Official Sony XBR8 Series Owner's Thread - Page 9

Ah... I see. Thank you for clearing that up.

Rich

Those new Sharp TV's are TOO expensive and makes the XBR8 a bargain.

In fact,
LC-65 XS1E - 12 000 € (16k+ USD)

LC-52 XS1E - 9 000 € (12k+)

+1 . The uproar over the pricing of the XBR8 clogged several threads for months. I can hardly imagine what this pricing is going to do to the threads. I have a hard time understanding why these mfg's don't modify their pricing in light of this horid economey. I would love to see the statistics of how many 950's, XBR6's and XBR8's have actually sold.

Well that's just the price out of the gate, you know it willl be dropping fast in a few months from now.

The review of the XBR8 from Cnet

http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...-33060615.html

Well, no actually. It is different with the Sharp. It is definitely not aimed at the mainstream, in fact it is a limited edition model that will only be produced in limited quantities. If you look at what more you get for the difference between the MSRP of the Samsung 55A950 and SONY 55XBR8 then compare with what more you get for the difference between the XBR8 and the 52" Sharp it is clear that the technological leap is much larger at the top end.

Once we go above 5 grand for a television set of those sizes we leave the consumer market territory and enter the luxury market where money is not an object. It can be argued wither the XBR8 belongs in that territory but there is no doubt about wither the Sharp's do. There is no point discussing the price of luxury items, from the point of view of ordinary consumers they are outrageous by nature. Just check out the prices on any B&O flat panel and your eyes will dislodge from their sockets when you realise what you are actually going to get for all that money, here is a hint, most AVSforumers would not be very happy. The Sharp on the other hand...

Besides, I'd be careful about converting Euro prices to dollars, the Sharp sets will undoubtedly cost a few grand less here than a direct currency conversion will net you, that is always how it is. In Denmark the 46XBR8 has an MSRP of 7 grand, what the 55XBR8 goes for here. I think the 52" sharp model will have a MSRP within a few grand of the XBR8, and if one has the cash for one I'd say shell out a bit more and go for something that might not even be dethroned by next years models.

I have to agree with you. I believe the 52" XS-1 will be introduced in the US at $9,000 (since it is EUR 9,000 in the EU). At this point I may stretch and get one - I mean if I am going to spend 7K on XBR8 that is bulky, unremarkable and just marginally better than 950, I may as well spend 2K more and get an elegant cutting-edge set. I never though I would consider Sharp, but if it is as thin as they claim (everybody point out the 23mm at the thinnest point, but what about the thickest?) and has the ultimate picture quality - then it is much more appealing purchase than the XBR8. Still - many unknowns at this point - too premature to say yay or nay

You are in for a long wait. Almost no one is going to purchase this set so we should be lucky if even one AVSforum goer is going to post an owners impression of it, within a month of its release, just like the XBR8, only worse. We are going to have to wait for a professional review, maybe cnet, just like with the XBR8. But professional reviews are going to take a long time before being done and posted. There might actually not be a review of the XS-1 to be found this anywhere this year.

Also, there are pictures that show the profile of the XS-1, it looks really skinny, even in the thickest part. If they achieved such thinness without sacrificing the image quality then by gods, this might the television to set Sharp back on the map.

I was thinking the same thing. Not very likely to see an owner report here, and professional reviews will be rare. The latest may be the real problem, as I don't know that I want to spend that kind of money without seeing professional evaluation. Still - Sharp will want to catch the holiday shopping season, and being in NYC - I may be able to see one in person very soon

Isn't this supposed to be a XBR8 owner's thread? Where owners of XBR8's discuss issues of common interest about their XBR8's?

At least half the posts in this thread are about why the poster thinks the XBR8 is a bad choice, or why their favorite tv is a better choice. This kind of stuff is legitimate for discussion, of course, but it doesn't belong here. Please take it somewhere else.

Precisely. Where do we click to get this thread renamed as no longer being the official XBR8 owners thread so that a new 'official' thread can be launched?

Funny thing, just 4-5 years ago, the Sony XBR8 would be considered a budget TV.
Check out some of the prices on the older large screen LCD & Plasma models.
I mean $10-$20,000 is what you could have expected to pay for a high end 60" flat panels just a few years ago.

