Official Sony HX850 Owner's Thread (46HX850, 55HX850) - Page 33

Was told last week from Amazon that they will have this back in stock sometime in January.

Awesome! Right when i plan on getting one! Thanks for the info. For now ill just daydream about it haha. Im looking for a good tv stand with the swivel mount. That way i can get the wall mount look while hiding the wires. Any suggestions?

I bought this Z Line Vitoria stand for my kuro and I love it. It looks very slick once it's set up.http://www.amazon.com/Z-Link-ZL56444MU-Stand-44-Inch-Vitoria/dp/B0013J0GG0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1355266028&sr=8-3&keywords=zline+vitoria+40

I bought mine on Frys.com as they had it about 100 bucks cheaper at the the time.

I have an hx850, purchased used but made in August 2012. I am impressed by the picture and have not yet made use of any of the adjustments being mentioned here. I do have a question about blu ray playback so I hope it is ok to ask it here. I watched the Batman blu rays at 1080p and the display fluctuates between full screen and a letter box rendition with black space at the top and bottom of the screen. I am not making any changes so I am wondering what accounts for this. Any thoughts? thanks

Thats because some of the movie was filmed with imax cameras(no bars) and some scenes were shot at 2.35:1 cameras(black bars)

Well that's a relief (and makes sense). I'm still wrestling with getting the 46", 55", or the Panasonic 55" GT.

I returned my 46 inch with the dead pixel and the replacement I got has one dead pixel as well. Maybe I just shouldn't be looking for these things.. It is so depressing. Do you guys hunt for dead pixels like me? I have a feeling a lot of these TVs have this issue and 90% of the public never notice it.

swap it out again. ive never noticed dead pixels before but i also dont look for them. but i had multiple sets last year and never saw one.

I have decided to live with it. I cannot see it with normal programming and from normal viewing distances. I need to stop looking for them. Ignorance is bliss! Now I need to dig through this thread for settings. Is there a general consensus on the settings?

Okay, I played around with my HX850 last night on a variety of content. The problem with Game Mode seems to be a processing issue. The backlight is still not great but it's not very noticible in the other modes. I can watch movies just fine in Cinema mode and yes, the edges are brighter than the center but the processing seems to smooth this over. Unfortunately, Game Mode exacerbates this issue greatly. I can start turning on various processing to help it but that introduces lag which is unacceptable.

Here are a few pictures showing what I am dealing with. The first is a shot of night sky from Skyrim. The right side of the screen is supposed to be black with white stars.



If you hit the "Home" button on the remote it shrinks and moves the screen to the left side, which means the right side of the "sky" is showing the proper color and brightness. Quite a difference.



Here's a solid grey slide in Game Mode showing what the set does with this:



I used the shot of the sky to illustrate the issue, but it's always there in dungeons or even outside at night. As you move the camera around it's as if there is a shadow covering the screen in the middle because the sides are so bright. Outside during the day (in-game), the picture looks mostly fine. By the way I've got my backlight set to 3, but setting it to the minimum doesn't help much. Neither does adjusting brightness or picture. The only things that seem to help a little are the items like Adv Contrast Enhancer and Black Corrector but this makes the rest of the picture look bad plus I suspect these things cause lag.

Any ideas? Defective panel or is this the nature of this model?

doesnt seem right to be that obvious.

That's definitely worse than my 46HX850. I have quarter circles of minor flashlighting in the lower corners, maybe an inch or two in radius, and rapidly losing brightness the further from the corner they get, with the right side being worse than the left. The left side is negligible when LED Dynamic Control is engaged, and the right side is just barely noticeable sometimes in the black bars and some dark program material, and as the set has no banding or DSE to speak of, nor any pixel defects, it's a keeper. It really does produce a stunning picture.

You should verify instead of suspect. The thing that's going to make a big difference is the LED Dynamic Control, which should be engaged at least at "Low", preferably "Standard", though the latter may cause noticeable brightness fluctuations with "pathological" material. You should also make sure you're getting proper black levels at the desktop. Basically, black should look black, not gray, and you should be able to distinguish dark shades. You can download test patterns or just run a paint program and create some adjacent rectangles at RGB(0,0,0), RGB(8,8,8), and RGB(16,16,16). You should be able to tell one from the other. I'm somewhat surprised you're not liking ACE and Black Corrector; I think they're worthwhile for video at least. ETA: Also make sure all the Eco stuff is off, particularly the ambient light sensor. I tend to forget those misbegotten features exist and assume everyone turns them off first thing.

FWIW, with my Nvidia GTX460 set to "Gaming" mode in "Content type reported to display", my HX850 automatically selected Game mode, and with the dimming set to "Standard", I didn't notice any significant lag in some limited testing I've done since I got the TV a couple of weeks ago.
Edited by tima94930 - 12/12/12 at 12:16pm

What settings would you recommend for ACE and Black Corrector? I read on this forum that Black Corrector crushes the shadows! Not sure if there is any downside to ACE?

