Sony hx729 - Page 2

If you can't see it in normal viewing, then why even look for it? If I look hard enough, I can find a flaw in anything except my wife. As my old daddy used to say, the more you stir a turd the worse it stinks.

point taken.

THX Mike for your reply again, but its there in any viewing mode with any dark viewing background from any type of viewing source. I'll have to post some pics in a few days to help out anyone else identify it. I'll post my pro calibration settings later today after work. CIAO

March 2011 model here.

I just got an HX729 a couple of days ago and I don't see any bleeding or any other screen issues. It looks pretty darn good to me. I'd be curious to see pictures of the defects to compare. In my case, I didn't even need to tweak the picture settings much to get an optimal picture. So far I am pretty impressed and happy with what I got.

Where on the back is the build date? I looked all over the back of mine and didn't find it anywhere.

towards the middle on the white label. It's in very small print above the barcode if i remember correctly. Mine just said "Mar 2011"




I should be receiving my DVE HD Basics disc today so hopefully i'll have some time to calibrate the TV tonight or this weekend at the latest.

I just picked up my 46HX729 a few hours ago. I finished putting it in my bedroom where I have it mounted on the swivel stand of an INIT combo unit and hooked up to a Sony HT-CT150 sound bar along with a PS3 and TiVo HD.

I've only had time to hook it up and make sure all the basic stuff was working, so I haven't done any serious calibrating. As one might expect, it was set pretty much in torch mode out-of-the-box and I quickly noticed flashlighting in both of the lower corners, but after some quick changes to the display settings, they disappeared. I have a Disney WOW disc which I'll be using to do my own calibrating, but that likely won't happen until at least Sunday when my work week ends.

Connecting to our wireless network was no problem and I've already made sure that Netflix works after activating with both Sony and Netflix.

I also use a Harmony One remote and had no issues replacing the Sammy with the Sony TV in the activities, though I will have to go back and customize the quick commands.

This replaces a 2+ year old Sammy LN46A550. There wasn't anything wrong with the Sammy - my mom was in dire need of a replacement for her ancient 29" GE CRT so it was a good excuse for me to upgrade.

Kirby34, I previously had a Samsung LN46A550 too, what a coincidence. Mine has been moved to the basement bar/game area. Still a great TV, but I wanted something bigger with a faster panel, hence the 55HX729 choice.

As for the web browser on the HX729, i figured it out. Load the browser from the home menu. Takes about 30 seconds to load. Once loaded, hit the OPTIONS button on the remote, this brings up the browser operations. First thing, go to ZOOM and zoom in one click, makes it waaaaay more readable. Also, the OPTIONS menu contains everything you need to navigate to other sites, etc. It's fairly simple, so just have fun from there. You can bookmark sites too which is nice for quick access later. Browser was working perfectly for me. It's not too bad on speed after the inital load up.

Also, found my panel date on the back finally. April 2011. It's on the white label on the bottom left.

Hey guys I am looking for some advice. I was all ready to purchase the Samsung 55D8000 but after reading these forums and other reviews it really seems like there is a good chance of receiving a defective set. So, I was looking at other sets and the HX729 caught me eye. So far, the reviews seem positive and I'm sort of back to square one. If anyone has any advice and is willing to share the thought process that bought them to the HX729 - it will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

My path was similar to yours. After doing some research, my first choice was the Samsung 55D7000. The more I read about that and the D8000 series on AVS, the more I rethought my decision. There seems to be a lot of panel quality issues with the Samsungs.

While the Sony TVs are not immune to the same problems, my sense was that they are not nearly as problematic. Once I decided on something else, I checked out Sony. I've always had good results with Sony TVs. In fact my HX729 is replacing an older gen Sony LCD, which I never had any problems with. So it pretty much came down to what model I could afford, and the 729 was the best one feature-wise in my target price range. I went to a local Sony store to see a demo unit, was sufficiently impressed with it, and went ahead and bought it.

So far, I am very happy with my choice. It's a really nice looking TV with ridiculously good black levels and great color. All the internet functionality is sort of extra gravy, but I did get the add-on Skype camera which works pretty well. I have not tried out the 3D function much yet, but what I did try was very nice.

