Official Sony KDL-xxV5100 Thread - Page 140

Hello all,

I'm new to this thread since we just purchased a KDL-40V5100. We got an unbelievable deal. We got it from a local store for $300. It was a display model that had never been plugged in.

I was trying to download the "unofficial" firmware update as that seems like the way to go right now, but the box.net link is not working for me. Is is still active?

mrdjman, please explain:



Do you know of an official upcoming firmware fix from Sony, specifically for the audio drop-outs on the Sony HDTVs affected, such as the KDL-46V5100?

Or, is the "help on the way" comment meaning there might be an upcoming post from someone from AVSFORUM who can suggest a work around?

Unfortunately, I don't know specific models, however, I would assume that Sony understands the issue, and would try to address it in whichever ones are affected. Our friend who helped previously is at it again, and may just be on to something...stay tuned...(and I don't know if this will be *official* or not).

Please ask "the friend" to work on the "flicker effect" too - thanks.

Thanks mrdjman for the quick reply! Resolving the audio dropout issues, flicker effect, red flashing, etc on the affected Sony HDTVs would only benefit Sony. Otherwise, Sony will not have repeat customers... and if Sony is wise, they will understand that they won't just lose current customers, as they will talk to others and those other potential customers will consider other brands.

A big thank you to 'our friend' (I'm not sure of the name) who is working on a resolution to the problem(s) with certain Sony HDTVs. I really hope that the audio dropout problem will be fixed. On my KDL-46V5100, audio dropouts is the most random, frequent, frustrating, and annoying problem.

Agreed! My 52V5100 is an otherwise great TV.

From what I understood, the 'Red Flash' issue was resolved with the first 'un-official' update. Either my eye isn't discerning enough, or I was one of the few that didn't have that issue. I don't know about the 'flicker'... My 52V5100 is a great TV other than the audio drop out (and the color disappearing when using composite cable and not HDMI...), and I would be happy if the audio didn't drop...and...so far...so good... I will try to find out what models would be affected if, hypothetically speaking, of course, there were to be another 'un-official' update...

Got audio drop outs (and HDMI synch-ing issues - though perhaps one and the same thing as the audio problem) on my 40v5100. Otherwise an awesome TV. Red flash was corrected with the "unofficial" update. No flicker.

Jeff

Never mind. I guess the firewall at my office prevented the link to the "unofficial" update from working. I just tried it here at the house and it worked.

I am getting audio dropouts. I have a directtv receiver hdmi connected to a denon 1910 and that hdmi connected to my kdl-46v5100. Since the audio is going from the directtv receiver to my denon could the sony be causing this?

Thanks,

Andy

my calibration:

Backlight: Min
Picture: 87
Brightness: 56
Color: 41
Hue: R4
Color Temperature: Warm
Sharpness: 5
Noise Reduction: Off
Advanced Contrast Enhancer: Off
Gamma: Off
Clear White: Off
Live Color: Off

Advanced Settings
White Balance:
Rgain -12
Ggain -7
Bgain Max
Rbias -12
Gbias -7
Bbias -10

With changes in the white balance seems to eliminate the blue in the dark parts.
Also has increased to 56 brightness, because the new firmware increase the contrast level

So, you're getting audio dropouts using an EXTERNAL sound system? That's definitely *not* the issue the rest are having... I only ever experienced it when using only the TV sound. If I use my surround...it works fine.

yes. I had it originally when my sound went through my tv via the digital audio cable to the receiver. Then i switched to HDMI where the TV is at the end of the chain (after the receiver) which i thought would remove the dropouts. I am trying to figure out how to trouble shoot this. I swapped out the hdmi cables a while ago

Direct TV has known issues with audio dropouts over the hdmi connection.

If you can run optical (or digital coax, same difference) from the sat box to the Denon it should get you a solid audio experience

Any word on this? I've installed the new official firmware for the 46VL150 (supposedly same internals in 46V5100), and still having the audio dropouts -- even though the firmware description claims to fix it... If someone is talking with the Sony rep, definitely need the audio drop out fix for the VL150 as well as the 5100 series...

Patience is a virtue...

Message deleted by author. No relevance to the discussion.

I own a KDL-52v5100 and have read every post on this forum. I am a tweak freak but know I am in good company, sharing my habit with all here.

I have never had the major problems that concern most posters like red flashing and clouding and mostly been very happy with my purchase. I do get some audio dropouts but that could easily be the fault of my shaw set top box. In any case it rarely is often enough to give me grief.

My major addiction is calibrating the picture, much to my wife's dismay. I have tried every calibration suggested here and tried using the DVE HD Basics BluRay but to my eyes the picture is always too dark, crushing the blacks and the colour is always over saturated. So ignoring all educated and professionally calibrated settings suggested here and elsewhere I now use these settings, Standard for almost all content coming from the Shaw PVR. For Blu-ray and some very well decoded HD movies from the STB I use the Cinema mode with almost the same settings but slightly higher colour and lower backlight. For Hockey games I use a Custom mode with the same settings but the colour temp on cool and the backlight up to 3.

