Sony SXRD 50" and 60" - Oct/Nov - Page 5

"Do you think that these sets will actually make it to market by Oct/Nov, considering there is so little info on them right now?"

I missed these Qs before, sorry... Yes, I believe the dates. Sony is not a "guess when it'll be ready" company that often. The first Qualia projector was late, the RPTV variant was actually early / on-time. I believe these dates.

"Will they have a 1080p/60 input?"

My guess is yes. It's easily supported today with decent parts. And it appears those decent parts are getting cheaper and cheaper.

Well it sounds like the Sony and the LG LCoS sets will have 1080p HDMI inputs, but someone said that JVC would not. However, I also noticed that JVCs 61FH96 is now going to be released in September 2005, is the delay to implement a 1080p input, or was that earlier june-july release completely bogus?

Any word on the Hitachi 1080p LCoS?

Is it set in stone that the first run 1080p DLPs will not have 1080p inputs?

Did I really see TVauthority selling a Brillian 720p LCoS for $8 grand?

Thanks!

J.T.

I wish it was that easy. Maybe it's true if you buy off of the internet. However, I want to buy local. And I think I can get about 20% off at HH Gregg, but besides them no one in my area of town will do this. I think a lot of negotiating power depends on where you live, what stores are in your area, and how much competition there is.


I'm not convinced that prices will drop much by the fall. Especially since a lot of the models won't be out until late summer/fall. I hope you are right, but judging over the last few years on DLP/LCD sets the might drop by $200 per model and then next year you'll start seeing the bigger price drops after the 1080p sets have been out for a while. I do hope you are right.


I think this information is based on opinion. Last year it was said the Toshiba DLPs had better picture quality than others. The Toshiba does have better contrast and better blacks than all the DLPs I've seen, however the picture lacks the detail and sharpness of the Mitsubishi. Again, It'd be nice if the Toshiba was the best as the prices listed for the 1080P sets are cheaper than the rest. And this time the Toshibas aren't stripped down models. Sony, however will sell for its name. And they'll also sell to those who see rainbows which means the competition will be LCD and LCos sets. I'm sure Sony will excel in this area especially since the Hitachis will be quite expensive.

I agree with you. Until you can see these sets with your own eyes, everything else(including street price) is conjecture.

I also agree--It is too early to guess street price --what if several of the 1080p sets are late to market ---what if you live in an area with less competition--what if 1 or 2 of these sets have a 1080p input and the others do not???

This may be the fly in the ointment. Dealers are aggressively trying to push the 720P sets out the door to make room this Fall/Winter season for the new 1080P lines coming. 720P sales have been dismal lately with everyone waiting to see the new 1080P's. 50" Samsung HLR's are being pushed down below 2K with no interest financing to try to dump them. Anyone interested in a 720P set now can walk into a bigbox dealer and practically name your price, if it's at all reasonable, you'll be a proud new owner. Unless these sets are dumped, it may take longer than anticipated for 1080P lines to find floor space this fall....

I'll probably end up paying MSRP if I can't find a deal. The waiting must end!

Gazelle, the 720P sets aren't being dumped. The HLR series has been well received. This is just a slow time of year until the NFL gets rolling. People are out working on their lawns and buying barbeques.

The 1080P sets will not replace the 720p's, they will be a step up. The average consumer doesn't know anything about 1080p or the differences between 1080i and 720p. They are just starting to lust after any type of HD in this last year as some programming has become available.

Lew

i'm trying to understand this 1080p stuff. What do you mean by a set having 1080p input?

DLP, LCoS, LCD, Plasma are all fixed pixel displays. They will look their best when displaying a source, (HiDef DVD, PC wmv-hd, Sony PS3, DVDO iScan HD+, etc...), equal to their native resolution, in this case 1080p. All other sources need to be deinterlaced, upscaled, or downscaled which will degrade the picture quality to some degree.

The controversy is that this first wave of 1080p sets may only have a 1080i HDMI input. This would in effect mean that all sources, including 1080p, would have to be deinterlaced, upscaled, or downscaled. The 1080p set is incapable of looking its best due to a bottleneck at the HDMI input.

I personally would not want to plunk down 4+ grand on a 1080p set that cannot look its best because the Manufacturer chintzed out on a $6.95 SiI 9011 1080p HDMI Input/Receiver.

=========================================================
January 5, 2005

SiI 9011

"...Pricing and Availability

The SiI 9011 is currently shipping in production to multiple consumer electronics manufacturers and is available in two packages: a 128-pin LQFP with 0.4mm pin pitch and a 144-pin TQFP with 0.5mm pin pitch. The SiI 9011 is priced at $6.95 in 10K quantities for the 128-pin LQFP package...."

If the 50-inch and the 60-inch models are this low--how much lower will the 70-inch SXRD model be? My guess is they'll also release a 70-inch model that will support 1080p input--you always have to put out a super duper model for the same people who shelled out all that money for the original Qualia--they'll shell it out again! I wish I was smart enough to always shell out money for rapidly depreciating Video Displays!

by that token, why bother buying anything at all

Yeah timing should never matter--just buy as soon as possible--try to sell that to people who know something about money at Wall Street!

You when the retailer tells you it's the right time to buy, geesh!

it all boils down to disposable income and how much a person has at any given point in time; what is right for some isn't for others, so why bother wasting bandwidth on such discussions.

What about 4k support?

There are currently no native 1080p60 sources, outside of computer games. AFAIK 1080p60 is not even an HDTV standard.

