The Official Sony 34HS420 Thread...

This tv has been a pleasure to watch. Every time I sit down to watch a show I'm blown away, again, by the fidelity of HD. I love to sit as close as possible without noticing any scanlines or flicker, which is about 4 feet. The only thing more I would want out of HD is bigger size, and the ability to surf the web and use email on the tv. I've tried it and it's just not a good thing. LCD sets are much better suited for use as a computer monitor.

I love this tv!

I think it is a great TV as well, I really love mine. I have a bit of a horizontal bending/bowing problem on the far upper and lower left hand side...if that makes sense. I have D* and a H20 box. I leave it on native and let the TV do the 720/1080 converting. What do you guys do?

I could not be happier with mine. It is just a great TV. It's only 3 months old but no problems except i could use more HDTV stations to watch. DVD's are awesome and SD is good (as possible) too.

I have Comcast Digital Cable and have the STB set to output all HD signals at 1080i. That way the scaler in the STB (which is usually better than the one in the tv) handles the conversion from 720p to 1080i and it's all good.

For SD I have the STB set to 480i, that way I set the DRC setting on the tv to 960i and get what seems to me to be the best PQ - truthfully I don't see too much difference whether DRC is set to Interlaced, Progressive or CineMotion - but I guess I prefer Interlaced since logically 960i seems like it should be best. For DVDs I have an Oppo upconverting player connected via HDMI and it makes dvds look awesome.

I think the scaler in the TV is better than the one in my STB. As far as the DRC goes...I can't tell the difference between the 3. Is there a way to turn the DRC off, that way I could actually tell if it is making a difference? I mean I assume it is 960i, but how do you really know. Plus if you turn the service menu on when it is in 480i, that is what it displays on the top...not 960i.

ahhhh, I see, thanks...makes sense.

I love my Sony 30HS420 and its the best HDTV ive had, I went threw 6 HDTVs before finally finding one i was happy with. After a few months of tweaking ive yet to see a picture that looks as good as mine although obviously a Sony XS or XBR would be better but ive never seen one. Ive had no problems with it at all and i love how much you can tweak it unlike most HDTV's. Have you got your HD-DVD player and tryed it yet Matt? Or maybe someone else has got one with this tv?

Please some one correct me, as what I have here is merely hear say, and I NEED to be informed.

1. The Samsung "Slim Fit" has ~800 scan lines
2. The Sony XBR/XS has ~65% more scan lines
3. Our 34HS420 has how many scan lines???

I did a search but found nothing conclusive. I am trying to become as educated as possible on the subject of CRT TV's, so any information on the subject is appreciated. Is there a chart somewhere that lists of all the HD CRTs made who has how many scan lines, or the like??? Sorry for the very vague questions, but I am very interested in the subject, and would love as much information as I can get. I noticed in the CRT projection forum there is a CRT Projection Primer....a wonderful website, that gives you all the information you could possibly want on CRT Projectors. Is there anything like that for HD CRT TV's???

Sorry, for going off topic, I was just curious...especially sense you said..."Please feel free to share your experiences and problems or issues or what ever you want for that matter on this tv." So under the, what ever you want on this tv, I figured I would ask about how many scan lines there are. My apologies, I am new to this whole thing.

As I said before, I love this tv. If someone were to ask me "what else could Sony have done to make the tv even better?" - I'd say two things:

1) include independent input memory
2) put the "Menu" button somewhere else on the remote. I don't know why, but I consistently hit the button in the center of the "ring" instead of the proper Menu button on the side. The "center" button I keep hitting brings up "Favorites" I believe, then it's a real mess when I hit one of those accidentally. I just wish Sony had put the Menu button somewhere else.

Mine would be...

1) independent input memory
2) the remote have a code for my D* H20 Box
3) digital audio out
4) I know this is a dream...but 2 HDMI inputs...

Same with my sets. I have come to really enjoy the Harmony remote I picked-up a few months ago. I had one of the Sony universal remotes with the big LCD screen but it was incredibly difficult to manage. I believe it was the Sony AV2500 - now it just collects dust. Too bad because I paid almost $200 for it.

Matt: The tv handles HD great the problem is the cable and satalite company's just aren't puting out quality HD material. Most of it looks no better then an upconverted DVD, The only really good HD is over the air HD.

I totally agree about SDTV looking great on this tv, I hooked up a splitter so i could send one line to my HD box and one to the tv's tuner but i had signal dropouts, Im guessing i didn't have a splitter capable of splitting it correctly, Any idea which i should get?

Also, Which DRC mode are you using for SDTV?

I use Interlaced for DRC. (PS2)
HD (Motorola STB outputs 480p and 1080i)
dvd is 480p
ps2 is 480i using S-Video

I have HD service from Comcast and it's fantastic. I get these HD channels: FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, INHD1, INHD2, Discovery HD Theater and ESPN HD. As good as DVDs are, HD is in a class all by itself. I use a splitter with cable, so that I send one cable split to the Comcast STB for digital channels and one cable split to the tv for analog cable channels. Everything looks awesome. What's so great is how well the analog cable channels look all by themselves with DRC at 960i, but then I switch to an HD channel and WOW!. The colors and the detail is unbelieveable.

Matt - I can't wait to hear what you have to say after you get HD. I don't think you're gonna be able to contain yourself.

nick2003 - the coax splitter has to be rated at least 1GHz.

Even with D* my HD looks really amazing, and I am sure it would look even better if I had E*. I get both OTA and the D* LA Locals. The OTA looks much better, but ESPN and ESPN2 still look great during games. So much so, that I can hardly watch SD anymore. I have the SD set at interlaced. For DVD I use 1080i via HDMI.

Thanks guys, I also have Comcast HDTV service, There are some very good quality HD show's and movies but for the most part its not impressing me, The best quality stuff i have seen on it is on the locals like NBC, FOX, ABC which i can get for free. If you have a good upconverting DVD player its better then most of the other stuff on there with some exceptions like sopranos on HBO and every now and then you'll run into a good HD movie but most aren't OAR and are highly compressed. If you want to see true HD get one of the new HD disc formats because even the best looking stuff on Cable or Satalite is compressed quite a bit.

Is the HDMI input HDCP compliant on the 30" or the 34" cause some people say its not???

Thanks !!!

AFAIK... 99% of HDMI is HDCP compliant. I would say that Sony would be...

It is.