Configuration: coax cable from wall to Motorola STB, HDMI from STB to Sony Home Theater HT-HF360, HDMI from HT-HF360 to TV KDL-52V5100, HDMI from Sony Blu-ray BDP-S360 to HT-HF360. No other cables, composite or optical. I have tried using composite from the STB to the TV and optical from the TV to the Home Theatre, and any other configurations I could think of to see if one was better. The pure HDMI configuration is not only simpler and neater but the picture and sound is somewhat better in my opinion.

Mode - Standard
Backlight - 2
Picture - 81
Bright - 53
Colour - 36, I have never seen anyone set it this low
Hue - R10, any lower and all skin tones look tanned to me
Colour Temp - Warm, I used to use Neutral but with these W. B. settings and Hue setting warm works
Sharp - Min, all this does is add artifacts
Noise Red - Off
ACE - Off
Gamma - Low, sometimes I put it on medium to avoid black crushing in some content
Clear White - Off, I can't see any difference in the whites with this on
Live Colour - Off, I see a small difference in reds and greens with this on but no improvement IMO.
Cinemotion - Auto 1
Motionflow - STD

White Balance:
RGain - -10
GGain - Max
BGain - -8
RBias - 2
GBias - 1
BBias - 1

ECO - Backlight - On, PC Power Man - Off, Light Sensor - Off

It may be my own sensitivity but I find all suggested colour saturation settings too high, except for Blu-rays, but on my system BDs look so good that it is almost impossible to make them look bad.

My major complaint is my inability to find any standard by which to calibrate the picture for all the different grades of content. I have used the DVE HD Basics calibration disk and find it is next to worthless for me. The only test patterns that work as intended are the Pluge pattern for brightness and the overscan pattern for sharpness. The grey scale pattern is useless on this TV since there is no way I can clip the whites as per the instructions, I can push every setting to the max and still see good detail in the upper whites. The colour pattern is also useless, using the blue filter I can set the colour to match the instructions but the red and green cannot be brought in. I have heard that this blue filter will not work on LCD screens. There are no instructions or even a mention for adjusting white balance, gamma, or hue which is amazing to me since it is such a techy tutorial, I would think that white balance and hue/tint would be a major consideration. I have gone through every menu on the disc and on the web site thinking I must have missed something, but it's just not there.

So what is the answer? Buy a colour meter? Is there nothing out there for the enthusiastic hobbyist that will address the obvious issues that the general consumer has? I know there are other calibration discs but after my experience with DVE I am not apt to waste another $30. My own eyes are the final judge after all and maybe it is unrealistic to expect an objective answer to such a subjective question.

I was at a friend's house checking his V5100. The picture did not look great, so I checked setting in both his satellite box and tv. I changed the satellite's HDTV settings to 1080i and 16:9 (was at 480i and 4:3). The problem was setting the view mode on the tv - Normal was greyed out and could not be selected. I could only select from Wide Zoo, Full and Zoom. For example, while watching an HDTV NHL game the score banner at the top was not visible, but would have been in Normal view.

How can I get the TV to let me select Normal? Thanks in advance.

I am annoyed that I had to do this, but I now have audio going directly from the cable box to my surround receiver via a digital audio coax. Thus, for audio the Bravia is bypassed. For video, I am using an RGB component cable going to the Bravia. Having no HDMI cable results in no dropouts or picture flicker. I do not notice any major degradation in HD picture quality by going this analog path. So my assessment is that HDMI protocols between the Bravia and the cable box are not working as they should. I wish these A/V manufacturers especially SONY would get their acts together after agreeing to create this new all digital one cable standard. I assume an even greater burden on this HDMI standard must be imposed when using the latest 3D systems. I bet dropouts and picture flicker in 3D must be a whole new experience.

Interesting comments about HDMI and audio dropouts from Samsung:
http://support-us.samsung.com/cyber/...71F&modelcode=
I wonder if SONY has such an informative page about this topic. Somehow I doubt it.
The A/V Industry's "High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection" verification process stinks like a dead fish in my opinion.
Since SONY is the holder of vast stores of copyrighted material, you know SONY will implement HDCP to a fault -- pun intended. SONY has demonstrated the length they will go in copy protection in their hidden malware fiasco with certain SONY CDs.
What really irritates me is the potential for a slight change or error in the HDCP protocol to crash your hardware, if your equipment is not (or can't be) updated by a firmware revision. Copy protection strikes again!

This still doesn't rule out defective HDMI circuitry in the Bravia.