Where are you seeing this about the XBR8 only providing grey light via the RGB LEDs?

There would be no reason to use R, G and B LEDs for backlighting if you were only going to make the backlight shades of grey. White LED's would be much better there, and you would be able to control the regions of brightness much better then. To be using individual R, G and B LEDs implies you are generating colored backlight, so the backlight can be mostly green, or blue, or whatever, to give you the most saturated color to the eye (using blue backlight to illuminate a blue area, rather than using grey backlight to illuminate a blue area where the LCD filters out a good portion of the backlighting).

See my post #230 on this topic. As far as I can tell, the purpose of Sony's triluminous backlight is to produce as pure white a backlight as possible.

And although the idea of introducing color in the backlight may sound good, it's far from clear to me how that would work. In essence, an LCD panel is like a stained glass window, and the backlight is like daylight shining through the window. The color generated by the stained glass window is a function of the color of the glass, not the color of the light being shined through the glass. And if you start tinkering with the color of the backlight, you affect the affect the colors of the net resulting image. This may seem like it could result in even more vibrant colors, but if the "image" on the colored backlight doesn't line up perfectly with the image on the lcd panel, then the colors are going to be badly distorted in the sections of the image where the two don't line up perfectly.

At least that the way it seems to me.

I've been looking for some info on how Sharp is suposed to pull this off, but so far, I haven't found anything.

I would also add at this point that the question of whether Sharp may have come up with a better RGB backlight is really a topic for another thread.

With the thread on page nine and fewer actual owners of XBR8 sets than I can count on one hand I'd wager to say that off topic discussions are the only thing keeping this thread alive. I've read every post in this thread since the beginning hoping to get some useful information, but no dice. Thank god that cnet review came out just in the nick of time to convince me to get an XBR8.

Besides there are no XBR8 general discussion thread where we can discuss the XBR8 backligh technology as compared to the sharp or other discussions. I guess I could make one, but with so few owners who have anything to say about the XBR8 all that will do is result in this thread dying. No point in that I suppose.

If all this thread contains is off-topic posts, then maybe it needs to die. At least until there are enough XBR8 owners out there to make it useful.

As for questions about Samsung's vs Sony's vs Sharp's LED backlight technologies, I think that's a subject for a thread in itself. You may want to start one, and if you do, I'd appreciate your providing some links to support your position as to what each technology does and does not do. So far, I haven't been able to come up with much of anything on Sharp's RGB backlight system. If they're really adding color in the backlight, I'd be very interested in seeing how they address the problem I noted in my post above. Insofar as I can see, a blurry colored backlight isn't going to do much of anything other than create color inaccuracies. But then, maybe I'm missing something . . .

The drive for RGB backlighting revolves around the total removal of the color filters you speak of. This would enable an enormous increase in panel efficiency. Problem is that this approach requires senquential color (hopefully high speed). I don't think Sharp or Sony are use RGB backlight for this though.

I was kind of hoping to see another owner & review on this website already, but guess not. The only person who came close had to return it because of cosmetic problems. Heres hoping for another honest review in the near future on the website.

Not anywhere near a proper review, but I went to go see this TV at ABT this past Saturday. They had that Water Horse: Legend of the Dragon or whatever it's called movie playing on it. To me it looked kinda shi##*y. The picture seemed to be quite grainy for a BluRay. It appears that it was more the BluRay disc than the TV though, because when I tuned it to OTA HD channels it looked fantastic.

Honestly if it wasn't for the $7K price tag I would have picked it up on the spot, however I can't justify it, as much as I want it now. That's probably why there are so few owners posting here.

Apparently Sony is forcing its retailers to hold the line on the pricing on this bad MF. If it isn't selling though, hopefully that will be lifted soon, or Sony themselves will drop the price. I guess I will just quietly sit on the fence in anticipation of the 52XBR7, which has a tentative availablilty date of 1/10/2009 (Sony Style website), or a REALLY big price drop on the 55XBR8.

The more I think about it though, it is unlikely that the 55XBR8 will see a price drop of much if at all, before the 52XBR7 is released. They are probably trying to leave as much room in the pricing gap as possible between the 55XBR8 and the 52XBR6, so they can slide the 52XBR7 in at a decent premium as well.

