Sony TV Owners & Discussion Thread

[Nevyn72]

Guys,

my 60" has turned it self off then back on again a couple of times......

This seems to be a bit of a problem with the 60" version.....

What is the count now? 4, 5 different sets?

Anybody with the 70" experiencing this?

[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.

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.

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

[kendrew]

Where most TV’s will only show a brief interruption when there is a glitch in the mains supply, the Sony and most devices that use a lamp will go through a power down power up sequence which takes time and is normal operation to protect the lamp.

I am not saying that your shutdown was due to this, but it could have been and that is the point.

Personally I would not lodge a complaint due to one shutdown, but that’s me.

As for the magenta colour issue, that’s more serious. It is normal for the SXRD to take up to 15 minuets to fully stabilize in colour, but if it is taking significantly longer, or does not come good at all, the set is defective.

Be aware that off angle viewing can result in some colour issues, so check colour when viewing the set straight on.

Owen, this is a long post but I feel it has merit.

When we first got the 3LCD RP Wega, some six months ago now, I was concerned about a warning that Sony had included in the packaging, on a small piece of paper. It went something like this, "Do not switch off the TV at the power point as damage may occur, due to the set not being able to perform the necessary shut down procedure. Alway switch off via the set."

After setting the TV up I switched on and heard a cooling fan, for the first time. (There was no mention of a cooling fan in the specs. and I couldn't hear it in the showroom.) I realized why there was the printed warning. After switch off the fan would continue to cool down the lamp - as I recall old overhead projectors had to be left power on to allow the lamp to cool.

We live in a rural area and frequently experience momentary power glitches, due to storm activity, branches touching lines and causing auto closure, etc. Some auto closures will operate several times within a matter of minutes until things either stabilize, or fail altogether and power is lost for 15 minutes up to hours at a time.

I suspected that one of these outages could cause havoc with the TV shut down procedure.

I telephoned Sony and I could almost see them scurrying around finding an answer to my question regarding the effect of power blackouts on the TV, without a proper shut down period.

Finally, one technician, sort of assured me, that if it didn't happen too often everything should be OK. I asked about lamp life and he said it might affect it. I told him I would install a UPS to overcome the potential for damage and he said that would be a good idea.

Heaven knows how many unsuspecting owners of sets like this are unaware of the risk they take each time they switch on.

Since installing the UPS, we've experienced quite a few events where the mains power goes off, the UPS beeps while on battery backup, I switch off the TV at the set, or via remote, and the cooling procedure performs normally.

I recommend that every SXRD owner (and owners of fan cooled lamp TVs in general) should get a UPS. Ours cost about $200.00 and has enough battery backup to allow the low power cooling system to operate fully without any concerns. It also provides line noise filtering, surge protection, smooths out sags, etc.

Regarding viewing angles, I have checked colour variations from all angles and the impurities are still there, even after two hours or so - but better than when first switched on. I think you said in an earlier post that the time for warm up may take much longer when on power saving. I agree, but surely it shouldn't take so long.

[kendrew]

Hi guys

I've been looking at the spec of this TV for a while and have a question. What material is the screen made of? Is it glass or plastic? I went to the Sony shop in Melbourne Central last week and asked but the chap kept telling me it's an LCD tv.. *sigh*

So can any owners help out? I'm interested in the longevity of the material as I have a 4 year old and a 1 year old and I shudder to think what they will do to a nice 60" clean surface having seen what they have done to their newly painted bedroom doors.

Thanks for all you your reviews on this box. I'm leaning very close to buying it. The wife agrees its good but laments that our existing AV cabinet is too small so does anyone have a good recommendation as well for a AV cabinet for this? I would prefer one with wheels as our current one is custom made so I can swing it out to get at the connections behind.

Thanks

The screen is plastic - and I am very glad our children are grown up - and we don't permit ankle biters in the HT anyway. I don't know what effects sticky fingers, utility knives (an unlikely example) and other toys may have on viewing quality. Perhaps you can fabricate a reinforced plexiglass cage (play house) for them when they are in the TV room.