Another interesting page derived from a reference in the Wikipedia description of High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP):
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blo...aster-key-leak
The comments by the techies at the end of this article are just as interesting.
The original Wikipedia article that gave this as a reference is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-ba...ent_Protection
Excuse me for going off on a tangent on this HDCP subject, but since HDMI handshaking may be a suspect in these Bravia dropouts, I think this needs some further discussion.

[quote=PaulNB;19380458]I was at a friend's house checking his V5100. The picture did not look great, so I checked setting in both his satellite box and tv. I changed the satellite's HDTV settings to 1080i and 16:9 (was at 480i and 4:3). The problem was setting the view mode on the tv - Normal was greyed out and could not be selected. I could only select from Wide Zoo, Full and Zoom. For example, while watching an HDTV NHL game the score banner at the top was not visible, but would have been in Normal view.

Beyond the two settings you changed, there should be a 4:3 override setting in the satellite box menu. If this is set wrong it could be causing your problem. I don't think it has anything to do with the TV.

[quote=odin7;19380743]I am annoyed that I had to do this, but I now have audio going directly from the cable box to my surround receiver via a digital audio coax. Thus, for audio the Bravia is bypassed. For video, I am using an RGB component cable going to the Bravia. Having no HDMI cable results in no dropouts or picture flicker. I do not notice any major degradation in HD picture quality by going this analog path. So my assessment is that HDMI protocols between the Bravia and the cable box are not working as they should.

I think you are right but I don't think all the blame is Sony's. I also went through hell over HDMI hand shake problems and resorted to component and optical cables. I still had problems with my Shaw Moto box so I had them swap it. Now I can have everything go HDMI to my surround receiver and then one HDMI cable to the Bravia and I have never been happier with both audio and video..

I will get some flicker if I use full pixel so i generally have the wide mode on full unless it is a Blu-ray signal and then there is no flicker. I don't have any more audio dropouts than before going all HDMI. Shaw is notorious for dropouts and pixelation so it is difficult to pin point who is at fault. In any case I get so few audio drops now that I can't complain, maybe one or two split second drops in an evening, if that.

I still have the old firmware, Sony is sending me the latest and I am a little hesitant to upgrade since I am having no problems at present (if it aint broke don't fix it) but I am hoping that the update will fix some concerns I have regarding black levels and colour saturation and. Also Bravia Sync seems to have a mind of it's own and Sony say's the latest firmware should fix that.

I am still a big Sony fan, love the TV and Home Theatre and Blu-ray. Service has always been good to me, which is probably just luck since I have heard bad things from others.

Great find, odin7!

Hopefully the audio dropout issues plaguing the Sony KDL-xxV5100 series and other Sony models can be resolved via an official Sony (or unofficial) firmware update.

I have tested the same HDMI cable from my Atalanta 8300HD STB to all HDMI ports on my 46V5100, and the audio dropouts continued.

I tested using another HDMI cable, but the dropouts still occur from the STB to my 46V5100.

Clambakes, thanks for the settings. I tried them last night and they are good. I upped the backlight to 5 though as a personal preference for more pop.

Glad they work for you Coolowl. I also move up the backlight to 4 depending on the time of day and content. Also for HD film I like cinemotion on Auto 2 and Motionflow on high.

hi im just wondering what is the settings do you use to watch blu ray movies? Thanks.

When watching a Blu-ray I use my Cinema settings, just hit the theatre button and the Bravia will go to Cinema and switch the sound to a surround system if you have one. My Cinema settings are:

Mode -cinema
Backlight - 3, lower or min if it is night and the lights are low
Picture - 81
Bight - 50
Hue - R10
Color Temp - warm
Sharp - min
Noise - off
ACE - off
Gamma - low
CW - off
LC - off
Cinemotion - Auto 2
Motionflow - high

White balance:
Rgain - -10
Ggain - Max
Bgain - -8
Rbias - 2
Gbias - 1
Bbias - 1

I believe these are pertinent to our Bravia problem.

http://www.highdefforum.com/flat-pan...ifference.html

"Component Cables: Best for Cable broadcasting since all HD programming is on 1080i. An HDMI cable is not going to make it look better." and
"Not quite true, if it was there would be no built in error correction. HDMI too is susceptible to EMI and RFI interference, evidenced by ferrite magnets on some cables.

Which really serves no intrinsic purpose other than making you believe you are getting some value. In most cases, snake oil at it's best.

Not always good advise as HDCP handshake issues arise daily and make some devices just not work with HDMI. In fact, many if not most cable providers (Dish Network as well) recommend using component for video to prevent the aforementioned HDCP incompatibilities."

As I said way back in a previous post, I can picture an HDMI source device extending a "hand" for handshaking and the SONY Bravia giving it the arm up backwards thumb salute instead of a handshake resulting in a dropout.

Also, read:
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articl...icomponent.htm

hello you miss to put what is the setting for colour, you just jump to color temp. Thanks

Oops, sorry.
Colour - 36