Well, I don't have a CRT so I can't truely verify but it feels laggier when I turn on some of the settings. LED Dynamic control only helps a little bit. It is still quite bad when it's on which is why I think the processing is to blame as much as the panel. As I said, cinema mode is mostly fine. I have all the ECO stuff off. ACE and Black Corrector are fine for movies, but it makes Skyrim lose shadow detail at night (in-game) and look too "contrasty" for my liking. I just don't like the effect in games, it was like that on the plasmas I tried too and I didn't care for it there either. Regardless, these things don't help very much, lag or not. I'll take another pic tonight with those settings on. It's better but still...not good.

Hope you get it sorted... TVs can be very frustrating. I'm not sure why gaming mode would look so much worse. All I can think of is to verify that the black levels are proper by viewing a test pattern (e.g. black bars from 0-255 in steps of 8 should all be distinguishable) or creating an approximation to it for the lowest blacks at least in a paint program.

I currently have them both on Medium. I think the processing on the HX850 is great overall. It works a lot better than on my W4100 and EX500 sets.

Calibrating against AVS 709 HD (PC and BD player), Spears and Munsil (BD player), and Windows 7 Media Center yuppies (PC), I ended up with the following for my 46HX850, and both WMC and XBMC look identical on the PC with XBMC configured to use hardware acceleration. I also went beyond calibration patterns and looked at some scenes mentioned in various CNet reviews, including ones from the latest Star Trek movie, Tree of Life, and Watchmen, plus some of my own favorites, including 2001 (black levels, contrast, torture test for local dimming with the Jupiter syzygy sequences), The Simpsons (they should be yellow, no tinges of green), and Men in Black III (Tommy Lee Jones' craggy face). For Star Trek and 2001, I was able to AB-test between the PC and BD player, which are on separate TV inputs. These are my common settings for my Sony BDP-BX1 and PC running WMC and XBMC:

Picture Mode: Cinema 1 and 2
Backlight: 4 for Cinema 1 and Max for Cinema 2, which are the only differences. I use Cinema 1 in a dark room.
Picture: 90
Brightness: 54
Color: 50
Hue: 0
Color Temperature: Warm 2 (first Sony TV I've preferred Warm 2 to Warm 1; I also have a 46EX500 and 40W4100)
MPEG noise reduction: Off (did not try)
Dot noise reduction: Off (did not try)
Reality Creation: Manual(*)
Video Area Detection: Off
Resolution: 40
Noise filtering: Min (did not try)
Smooth Gradation: Medium (nice!)
MotionFlow: Clear
Cinemotion: Auto 2 (Auto 1 gives stuttering and artifacts, same as with earlier Sony TVs)

Black Corrector: Medium
Advanced Contrast: Medium
Gamma: 0
LED Dynamic Control: Standard(*)
Auto Light Limiter: Medium
Clear White: High (though Warm 2 has the best colors, I'm just not a fan of dingy, reddish whites)
Live Color: Low (intensifies the yellows in Simpsons)
White Balance:
G-Gain: -4 (gets green out of the Simpsons)
G-Bias: -2
Rest default
Detail and Edge Enhancers: Off (did not try)
Skin Naturalizer: Off (did not try)

About Reality Creation: This is a great feature. However, Auto causes Tommy Lee Jones' face to look too craggy, and it causes artifacts in 2001 in which stars in a starfield can suddenly all brighten at once for no reason. Switching to manual fixes this, and backing the resolution down to 40 sharpens everything nicely while keeping TLJ looking semi-human. I observed no artifacts in various test patterns. (BTW, when I talk about artifacts, I've tested them by turning off features and seeing if they go away, plus seeing if they exist on my NEC 20WMGX2 monitor, also connected to my PC in a dual monitor configuration.)

About LED Dynamic Control: Standard gives very deep blacks. I've noticed overt blooming only in a handful of scenes, the most apparent being the final Jupiter syzygy in 2001, when the camera pans up, and the light show begins. I can easily see the zones brighten and darken as this happens. It really is a pathological case for the technology, but even so, it's much less objectionable than the auto-dimming my W4100 would do in its Standard mode (which could be defeated for all but solid black screens in Custom mode by turning on ACE, which is how I always ran that TV). The good news is, switching to Low seems to completely eliminate this artifact, though the blacks do become a little lighter, but still good. For normal viewing, I leave it at Standard, and I'd do it even for 2001, as its bad side is infrequent, of such short duration, and not very objectionable when it does happen, and Standard looks so amazing.

