighting and had constant black and white levels, however times have changed and its now hard to find anything except basic LCD with constant lighting, they have gone for dynamic lighting which changes with the average picture level of the video. On bright scenes the whites and blacks get brighter and in dark scenes the whites and blacks get darker.

Plasma's have always had a floating white level to some extent, on very bright scenes with large areas of white on screen the white level drops but black level stays the same. If contrast is kept low for viewing in a dim environment this effect can be minimised or even eliminated and is not a significant issue, its only when the panel is driven hard with high contrast settings to get a very bright picture that it becomes a problem.

Black levels on Plasmas in the past has been very consistent and didn't change with picture content, however some newer models do have a black level that changes (floats) with average picture level. This is a deliberate design decision on the part of manufacturers. Such "dynamic" behaviour can be used to save power or to make the average picture level brighter as many people seem obsessed with brightness. Its a bad move IMHO as dynamicly changing picture levels is a form of distortion and can be quite annoying. I guess they figured that since LCD's use it and people dont seem to mind Plasma's can as well. It's a race to the bottom as far as I am concerned.

I am not sure which Plasmas are currently affected by floating levels but as I said just about all LCD's are and this "feature" may or may not be user disableable.

Great post, very informative.
Appreciate it

[Owen]

Your welcome mate, I aim to "fill in the blanks" for forum newcomers and cover topics that are typically not commonly discussed or understood.
Unfortunately that inevitably leads to some repetition which gets on the nerves of long standing members.
You cant keep all of the people happy all of the time.

[TheFrog]

Owen, on Dec 19 2011, 08:11 PM, said:

Your welcome mate, I aim to "fill in the blanks" for forum newcomers and cover topics that are typically not commonly discussed or understood.
Unfortunately that inevitably leads to some repetition which gets on the nerves of long standing members.
You cant keep all of the people happy all of the time.

Consider yourself disliked but respected, LOL.

[Drizt]

Myer are lying bastards.  The TV has had its delivery date pushed out now 5 times and now they can't deliver til post Jan 4th.  They can now get stuffed.

JBHIFI have them in stock and can deliver tomorrow.