This is like worring about 200mph rated tires. At some point in the future this may be a real issue, and is a cool discussion point, but is currently a non-issue.

What was the price of that part 12 to 18 months ago when the the currently shipping sets were designed, What was the state of HDMI? How many receivers shipping as of Jan 05 support HDMI

So your advice is what exactly?

Buy now because the immediate future is irrelevant.

Excuse me for jumping in here.

Not so much for the 1080p input except for gamers and home theater computer guys, but its the display resolution of 1080p (over 720p) which may include a better black level and black management (auto iris) that may in combination result is a worthwhile difference and worth the wait. The problem as I see it is that in most home theater stores, the store illumination mask the difference in black levels and might make the sets look more similar than they would if viewed in the evening in most homes.

$6.95 at wholesale in lots of 10K may mean $100-$150 at retail. Not a huge sum, but something the manufacturers have to consider when trying to hit price points. The cost, as HHF has pointed out, was probably much higher a year ago. Hopefully we can expect 1080p input next year, but I doubt it will matter to non-gamers. Lew

Also, remember that Sony is losing money in their consumer TV division.

If Sony loses money on TVs for a long enough time will the Qualians try to take over the world?

Unless I missed something about the XBR line/designation being discontinued, I still think we will see some 60" and 70" SXRD displays under the XBR designation. Not this year, maybe next year?

Regards,
Dan

Lew,

I am not sure I am following you on the $100-$150 retail. They are already putting HDMI inputs on the set, but they decided to go with 1080i over 1080p so the increase in cost would be the difference between the two. I believe the difference would be even more miniscule.

Then you have to ask if they cut corners here, what about the internal scaler that you will be forced to use. No HDMI scaling from your DVD player, no external DVDO iScan HD+ because the TV must do the final scaling from 1080i-to-1080p to get around the bottleneck.

Now I do not think these sets are a step backwards, but they sure aren't the full step forwards for which you are paying.

Hopefully, some of these 1080p sets will have 1080p inputs, and put this whole issue to rest.

Thanks for the comments,

J.T.

Well I have a set that will accept 1080p60 ( Sony G70 ), I just can't find any 1080p60 input! I see 480i from DVDs. 720p and 1080i from DVHS and OTA HDTV. ( I am ignoring T2 WMV, and the other handfull of location eye candy WMV offerings ).

A year from now we will likely have 480i DVDs, 1080i and hopefully 1080p24sf from HD/BLU Ray, 1080i from DVHS, and 720p, 1080i OTA HDTV.

2 years from now ...
5 years from now ...

I thought that I had read here a while back that Microsoft was making 1080p movies available for download on a weekly basis.

I also think it's desirable to have 1080p60 inputs so you can perform any video processing outside of the TV and be able to drive the display at it's native signal rate. The desire to do external video processing is due to the suspected quick ramp-up in processing capabilities that will be superior to what will ship with these initial 1080p displays.

The external scaler arguement.

Lets see, for film sources 1080p24sf is a much better output than 1080p60 (no judder ).

Well how about OTA 1080i HDTV via scaler. Lets find a scaler that will deinterlace 1080i60 to 1080p without bob and weave ( basically throwing away half the resolution, resulting in 540p). Well there is therecently shipping faroudja 1080 at $8,0000, ... A nice partner to my $3,500 TV!

I already discussed Microsoft's WMV HD movie collection.

Is it better to have 1080p60 than not?. Sure it is.

Is not having 1080p60 a big issue? Not an issue at all, and likely not an issue for the forseable future.

I had also read here that at least some networks are shooting video at 1080p. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some form of transport of these 1080p sourced videos to the consumer over the next 10 years (optical media, internet, satellite, OTA, other?). I would hope to keep my new 1080p set for quite some time. Maybe not as long as my usual 20+ year stints on CRT based TVs.

Is the entire extent of Microsoft's available 1080p content limited to two films?

HoustonHoyaFan,

Wow, HHF you just made the argument! Don't buy the current 1080p sets because you will never get more than 540p on your brand new HiDef DVD, PS3 and HTPC.

How good do you think the scaler/deinterlacer will be in a set that skimped on a 1080p HDMI? (keep in mind, you are locked into it for all sources. Many have preferred the scaler/deinterlacer in their HDMI DVD players to their sets, but this will not be an option in this set.)

External Scalers:
Algolith Dragonfly with Realta HQV - $3500 msrp

You have a good point that it is the difference in cost between the two parts. Also I was using a formula that may be way outdated. People tend to intuit that a $5 increase in parts cost means a $5 to $10 increase in retail price. Many years ago a high end manufacturer gave us a formula that a product at retail was about 15 to 20 times the parts cost, thus the serious attempt by mass market manufacturers to cut parts costs wherever possible. Our current manufacturing model might be drastically different.

I still tend to give the manufacturers a break on this. We don't know what parts quantities were available at the time the Qualia was designed. There is just too much we don't know, including the possibility that the didn't have time to do enough testing.

I am sure that next year all of this will be forgotten as second generation sets hit the market. Lew

Lew

Who knows what evil rules the mind of corporate accountants.

I suspect that after all forumlas are applied, they look to see what their competitors are charging and try not to stray too much from that. That may actually have a lot to do with what they're willing to spend given they may feel that they can't raise the price.

Much agreed. And the 720P sets that are being "dumped" isn't because they are 720p sets, it's because they are clearing out the 2004 sets. This is the time were new sets 720p and 1080p sets are being released for 2005.