Anyway, any other updates from current owners? Gaming consoles, AV Recever, BluRay players, Satellite Receivers, HDMI connections in general, still all playing well with each other?

sharpone, thanks for the review. No matter how small it still helps. I am thinking it was the blu ray. Next time you go back there, have them put on a different movie like POTC or an animated flick.

Same boat as you, the price is too much for me to even consider. I love the samsung 950, but if the sony was around the same price than I would probably do alot more examining of the two.

Let's start with how backlit LCD tv's work. First, they have an LCD panel. The LCD crystals in the panel act as pixel-sized color filters. The backlight shines light through the LCD crystals imparting the desired color to the pixel. If the backlight provides a pure white light--i.e., containing the full gamut of colors in the visible spectrum--and the LCD crystals do a good job of filtering out all but the desired wavelenghts of light, then the colors of the resulting image should be very accurate. This, I think, is what Sony is trying to acheive with its triluminous system. Sounds good to me.

As for the idea of using the backlight to provide colored, vs white light, then you would have to radically change the way the LCD panel works. In addition, as I've discussed above, you would have to provide almost perfect alignment between the backlight "image" and the image on the LCD panel. Now maybe Sharp is somehow doing this. I don't know. And if it is, great, I'd be interested in seeing how they're making it work. But so far, I haven't found squat anywhere on the web on this issue.

SharpOne & Slumpey, if you don't mind me asking (I'll understand if you dont and will respect your wishes), if they XBR8 had a lower price range, say like $5,500 or $5,000, you guys would get it. Sorry to be a jerk. The only reason why I ask is because I have the opportunity to get an XBR8 at Sony Employee pricing. Rememember guys (I know, no S**t), it all depends on what YOU want. I like the idea being able to adjust the picture settings in game mode, build quality, RGB LED's, customer service, and more future "proof" with the 10 bit processing/10 bit panel; as oppose to the Samsung 10 bit processing/8 bit panel (I hear diff things about if the 950 has an 8bit or 10 bit panel).

Tele-TV, I think it is safe to say most people in the high-end LCD market today would get the xbr8 if it was priced $2k lower. If you trust CNET reviews, it is the best LCD out right now. But some of the reasons you mentioned for why you want it can probably be met by even cheaper tvs, depending on how much of a videophile you are.

Actually, there is a cnet review:

http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-t...rColumnArea1.1

Bottomline of the review was: XBR8 is better than 950 but still not as good as Kuro

I want another opinion besides cnet. cant always trust them, never liked there settings either,

I can answer that for myself - if the 55" XBR8 was priced below $5000 where it belongs (in line with the original pricing on the 950, just 10-20% more) - in that case, I would already have one in my living room. However, at $7K it is priced as a superior product when it is just marginally better. It could warrant $7K if it was 1 inch deep, everything else being the same (just my opinion). Sony just priced themselves out - you can see that, nobody is buying this set. I don't know what's up with Sony, they act as if they don't want to sell any. Not allowing discount by retailers is even more stup1d - a lot of people would not buy electronics at MSRP no matter what, and that doesn't help. I have had as much as 30% off of high-priced ($5K+) home electronics, buying at list price is just nuts. There is a good reason for list prices - buyers that don't know too much will pay that, and knowledgeable buyers will go for a deal and buy the product at discount. Sony it seems would rather eliminate that significant % of buyers. Oh well

Sorry guys for OT-ing the discussion with backlight/Sharp posts. I generally don't like to do that, but it was just natural to respond to posts. In any case, I think this thread should be renamed - it is NOT owners thread (there are almost no owners anyway), and even the guy that started it doesn't own XBR8. We may as well just keep the discussion going, and when someone buys XBR8 and is enthusiastic about it - they can start a new *real* owners thread and update the 1st post, etc.

To me the important discussion is what is the best LCD TV to buy right now, and I've posted on several threads. The main contender seemed to be the XBR8 - but it is eliminated by price, the 950 - has some downsides, and now the Sharp XS1 - promising but unknown.

I would say I'm a videophile, but not as much as you guys. I always go for video first than audio. This morning I just picked-up the DVE Blu-Ray disc.