So, that's about my fourth go at this. I started on General, but I didn't like having to go through Vivid to switch between Custom and Standard. So I decided to try Cinema, with Cinema 1 being for dark room viewing and Cinema 2 being for daytime. I have my HTPC on HDMI 1, with the Nvidia Control Panel's video set to "Limited (16-235)" and the TV's "HDMI Dynamic Range" also on "Limited" for that input; this makes 16 true black while preserving WTW. It gives all but identical results to the BD player on HDMI 3 using the same TV settings aside from the TV's "HDMI Dynamic Range", which I can leave on "Auto" for the BD player; "Auto" is the same as "Full" for the HTPC, and that just doesn't work right irrespective of the Nvidia Control panel settings. (I've always connected my PC directly to the TV due to HDMI handshaking issues which are pathetically common in HTPC circles when going through an AVR; they just don't exist when connecting HDMI directly to the TV. I run S/PDIF from the motherboard to the AVR for audio to eliminate HDMI audio problems. BD player goes to AVR. Another advantage is the ability to have separate settings for HTPC and everything connected to the AVR, which is a necessary bit of freedom IMO.)

I think the end result is stunning. Blacks are inky, and shadow detail and contrast are great in the test discs and WMC yuppie videos. The AVS709HD's black, white, and APL clipping are just like they should be. The shadow detail and black looks great in the scenes from Star Trek, Watchmen, and Tree of Life that Cnet talks about, plus everything else I've thrown at it.

After fighting with this t.v. for a few months I think I have finally dialed it in. These settings are kinda dim, so they are intended for a darkroom only. The black levels are darker than the levels I measured on my previous GT50 and E7000 plasma sets.

Eco: Low-extremely important for really low black level and for eliminating those nasty flashlight effects

Scene select: Cinema
Backlight: Min
Picture: Max
Brightness: 51
Color: 50
Hue: G1
Color Temp: Warm 2
Sharpness: 25
All noise reduction and Reality creation: Off
Smooth Gradation: Off
Motionflow: Off
CineMotion: Auto 2

ADVANCED SETTINGS

Turn off all picture enhancement settings: Adv. Contrast, Clear White etc.
Gamma: -2
Led Dynamic Control: Standard
White Balance: R-Gain -4, G-Gain -3, B-Gain -2, R-Bias 0, G-Bias 0, B-Bias -1


Using CalMan and 21% apl window patterns, the results I got from these settings are astounding. The max brightness is only 97 nits, but the black level readings are around .003 nits. Average gamma of 2.4. That's a real time contrast ratio of 32,000. It smokes even the plasmas that I had. Enjoy peeps

Is there any quick way to go from Cinema1 to Cinema2 without pressing Options, Picture Adjustments and Picture Mode?

No I don't think there is. Could be wrong

Once you've selected "Cinema" in "Scene Select", the "Picture" button will do it. Where is the "Picture" button, you ask? Not on the HX850 remote! But it is on my old W4100 remote, and I can also program it into my JP1 remote from a device upgrade. Either way, I can use those remotes to teach my real remote, my Sony RM-VL610. Harmony users can probably work something out, too. Heck, it might even be built in to other universal remotes as a standard Sony feature.

Tima93940 I have to question a few of these settings.

I don't know if you are using a meter to determine some of these, but with all due respect, they are far from accurate. Black Corrector raises the black levels on the set. Why, I don't know but it does. Advanced Contrast should be left off on almost any hd set. Calibration 101 right there. Auto Light Limiter produces an ABL effect on the tv similiar to plasma's and should be avoided. It limits the amount of brightness on a full field white screen. Clear White causes an unnatural blue appearance to whites. You can get similar results by lowering blue gain in white balance. Live Color over saturates the color spectrum, like what xyvcc does, making it completely inaccurate.

I have to ask, why did you decide to turn these settings on like you have? Is it just personal preference? It's certainly no where near reference.

I used the settings that chronitis posted as a starting point for my settings. I am seeing some soap opera effect which I am really sensitive to, keep in mind I am coming from a Sony HD CRT. I am seeing it with fast motion objects / people, especially with a bright background behind them. Is there anything else I can tweak to completely eliminate this effect? If I can not get rid of it I may have to return this and get a plasma because I find it really distracting. I am testing things out with 1080p youtube videos with the native app because I have not hooked it up to another source yet, things like movie trailers.

I explained my testing procedures and material in some detail. Your settings give better black levels, but they sacrifice a whole lot of shadow detail. Whites look dull. Yellows have a greenish tint. The whole picture looks blurry, almost like comparing SD to HD. I'm very surprised anyone would reduce sharpness below 50 with this set. Even before experimenting with "Reality Creation", I thought my 46HX850 seemed on the soft side at its default 50, and I ran my W4100 on 5, which was substantially below its typical default of 15. Sony varies in its sharpness defaults. The W4100 and EX500 I have default to 15, and I turn them down. I have an even older 32M4000, and like the HX850, it defaults to 50. While you can't compare different models, I'm just pointing out I'm not some "sharpness nut" who jacks it up on everything. I use the Spears and Munsil sharpness test screen, increase it until I get artifacting, and then decrease it until it disappears. I definitely did not observe any artifacting at sharpness 50 at 8'.

