The OFFICIAL KD-36XS955 Thread... - Page 6

I think it's pretty firmly established by now that he's blindly evangelizing the set and refuses to accept anything that's not glowing, gushing praise about the XS955. When he posts his review next week, I'm sure you can look forward to hearing about how stunning standard definition programming looks, and I'd bet the numbers "910" and "960" will be continually bandied about in there somewhere.

Boy is this thing heavy...fits on the stand fine but you only get one shelf with the stand...the second shelf is an additional cost option (from who?)

Finally got it up and running on all sources last nite. comcast cable, SD DirecTV with TIVO, Sony progressive DVD, and Sony VCR.

Cable...not as good as my analog 35" Sony 35V35 I replaced

DirecTV...depending on the channel...awesome. Dancing with Wolves was beautiful....gardening shows...look like cable. Boils dow to compresion on signal from DirecTV for each channel.

VCR, as good ar worse than cable, quality of the source is the issue.

DVD...interlaced...decent. Progressive...beautiful

HD over the air will have to wait 'till this afternoon for antenna hookup (TV is in the basememt).

Sound is very good.

Let me put a hundred hours on it and then I really know.


BTW, Does anyone have a service manual or list of access codes for the service menu for this set?

hey metman2003, I have a second glass shelf if you need,that I won't be using. I ordered it last month after I placed my order which is now canceled.I got the name of the place from Sony and its the actual manufacturer of the stand. I can't recall the name but if you want to pm me about my shelf or the name I 'll get it for you.

...my wallet, that is. Finally saw one of these beasts in person and even Connie Chung (or a Connie Chung clone?) looked good on a D****TV (SD) feed. Only problems with that were some noise due to the overextended distribution system and some compression artifacts that arrived with the signal. I tried several other channels due to my concern that the set adequately handle SD. HDTV signals from DVD player and from D****TV of various football telecasts looked excellent. And this was all right out of the box. They had just set the thing up and had not adjusted anything. Interestingly, the set was placed in one of the nice viewing rooms rather than out on the floor.

I am sure the set will prove to be less than perfect, but it definitely meets or exceeds my expectations--particularly with SD content--and will work just fine for the next several years until HDTV becomes more commonplace.

Delivery Wednesday!

Gary K.

Exactly. I have been in and around the electronics industry for a long time and it seems entirely reasonable to me that 3 chip DLP's, refined LCos designs, and other approaches that may seem exotic today will be much more affordable and robust in design than the present generation of sets, and that this will happen in about 5 years. This is not to disrespect or diminish in any way those who are currently pioneering this early market by purchasing the emerging projection and flat panel technologies today! If my wife did not see rainbows we might well have ordered a Mits DLP.

For now though, the '955 is a beauty. About your stand question, I actually have a striking and unusual platform/rack that I am going to use for this set. I will upload a picture when I get it all installed.

I really hope I can find a good deal on this TV when it's available locally, because I think it will fit our needs until we can afford one of the flat panels or nice rptvs (or projectors in a decked out home theater room, drool). But it's really currently just outside the budget I can rationalize (so far) for an entertainment purchase.

lahaina, can you say how the image quality is at roughly a 6' viewing distance? I ask because we have a really small living room, and I'm concerned that regular SD feeds will look bad when viewed so closely (I know that HD as well as DVD should look great, but we watch a lot of Nickelodeon, History Channel, Speed, and other stations not currently available in HD).

Also, does anyone know if this tv will have a sound sync problem if I feed audio straight to our home theater instead of through the tv? I've read that is an issue with quite a few sets, where the video processing creates a delay that ruins the sound sync when the TV doesn't process the sound as well.