I consider myself decently versed in home theater hardware, but I'm not hardcore about it. I'll get around to calibrating the picture settings eventually, but setting everything just by the naked eye in my viewing environment has been easy and the results are more than satisfactory.

Good luck with your decision.

Sony>samsung

i needed a new set to replace a 40" Samsung. I leaned more towards Sony since I own a PS3 and could sync most everything up. I've always been around Sharps and Samsungs but there was something about the HX729 that I kept returning to. It had almost all of Sony's top hardware inside and I absolutely did not want the monolith design and glass screen since my living room receives so much natural light. While not matte, the HX729 screen is wonderful and I receive almost no glare. Even from fluorescent lights on the fish tank in the corner. Those things, plus a few more, plus the free 3D glasses and a price I couldn't pass up made it a no brainer. And to make it even better my retailer credited me back even more this week when they put the unit on sale for even less.

I'm a stickler for testing stuff and wanting to try it in store before I buy anything, especially something of this magnitude. But no retailer in the Charlotte-metro area had any so I took the gamble and ordered online. So far i'm extremely happy.

Now I just need a sound bar!

C'mon Mike, use that extra savings you snagged and get a full blown 5.1 surround sound setup You know you want to

haha i'd love to, but the way my condo is set up i don't have any rear walls for the rear speakers to hang and free standing speakers would get in the way.

I figure a decent soundbar setup will be ok for a couple years when things change.

Or just so some b&w 685s and a str-da3600

I picked up my 46HX729 two weeks ago. I still haven't had a chance to really mess with it but IMO the picture is incredible, especially on high-bitrate channels like HBO. I don't have a BR player yet since I just upgraded from a 20 year old Toshiba 32" CRT (which was a great TV in it's own right.)

I find myself spending most of the time in Cinema mode which pretty much disables MotionFlow and other image processing. I mostly watch film-based content so that stuff is no good, but with football season fast approaching I'll probably be turning it on on Sunday afternoons.

I agree with an earlier post that the Cinema mode is a little dark. But at the same time I was floored by how good the black levels are on this set. I haven't noticed any bleeding or flashlighting at all under normal viewing.

I have two gripes with this set which were concerns prior to buying it. The glossy screen does cause glare for me, mostly in the reflection of the lamp on the end of my couch (the GF didn't seem to notice what I was talking about though) and the built-in speakers SUCK. I knew going in that the speakers were not going to be very dynamic being that the set is an inch thick, but I was still a little disappointed.

My set came with the BD50 glasses but they were on backorder when I picked the TV up so I can't comment on the 3D performance.

I know that a lot of people recommend the Panny 110 for a BR player. I was also looking at the s580 and I was wondering if anybody knows if there's a real benefit to getting a Sony BR player since I have a Sony TV. I don't care so much about built-in web services or BD-live, but I do care about speed and image quality.

a new Sony BR player will allow you to use Bravia Sync so that you can control everything with one remote and some things like that.





Has anyone set up their media sharing with their computer and WMP yet? I have my network all set up, all of my video folders located, and the TV says the network is successful yet it will not pull up the list of videos for me to watch no matter what I do. Thoughts?

Hello Dogboy. I started from the Cinema 2 preset also and tweaked from there. I got it looking pretty good to my liking for the most part, still playing around with different settings. I kinda like the SOE from Motionflow - Smooth and Cinemotion - Auto1, but the judder gets on my nerves after a while. I've settled on Smooth and Auto2 for now.

For a Blu Ray player, the main benefit of a Sony type would be the sync with your TV and other Sony stuff. But it's not really a necessity. I bought a Samsung BD-D6700. I'd say just get a player that has all the features you need, has good reviews and in your price range. I picked the BD-D6700 since it's one of the few out right now with dual HDMI out and it was on a decent sale the day i got it. I only have a 1.3 HDMI AVR.

