Official Sony KDL-xxHX800 Owners Thread - Page 18

I noticed the samething, the clouding effect. But that was only on "Auto" brightness while watching 3D blurays. But once I set it to "High" the problem went away. At least it's a lot less noticeable than before. A lot less. And I'm very pleased with the results.

As for the longevity of the LED due to it being set to High, I'm not worried about it. If it means the TV will now only last half the time, 4 years or so, by then there's going to be 3D TVs that don't require 3D glasses and most likely I'll be buying one. This present 3D TV is only for the sake of enjoying 3D until then.

But by far I would choose a Sony Bravia over a Panasonic or Samsung any day. I'm really pleased my latest 3D Bravia. It rocks!

Took the plunge and purchased the 55HX800 over the weekend. Spent all day Sunday watching HD content from my Comcast DVR, Blu Rays, and 3D Blu Rays. I am floored by the picture. The blacks are inky black, I have zero flashlighting, and zero clouding. I couldn't be happier!

I must tell you that I spent about 6 months researching sets. I looked at the Samsung UN55C7000 and UN55C8000, and the LG 55LE8500 and 55LX9500. The Samsungs had a nice picture, but I just felt the Sony looked better with less clouding and flashlighting. And while the LG 55LX9500 is a beautiful set, I just could not justify the price. Plus, I got a great deal on the HX800 with the free blu ray player, 3D emitter, and glasses.

The only other set I would have considered is the new 55NX810, but the price is still a bit too steep on that one. Anyway, I'm definitely a satisfied customer with the HX800!

Congrats!

I'm having problems getting Dolby Digital from my 55HX800 to my Denon receiver. I have a PS3 hooked to the TV via HDMI. I then have an optical cable from the TV to my receiver. The receiver is getting a digital signal from the TV ok (i.e. playing sound), but it is not indicating that it is Dolby Digital (i.e. DD light does not come on receiver when playing a DVD that has DD). Does anyone else get DD ok out of the optical out connection of the HX800 TV?

Ignore my previous post. I found the "Bit stream" audio setting in the PS3 and that did the trick. On to setting up the video for best picture!

Price on that set is really going low these days. I remember looking into that TV at the begining of the summer and it was very 3300$ for a 46$. Now, I can get the same 46" for 2200$ and they are giving away 2 pairs of glasses, the 3D transmitter and a 3D bluray player. Clouding and somewhat bad view angle are currently holding me from considering it.

Considering the original MSRP of the series, current bundles are looking pretty attractive. As far as clouding and viewing angle are concerned, a bunk panel might produce those but there has been few reports of either of those issues here on this series of sets.

Agreed. I have zero clouding on my panel (bought the tv from ABT). And I find the viewing angle to be quite good.

Clouding will really only occur if you set your backlight to max, like during 3d mode. My clouding only appears during 3d mode, when in regular mode, there is absolutely no clouding and viewing angles are quite decent.

So I went to Magnolia to shop for TV's for my gym--which ranges from significant, though not glaring or direct, ambient light to quite dark (when the kids use it at night as their own TV). I pretty quickly settled on the Sonys, since the Sammys seemed to be a bit noisier, sharper and "colorful" than I like. More pop, but more tiring as well.

I went back and forth between the 55 inch HX800 and the 52 inch HX 909. Now, I understand the difference between edge lighting and local dimming, and I further understand what effects that difference is supposed to have on the picture. The sets were right next to each other, in relatively low light (because it was near closing and I insisted the shop lower the damn lights.) Same feed.

As background, I have a professional calibrated CRT front projector with 8 inch tubes hanging from the ceiling of my totally light controlled av room, with a screen that drops down in front of my professionally calibrated 82 inch Mits DLP ( we don't see RBE in this house) for "regular" viewing. I know and love black level.

I know what I expected to see. Heck, I wanted to see it. The delta of 800 bucks or so was not a big deal to me. But I could not see it. I could not see an appreciable difference in black level, color fidelity, "flashlighting", "clouding" or anything else, frankly. If anything, at the same settings I thought the HX 800 gave a slightly more pleasing picture to my eye. The sales guy was all hot to pump the 909, but by the end of the process he didn't have much to say about the picture quality issue itself, although he did tout the Bravia 4 processing in the 909.

I'll put on my flame retardant suit now and wait until the HX 800 gets delivered next week.

The HX909 is Bravia 3, just like the HX800 so that sales guys is a knucklehead. That said, I think at the end of the day it really boils down to if the customer prefers monolith to standard frame and the slight differences in the screen treatments - where the HX800 has a darker tone to the filter and the HX909 has the Opticontrast with the resin fill. Anything you put in front of the panel essentially becomes a filter lens, so it comes down to how you like your image served. In a serious light bath, the HX909 has more of a pink/purple-ish tone to it, mimicking the Sammys (to our eyes) whereas the HX800 has more of a brown/purple-ish look, similar to some of the better (legacy) plasmas. The difference makes the HX909 look more reflective, albeit both are hardly panes of shinny glass. Everything else being equal, we made our choice based on upon the look of the screen treatment knowing that more than 80% of the time we'd be watching television with significant ambient light bath - not a completley darkened room.