The only thing I'm much on the fence about is the gamma. I noted a few messages ago that Cinema mode seemed to be +2 compared to Standard, which is what I had been using and gotten used to. Thus, when I switched to Cinema, I used gamma -2 like you, but over time, it just seemed to be too dark. And I do 99% of my watching in a pitch black room. While certain things do look spectacular (as opposed to superb) at -2, other things like (say) a black suit can appear completely featureless, which I don't like. So, I'm at 0 for now. It's a trade-off.

I appreciate your post, but I listen to my lying eyes above all else. FWIW, I scored an 8 at the Online Color Challenge a few months ago, which is pretty decent.

ETA: I forgot to mention that setting contrast to Max as you did blows out some of the detail in the WMC yuppie's white shirt, particularly around the buttons and pocket. The default 90 is as high as I'd go here.
Edited by tima94930 - 12/12/12 at 9:27pm

Trust me, you're lying eye is completely full of it. My results are based on standards set by the film industry. 100 nits, 2.4 gamma determined via bt 1886 gamma calculator. It also almost eliminates flashlighting. You say it looks blurry. I say it looks accurate. Also you say yellow has a green tint to it. You cant calibrate that out properly on this set due to lack of cms, and setting live color on does nothing to help.

From you're settings it looks like sharpness is off, and reality creation is on. I've noticed that sharpness anything above 25 causes moire patterns in the avshd 709 sharpness test. Not a desired affect, and certainly a red flag.

Again you make think your eye is somewhat accurate. But your calibration is more based on preference than reference if you're not using a meter. I've been calibrating a long time and have never once trusted my eye over my meter for accuracy.

Don't know man. Perhaps its the youtube feed. Are you using your tv as the source? Try a blu ray movie or ota and see if you are having the same problem. Oh and is motionflow off? I'm really sensitive to soap opera effect as well and couldn't use it on any of the settings.

How does the HX850 handle glare as compared to the ST50/GT50 line?

The gorilla glass absorbs ambient light better. I had to have the blinds closed most of the time with the plasmas. It also has a better screen filter with no annoying red or green blob.

Good to know, because the filter on the GT50 has been great for glare, despite the screen not being matte.

I'm actually in the process of deciding on whether or not to return my newly purchased P50GT50 due to issues with ABL that seem to exist on all plasmas that I was introduced to the hard way. I haven't owned any other new TV in a while so I'm hoping an LCD will provide a more "consistent" image that's to my liking.

I realize I have to spend a bit more to get comparable image quality out of an LCD so I'm enjoying going through this thread and reading all your comments.

Your settings may be perfect per your meter (is your meter perfect?), but on my 46HX850, they exhibit poor shadow detail and produce an unpleasantly dark screen overall, fail to do anything to correct green-tinted yellows, look like SD on a lot of material, and blow out whites, among other things. The black levels you get, I was getting too for the last couple of weeks all on my own, but I've lately backed off them a little because they simply don't work well in all material all the time. I'm searching for a happy medium. Unfortunately, I don't have a meter. All I have are my eyes and test material; I never even remotely claimed my "eyes are meters" as you like to imply. The only point in my bringing up that color discrimination test was to establish I'm not color blind. When I try your settings, I see problems such as the contrast issue I mentioned in my last message, relative to specific test material. As for your gamma -2 and brightness 51, for the AVS709 APL Clipping Test, the flashing stops for me around bar 24, instead of 19-20 as it should. That's as objective as I can be with the capabilities at my disposal. You're not going to talk me out of any of this, because it's what I see, and I couldn't care less if your meter says I'm wrong. I don't know what you want from this, but I can't imagine there's any point in continuing it.

I am using a blu ray player set properly to ycbcr to make my calibration. You said you were using a computer and a blu ray player. But under what colorspace and rgb levels? Are you calibrating under full rgb? You also say that my settings over blow contrast because its set to max. Thats factually wrong because my contrast is lowered due to the ECO being set to low and the backlight being set to a minimum. My peak white is around 97 nits. Your calibration has to be much higher. I'm not trying to change your mind, but your results are incorrect. So if anybody was to come on this website and use your settings they would think that there tv was all good, but that's just not true. I'm really just trying to help because people keep complaining about flashlighting. I believe my settings fix that for the most part.
Edited by chronitis - 12/13/12 at 12:10am