For the TV speakers, I went into the sound setup and tweaked the equilizer, and turned off any 3D or other effects. I think they sound much better after a bit of tweaking. Nothing stellar, but acceptable.

Mike, if you have Windows7, go to Control Panel -> Network & Sharing Center -> Change Advanced Sharing Settings. Scroll down to Media Streaming and click on "Choose Media Streaming Options". You should see your HX729 in the list of devices. Change it to allow and you should be able to get to your files after that. Mine was set to Blocked by default.

P.S. - you might have to do the software update on the TV first, not sure.

thanks. I have everything set up correctly but for some reason the TV has a hard time bringing up my files to scroll through. The WMP media server works fine on my PS3 and the PlayOn server I have as well works on both the PS3 and the TV. So it's definitely something on the TV's end.


i've been enjoying the slew of bad movies on the Crackle On Demand app on the TV as well.

Are your video files of the format the TV can read? It's pretty limited on the file formats. And yeah, I like the Crackle thing too. Older movies, but there's some good ones in there.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm really starting to lean towards this set. I was just wondering how it compares to the NX720 and the HX820?

http://www.abt.com/documents/38313/S...arison2011.pdf

i don't really know how to answer that unless you find a store that has all three models on display for you to tweak and watch. But if you're just looking for a chart that shows what each one has and doesn't have then click the link above.

I completed my own calibration using the Disney WOW disc using Cinema 1 as the starting point. Overall, I don't feel like I had to make wholesale changes from the baseline, but the difference in PQ is definitely noticeable.

I've watched The Dark Knight, Matrix Reloaded, HP and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and a couple episodes of Band of Brothers (all Blu-ray) and am very happy with all facets of PQ - no noticeable flashlighting and the only blooming I'm seeing are when white credits roll on a black background, but it's not like the text is unreadable and I don't sit around watching rolling credits all the time.

I tried out 3D with Alice in Wonderland 3D and was impressed. I had no issues with eye fatigue and very minimal crosstalk in my opinion. I should point out that I didn't really bother testing off-axis viewing because this TV is in a bedroom and 99% of my viewing is straight-on while in/on the bed.

I also tried the simulated 3D with both BR's and HD TV broadcasts (both live and TiVo playback). Considering I wasn't really planning on using this feature a whole lot, I didn't have high expectations for it, so when I didn't find it overly impressive, I didn't really care.

We have Comcast cable and we didn't add the HD package until a couple days after I had the set, so I started out watching SD broadcasts which were surprisingly more-than-adequate. Needless to say, it doesn't compare with the HD broadcasts which we're now getting.

One of the things I'm still on the fence about is the setting for MotionFlow. I've left CineMotion on Auto1, but I seem to switch MotionFlow back-and-forth between Smooth and Clear1. Sometimes I like the SOE (soap opera effect) and sometimes I don't - sort of like Mounds and Almond Joy, I guess.

One thing I haven't messed with yet is the online stuff. I did activate the wireless and Netflix, but haven't done any exploration. That'll have to wait until I get back later in the week after a short vacation.

^good stuff. I'm hoping to complete my disc calibration tomorrow evening.

lately i've been using MotionFlow: Standard and CineMotion Auto1 for normal cable viewing.

Sports setting with MotionFlow Smooth while watching Baseball or Nascar and probably that way for football next month

and finally Cinema setting with MotionFlow Clear and CineMotion Auto 2 for blu-ray films.

Can anyone tell me if the remote control is backlit? I'm thinking I may have the 46HX729 in my living room pretty soon.

Mine isn't.

Edit to add that this isn't an issue for me because I use a Logitech Harmony One as my remote.

Anyone have any idea how SBM in the "Pro Picture Setup" section and Smooth Gradation in the "Picture Adjustments" section work together?

Are these settings that should be used together, like SBM has to be ON for Smooth Gradation to have an effect, or, are they completely independent of each other?

i've noticed what i assume is flashlighting. But it only appeared in the most unimportant time that i don't even care. It appeared when starting a blu-ray through my ps3 and the white play button appeared in the lower left corner on an otherwise pitch black picture. if that's the worst i get, i'm happy.