The rest was gravy; the money saved, the few more inches, the lower power, the lighter weight and the thinner, "non-picture" producing area dedicated to the bezel. And just like you, we saw no appreciable difference in the actual "panel" picture performance.

Enjoy your new television!

Damn. Knucklehead is right. After all that schmoozing, the processing is the same? Quick check on Google confirms. I didn't even think to check him, since he was so adamant about that. That kind of thing irritates me.

But I'll get over it. Can't wait to play with it. This is my first LCD/LED--are there "break-in" periods involved, before calibration, for example? Can't seem to find a reference to that...

I've not come across any technically based reasoning for adhering to a break-in period for LED-LCD, but I will say this, give your eyes a break-in period to the new set - preferrably with some more standard (not blistering Vivid mode) type settings. I gave mine about a week in the home environment in Standard mode before I got super serious about dialing it in. Enjoy the WoW factor for a week, get acclimated, then hunker down to dialing in your preferred setup once the excitement has leveled out a bit.

Billho3, do you like the HX909 better than the HX800? I went with the 55HX800 over the HX909 mainly because the Sony rep at Nebraska Furniture Mart where I bought it suggested that the picture on the HX800 was better, I figured she knew what she was talking about as she stares at the sets all day. I couldn't tell much of a difference in pq between the two sets and liked the fact that I was getting an extra 3" with the HX800. I don't really care about the 3D I just want the best 2D pq.

Hey yall, I've been messing around with a few different calibrated settings. So far i'm using OmarF's semi revised settings (not the one with the ambient light sensor). I like how much detail and depth it brings out in most scenes, but sometimes it feels almost crushing. Anyhow, i was wondering what you guys think of the Flatpanelshd settings.


Picture mode: Custom
Backlight 3-4
Contrast 90
Brightness: 50
Colour: 50
Hue: 0
Sharpness: 0
Colour temperature Warm2
Noise reduction Off
Mpeg noise reduction Off
Motionflow Standard / Off
Film-mode Auto 1/Auto 2
Black corrector Off
Adv. Contrast Enhancer Off
Gamma +1
Auto Light Limiter Off
Clear White Off
Live Colour Off
R Gain 0
G Gain -7
B Gain -4
R Bias 0
G Bias 0
B Bias 0
Light Sensor Off

I assume the dynamic led settings is standard.

Your gamma setting is way too high, youre washing out all your black and trying to compensate by turning down the backlight. Thats like letting all the air out of your tires then buying better shocks to fix the bumpy ride. Try putting your gamma to -1 and the backlight to 5, then turn the ambient light sensor on. You should get the detail the higher gamma gives you AND deeper blacks. Tbe sensor does not mess up the intended look of the picture. Ive used a reference projector in the same house for validation. And dynamic led should be on standard, you got it.

All the best
Omar

They have some real good deal on the HX800 here and I went to see it yesterday. It does look good in the store, but they mostly all do. The only thing holding me back is the input lag on gaming. What I'm planning to do is bring my xbox 360 to the store, hook it up to the TV and test it for myself. I won't have hard numbers for it but at least I'll know if I can feel the lag or not and this will determine if I give this TV a try.

Clouding scares me as well. Which is the plague of all LED TV this year. It's like a TV lottery. You might get some or you might now. I hope that if I get decides to go through with this TV, that I'll get a good one.

Clouding seems to be related to ppl maxing the backlight

unfortunately, that isn't true. Clouding is present even with the backlight lowered down, it's just not as visible.

I returned an HX700 (which is a CCFL, not and edge led) and it had bad clouding. Even when reducing the backlight down to 3 (which is quite low, but usuable in a dark room) I could still see it. Obviously, if I was to raise the backlight, the clouding would be easier to notice.

Another thing I notice is that the clouding seems to get worst as the TV warms up.

Personally, when it comes to lag, i do not notice any really at all. 70% of use on this tv is gaming on ps3. I notice no real lag at all. Especially since the settings i use turn off all the processing really. I play lots of FPS games.

In the clouding department, i honestly only notice it when the backlight it turned to near max.

This is good news. As for Clouding, if you only notice it when bumping the backlight to the max, then I don't consider it myself an issue. But when you see it all the time, espicially when watching movies, it's just distracting.

I've been having a nightmare for the past 3 weeks.