We were astonished at the price of the matching stand for the 60".

So we looked around and finally bought a silver coloured flat pack for under $100.00 from Fantastic Furniture. I bought 6 dual wheeled castors (with mounting plates with the four screw holes) from the hardware store and screwed them to strengthening battens which I glued to the underside, with edges painted flat black. The kids would love tearing it around the room; it glides very well on its six castors.

It is a small unit but is a quite adequate platform for the 60" footprint. It is very sturdy when assembled and goes with the 60" quite well. Its height is approx. 510mm; just a little too high for our seated eye levels but it doesn't affect the picture. I will build stands for our recliners one day.

The stand goes by the name: SPECTRUM LOWLINE.

[Owen]

When we first got the 3LCD RP Wega, some six months ago now, I was concerned about a warning that Sony had included in the packaging,

You have me confused with this statement mate.

Did you once have a 3 LCD WEGA and have now replaced it with an SXRD?

The UPS is a very good idea for people in area’s with unreliable power, however I would not personally be completely confident in the standard modified square wave output UPS’s. A more expensive true sine wave output model would be preferable, although it may be overkill.

For audio equipment a sine wave model is definitely preferable.

[Greebs]

The screen is plastic - and I am very glad our children are grown up - and we don't permit ankle biters in the HT anyway. I don't know what effects sticky fingers, utility knives (an unlikely example) and other toys may have on viewing quality.

Utility knives? I really don't want to know what you get up to when watching TV! . Being plastic though, if you do need to clean it, DON'T use window cleaner (or anything with alcohol or ammonia in it) - if it's anything like laptop screens, this will degrade it - use plain water or some soapy water instead.

[Scalpel]

You have me confused with this statement mate.

Did you once have a 3 LCD WEGA and have now replaced it with an SXRD?

From an old post of Kendrews:

The new 50 inch Bravia 3LCD is reportedly better than its predecessor, the Wega (KFE50A10) which we had - but returned because of an inherently noisy and intrusive cooling fan - in our HT environment. We trialled two sets - both noisy - and they were from the last shipment received in Australia; with a supposedly quieter fan than the earlier shipments. We've been waiting about 3 months for the SXRDs to arrive.

[Nullack1503559755]

Thats some good information Kendrew - if yours is on a UPS and you still get power cycling for no reason logically it's gotta exclude a mains glitch. So its probably either a problem with the Sony PSU or a bad read of sensors like the cooling fan or temperature sensor where it thinks it has to shut it down then realises its fine but the power cycle event has allready initiated.

[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.

[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).

[Riv39]

You have me confused with this statement mate.

Did you once have a 3 LCD WEGA and have now replaced it with an SXRD?

The UPS is a very good idea for people in area’s with unreliable power, however I would not personally be completely confident in the standard modified square wave output UPS’s. A more expensive true sine wave output model would be preferable, although it may be overkill.

For audio equipment a sine wave model is definitely preferable.

Owen, I have given UPS serious consideration (to conserve lamp life during power failure) and I tend to agree re the pure sine wave output. I also believe switching time comes into play for line interactive UPS units as well. Decent units claim approx 6ms and one would assume that the SXRD PSU should hold that long but I wonder if this is the case with a halogen lamp in circuit remembering that the standard line interactive UPS is designed for computer power supplies.

Just my rambling thoughts guys I may be way off the mark here of course.

[kendrew]

You have me confused with this statement mate.

Did you once have a 3 LCD WEGA and have now replaced it with an SXRD?

The UPS is a very good idea for people in area’s with unreliable power, however I would not personally be completely confident in the standard modified square wave output UPS’s. A more expensive true sine wave output model would be preferable, although it may be overkill.

For audio equipment a sine wave model is definitely preferable.

Ah, Owen, I appreciate your confusion. This thread is getting too long after all.

In my earlier posts, I mentioned we had trialled the 3 LCD Wega and found the cooling fan noise to be very intrusive.

Sony concurred, at the time, fan noise was an issue so we received a replacement. But it, also, had a very noisy fan - completely unacceptable to us.