When you consider how many (few) horizontal scan lines are spread out over a screen that size, then I question how happy you might be with it on standard content--for any 36" TV, not just this one at a 6' viewing distance. My impression is that the SD picture on this set is of a quality approximates that of other 36" CRT sets Sony has made in the past including its analog sets. There are some visitors here who will take exception to such a statement. I don't personally agree with them, having spent some time looking, comparing and deciding for myself. Fortunately, this is something you can definitely test and decide for yourself in a showroom as long as you can identify problems that are due to the broadcast and/or signal distribution and those which are definitely not (probably an whole 'nuther thread for that topic). Having a large, high quality 4:3, non-HDTV capable set (such as a Sony 'FS120) nearby that you can use as a reference might give you some confidence in the showroom.

As to a sound sync issue, that is a non-issue with the '955 so far as I know. I have not heard of this except for some Samsung or Panny DLP sets. Maybe someone else could put a finer point on that one but I think that was a very isolated situation.

What settings are you using to get good SD picture. Most of my SD channels do not display faces that well and I have to turn the picture setting way down.;

JamisonBWalsh is incorrect.

Avia is useful for diagnosing specific problems for the television (geometry, etc.), and it helps you find an ideal picture setting for your DVD player. However, Avia strikes that balance just for the combination of your specific DVD player and the input you're using for the DVD player. If you use a different DVD player, those same settings may not be ideal anymore. If you drastically change the way your DVD player is connected to the television, those same settings may not be ideal anymore. If you switch to a different type of source material (SD cable, a video game system, HDTV), those settings are very likely not ideal.

If Jamison's mindset were correct, then ISF folks wouldn't charge to calibrate per input since they'd only need to do it once. If Jamison's mindset were correct, then the XS955 would have one global picture setting instead of being input-specific. That's not to say that settings found through Avia for your DVD player won't make SD cable look better, but I wouldn't bank on the ideal settings for your DVD player flawlessly matching the ideal settings for SD cable or HDTV.

I completely understand this, but that's not what you said earlier.


Calibration by definition requires having a definitive point of reference. If you use settings from Avia intended for a different input and then change the settings arbitrarily to what you think looks good, it ceases to be calibrated.


I'm not the only person saying this. And bear in mind, I have the set and am not basing my comments on specifications or speculation.

D'oh! I just found out that our car needs ~$700 worth of work, so there goes the HDTV budget for now. Maybe I'll be able to find a good Black Friday deal in November.

lahaina, thanks for the feedback. I plan to swing by BestBuy and look at their 36" tvs to decide if we really have room or not. I may end up going with a 32" hdtv, since they seem to be quite a bit less expensive than the 36" options. And I wouldn't be so worried about it being too big for our space.

Jamison, you do have a point. In that devil-on-your-shoulder sort of way.

Oh, come on -- I think it's pretty clear you've demonstrated a complete and total lack of objectivity towards this set. A few sample quotes of yours before you ever saw anything in the XS955 line:







I await your glowing review of how flawless this set is, how it is vastly superior to the 960, and how anything I said that could possibly be construed as remotely negative is completely off-base. (Nevermind the fact that I really like the set, and that the only downside I feel is present is that analog cable doesn't look as crisp as it did on my analog VVega...something that doesn't matter to me since I always intended to use this TV as an HDTV/DVD monitor.)

According to a rather lengthy and technical thread in the Sony area over at ***************, 480i signals arriving via the tuner or composite video inputs do not go through the digital scaling circuitry AT ALL on Sony CRT sets. This is true for both direct view and RP styles. Based on that, my disagreement with those who insist that SD does not render well on these sets intensifies. It also reflects my experience in viewing SD content on these sets in the store. Out of the box, the colors, contrast, sharpness etc. may well be suboptimal, but that is true of any set you might buy.

I watch analog cable fed through my cable provider's set-top box via component video cables, a combination that, as best I can tell, does trigger the DRC circuity.

I haven't used the QAM input for analog cable in a couple of weeks, and even then not for any significant length of time, so I can't really comment on how that stacks up by comparison without unplugging and plugging some things in.

My disappointment could be a combination of the signal quality and the set-top box. I'm using the same cable provider I was with my old set, but with different set-top boxes and different connections. Either of those could possibly be to blame.