- I originally bought a Samsung PN58C550 from them. Took it home myself, opened up, found a cracked screen. HHGREGG went through the normal policy about how I needed to repack everything and took it back for them to inspect for damages before they can even tell me if I'm eligible for exchange, no can't have anyone come in to take a look since it's against their policy (I live 0.1 mile from them), no I can't submit photos for them to see. Turns out they gave me the wrong TV - gave me a returned one. After all this hassle they gave me, no offers of apologies - in words or otherwise. Only after I filled in the customer (non)satisfaction survey, did I get a call.
- On my insistence (not their offer), they deliver the replacement plasma free of charge. The plasma buzz drove me crazy so I upgraded to 55HX800.
- My first set had a few bad pixels for the green and the blue so I returned it and exchange for a second set. All this time, I lugged the TV there & back myself.
- My second set had worse bad pixels - more in the middle and more black across all 3 pixel components. I could actually see it from 8 ft out (my eyes are pretty good!).
- After the second set, I to BestBuy and asked what their policy is. Understanding obviously that what they 'tell me then' might differ in actual fact since they're trying to get a sale from me. They told me I could exchange as many times as I want within 30 days (compared to HHGREGG's 14 days). More over, they offer free delivery for big TV (which HHGREGG charges $70 for and weren't even willing to offer for free when the messed up). I asked the Magnolia guy - so if you deliver and I find bad pixels out of the box, they can deliver the exchange and take back the 'defective' (Sony will beg to differ) one? They told me, yup, until I am satisfied. Of course, I don't know how much of this is sales talk and how much is true.....
- I went back to HHGREGG. Partly because I wanted to go to BestBuy since they seem to be more flexible (not sure about in reality though) but also because I didn't want to get yet another exchange from HHGREGG as they didn't seem to take on this whole idea of my exchanging because of bad pixels too well.
- HHGREGG told me that despite having fulfill all the conditions listed to be eligible for a full refund as listed at the back of their receipt.

An exchange or full refund will be made if the following requirements are met:
- You must have the original sales receipt.
- Merchandise must be returned within fourteen days of the original purchase date.
- Merchandise must be in its original condition and include all original packing materials, accessories, product literature and warranty cards.

They told me I couldn't do a full refund and had to pay 20% restocking fee.

It was pointless arguing - HHGREGG insisted even if the conditions are fulfilled, the refund is still up to their discretion and since I had exchange 2 sets already, they had to charge me 20% restocking fee.

After a bit more discussion, they offered me free delivery of a 3rd set - and then also verbally said they would free deliver & exchange until I was satisfied.......

Today I got the 3rd set - and of course bad pixels. I went back to speak to the shift manager from the day before. She offered to send someone over to look at it (thought it was against their policy.......). I told her bad pixels are bad pixels - it's not going to make any difference. She told me what I already knew - Sony says it's not an issue and an exchange might not be possible now. And the regional manager confirms I needed to pay 20% restocking fee if I wanted to return. I was free to make exchanges for other models though.

So.....any comments from anyone on what options I have? I couldn't find any stats on how many people have NO dead pixels for the HX800.......would it differ from models like EX500/EX700?

Thanks for reading!

Sounds like you have the worst luck in the world. I very rarely see any TV's with burnt out pixels on showroom floors.

This TV with bundle is now at its lowest price ever @ BB.

Not quite, i got the USappliance deal about a month back which included 55hx800, 2 pairs of 3d glasses, transmitter, and BDV-E570 5.1 home theater in a box blu ray player. No tax, free shipping all for about 2299. Basically the same deal except with a 5.1 and for about 600 less total. In fact, USappliance has the same deal going on right now as best buy, except a few hundred less.

In the very latest WSR article on a Sony Bravia LED 3D TV (I think it was one of the fully backlit series) the reviewer said they had to put the Sony S470 3D player in RGB output mode to get the best picture from the set.

They mentioned that was one of the first sets the reviewer found that liked a forced RGB output via HDMI the best. Could it be the Sony TV or the player, or something else?

Anyone have a Sony 3D LED TV and a Sony 3D player that could test this?

Thanks!

Anyone with a PS3 could test that.

Lowest price ever "@ BB". Not to be confused with the lowest price ever, anywhere.

Yeah, I've seen the TV only offered for much lower at other places and I saw how great USApp does on bundles too. Quit being such a stuup1dmofo. JK

OK, let me rephrase that then...

BB is offering their best combo deal ever, with the lowest price since introduction.

Heh, i was kind of thinking you meant that too. =) Anyhow, so far this tv still knocks my socks off when playing blu rays and games. The best part is that it produces very very little heat compared to my ccfl sony lcd. The only time this tv ever gets hot is in 3d mode with the backlight all the way up.

One thing that has been on my mind lately is the difference between a deep black panel and opticontrast. nx810 vs hx800 comparison anyone?

Amalot is right. Prices at BB are insanely low, but you have to go into the store for the package price. I just got over $300 refunded from my package deal of two weeks ago, last night, to match the new price.

Omar