The local supplier agreed to our returning the Wega (Sony approval) with our offer to have our money (for the Wega) retained until some suitable TV came along. I had read about the SXRD in the U.S.A. for some time and was champing at the bit for a local model to be released.

Finally, due to our lengthy research on the 60" SXRD (Oh well, Xmas was soon) we took delivery a couple of weeks ago.

In my previous post I know I referred to the 3LCD Wega - but in my mind the continuity from it to the SXRD was logical. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Regarding the UPS we have several incorporated in line with our electronics setups. The models we have are fully compliant and approved with the most delicate computer systems. We have no cause to be concerned.

Since my previous post, I have been conjecturing. Is it possible that the slightest hiccup in mains power supply could initiate a power down sequence in the SXRD? Previously there have been very rare occasions, when one of our most sensitive components has indicated a discontinuity which has not been reflected in all others.

Since adoption of the UPS, it has been of no consequence.

However, when the installer/deliverer of our SXRD began connecting all inputs (much to my annoyance) I later became aware that he had plugged into the UPS via a surge protected output - BUT - without battery backup. I subsequently reinstated the SXRD power cord to a surge protected/battery backed up output and have had no problems since.

[kendrew]

Owen, I have given UPS serious consideration (to conserve lamp life during power failure) and I tend to agree re the pure sine wave output. I also believe switching time comes into play for line interactive UPS units as well. Decent units claim approx 6ms and one would assume that the SXRD PSU should hold that long but I wonder if this is the case with a halogen lamp in circuit remembering that the standard line interactive UPS is designed for computer power supplies.

Just my rambling thoughts guys I may be way off the mark here of course.

Very interesting, Riv39.

I am a layman only and do not know the complexities and technical variations of - say - a UPS, for example.

Now you have alerted me to a range of most suitable UPS applications, I shall have to do more research.

Thanks a lot.

[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. 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.info/index.php?act=Att...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!

*****************************************************************

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.info/index.php?act=Att...ost&id=2361

Edited April 15, 2012 by MLXXX

[Greebs]

I subsequently reinstated the SXRD power cord to a surge protected/battery backed up output and have had no problems since.

That good to hear kendrew. I assume that noise isn't an issue for you with the SXRD - I know mine is very quiet.

[Nullack1503559755]

Hmm Im frustrated with the power problem. The service centre only does in house diagnosis, no home visits, so now it has to be shipped to them. Minimum 3 workding days for diagnosis, and then 3 working days from the day of order to have parts arrive from Signapore. So probably two weeks without my TV atleast.

As for noise, on normal cooling fan mode its great, high is louder but the issue of it being too loud I think depends on other noises within the room.

Kendrew I await any further news from you with baited breath. If in fact the issue is fully resolved by the UPS that's my worst nightmare as then clearly it is a poor quality psu within the Sony. It simply unreasonable for the consumer to be forced into buying a PSU for a TV due to a poor quality internal PSU.

Owen and Andrew touched on some points such as sine wave vs square wave AC waveforms and the cut in time. A common feature of computing psu's is the large capacitative array that filters momentary glitches in the power supply. I really hope this isnt the root cause of our displays power tripping.

[dodgyblue1503560789]

The screen is plastic - and I am very glad our children are grown up - and we don't permit ankle biters in the HT anyway. I don't know what effects sticky fingers, utility knives (an unlikely example) and other toys may have on viewing quality. Perhaps you can fabricate a reinforced plexiglass cage (play house) for them when they are in the TV room.

We were astonished at the price of the matching stand for the 60".

So we looked around and finally bought a silver coloured flat pack for under $100.00 from Fantastic Furniture. I bought 6 dual wheeled castors (with mounting plates with the four screw holes) from the hardware store and screwed them to strengthening battens which I glued to the underside, with edges painted flat black. The kids would love tearing it around the room; it glides very well on its six castors.

It is a small unit but is a quite adequate platform for the 60" footprint. It is very sturdy when assembled and goes with the 60" quite well. Its height is approx. 510mm; just a little too high for our seated eye levels but it doesn't affect the picture. I will build stands for our recliners one day.