Yes, the DRC circuitry does come into play as I understand it when you use the COMPONENT video inputs, not the COMPOSITE video, however. Who knows? You might have found a way to get happy with it!

JBW

I've been reading this forum for over a year now. I started when considering an XBR800. Then the 910 came out. Then I bought a house so the TV budget was exhausted but I know I'm going to buy something sooner or later. I was going to buy a 960 but the wife is now drooling over a JVC-DILA so who knows what's going to happen. Anyway, to my point

Your first posts to this forum were pretty much that of an uninformed person trying to learn about the subject of CRT HDTVs. Very commendable - you shouldn't go blow a chunk of cash without educating yourself as to your purchase first, so well done.

Unfortunately, subsequent to that, your posts became incredibly misinformed. This ranged from wildly overstating the risk of burn in on a CRT TV to trying to support the suggestion that the "first batch" of 960's were all faulty and that a recall had been issued. At this point your posts were a little like a car crash - you didn't want to look, but you couldn't help yourself.

Tragically your posts have descended into "neener, neener" territory. I believe the kids call them "fanboys" I guess the definition of that someone who is so impressed by a particular piece of equipment (or whatever) that you consistently, blindly disregard the cons of something and will insist that your particular favourite [whatever] is way above the rest. And it's at this I take issue - you are misinforming people.

People come to read these forums to get the opinions of others and then make more informed decisions about their purchases. If someone is constantly posting false information, like "Burn in is real, people", then these people are being misguided. For myself, having read the board for so long and only having seen your name pop up a few months ago along with your descent from "I'm a noob" into "I'm a self-professed expert", I am able to distinguish the fact that your posts are frequently inaccurate. However, someone just starting to read the board recently wouldn't know that.

As a posting member of this forum you have a responsibility to understand that fact. If you intentionally mislead someone, whether it be from your own ignorance or just a complete bloody-minded refusal to believe that an XBR960 could possibly be better than an XS955 (or whatever petty delusion you choose), you are being completely irresponsible. Especially since through much of this escapade you hadn't even seen an XS. Imagine if I made a purchase based on some entirely incorrect "fact" stated by yourself (or any other posting member of this forum) and found that my purchase was based on incorrect information and I had paid $2000 for something that I really didn't want. How would I feel ? If I could at least return the item you personally would have cost me at best a considerable amount of time and disappointment, and at worst, money.

Speaking personally, you have ruined pretty much all of the XBR/XS related threads for me. What could have been a very worthwhile experience has been ruined by the constant barrage of almost insulting of the forum's collective intelligence, misinformation and downright lies. If the XBR didn't work for you, I'm sorry to hear it and I hope you have better luck with the XS. However there are plenty of people who will be better served by the XBR and you need to understand that. You don't want firewire ? Great save yourself a few bucks and go with the cheaper TV. Personally, I could use the firewire. Are you still going to tell me the XS is better for me ?

If you want to post please try and at least keep it at an adult level. Nobody wants to see your nonsensical statements anymore.

Jamison-
I am hoping that you recieve the 36xs955 and give it a review within the next few days. I have until 10/2 to buy it at Sonystyle and get no interest or payments til 3/06. I just saw the 36" 420 today at CC and was very impressed with the picture. The silver cabinet was definitely out of the question, though. Anyone else who has seen this TV in action, please post your impressions.

On Monday, I was at Fry's (Sacramento) and compared the 34XS955 and 36XS955 they had beside each other for 15 minutes. There was no feed available except a single NTSC (crappy channel 3) on either. Nothing I could adjust on the 36 (didn't venture into service menu) seemed to make the picture look as good as the 34". When I do a serious comparison, I take my own NTSC on a satellite digital recorder (what I'll be watching at home most of the time) and plug it into things. The 36" might do better in that setup but it is still displaying the 4:3 image in 5 more inches of vertical height than the 34". If there had been an HD source, I think they both would have been great!