The stand goes by the name: SPECTRUM LOWLINE.

Kendrew and everyone

Thanks for that info. So it is plastic... Hmmmm another spanner thrown into the works. Unfortunately we don't have a HT room. Looks like might have to consider buying an LCD/Plasma instead for the time being seing that the screens are glass. Any opinions on the longevity of those surface to utility knives?

With regards to the stand I will go to Fantastic Furniture and have a look. The matching stand from Sony is too expensive for my taste. For that amount of money Sony was going to charge I was thinking of going to a cabinet maker and getting a custom made cabinet.

dblue

[Nevyn72]

So is this power issue an exclusively 60" problem or have any 70" owners experienced the same?

[Drizt]

Kendrew and everyone

Thanks for that info. So it is plastic... Hmmmm another spanner thrown into the works. Unfortunately we don't have a HT room. Looks like might have to consider buying an LCD/Plasma instead for the time being seing that the screens are glass. Any opinions on the longevity of those surface to utility knives?

With regards to the stand I will go to Fantastic Furniture and have a look. The matching stand from Sony is too expensive for my taste. For that amount of money Sony was going to charge I was thinking of going to a cabinet maker and getting a custom made cabinet.

dblue

LCD's are not glass they are plastic. Plasma's are glass and as a result suffer from reflections. There are pro's and con's to everything unfortunately.

[Nullack1503559755]

Kendrew I wonder if you would please consider doing a brief test? The test would be to have your USP and TV on, then disconnect the mains from the UPS, and tell me if the TV does not power cycle. Then if you could please provide the model number of your UPS I can lookup it's switch time.

Im trying to establish if the TV is sensitive to switching transients of a few nanoseconds or if its only sensitive to power sags.

[davep]

he's already done this, albeit not intentionally, from the previous page:

Since installing the UPS, we've experienced quite a few events where the mains power goes off, the UPS beeps while on battery backup, I switch off the TV at the set, or via remote, and the cooling procedure performs normally.

[Riv39]

Hmm Im frustrated with the power problem. The service centre only does in house diagnosis, no home visits, so now it has to be shipped to them. Minimum 3 workding days for diagnosis, and then 3 working days from the day of order to have parts arrive from Signapore. So probably two weeks without my TV atleast.

As for noise, on normal cooling fan mode its great, high is louder but the issue of it being too loud I think depends on other noises within the room.

Kendrew I await any further news from you with baited breath. If in fact the issue is fully resolved by the UPS that's my worst nightmare as then clearly it is a poor quality psu within the Sony. It simply unreasonable for the consumer to be forced into buying a PSU for a TV due to a poor quality internal PSU.

Owen and Andrew touched on some points such as sine wave vs square wave AC waveforms and the cut in time. A common feature of computing psu's is the large capacitative array that filters momentary glitches in the power supply. I really hope this isnt the root cause of our displays power tripping.

Bathrone, not sure where you are located but most of Australia generally has fairly reliable power particularly compared to some countries where these sets would end up. I can't believe Sony would incorporate such a sensitive PSU in the SXRD, I don't seem to recall seeing any issues in the US forum on this one.

[Nullack1503559755]

he's already done this, albeit not intentionally, from the previous page:

What model UPS does he have? Is it an online type?

Bathrone, not sure where you are located but most of Australia generally has fairly reliable power particularly compared to some countries where these sets would end up. I can't believe Sony would incorporate such a sensitive PSU in the SXRD, I don't seem to recall seeing any issues in the US forum on this one.

I hope so. I'm awaiting to see if Kendrew continues to not have problems in UPS mode given he did have problems like mine without it (surge only). I understand this could be just a fluke set of events but often the simple answer is the most correct one. I'm in Australia.

[AndrewWilliams]

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.

[laurie]

Unless one uses an 1KW UPS unit I be very careful on anything lower as the initial turn on current surge could be very high.My pj is powered directly from the batteries and it's frequency is internally locked on 50Hz AC and not tied to line frequency

cheers laurie