The Official Sony 2006 KDS-(XX)A2000 [NO PRICE TALK] SXRD Owner's Thread - Page 231

Strange! But not really... I sit 6.5ft from my 50" (I live in an apartment yes! hehe) any I love this TV, especially after I had it calibrated. I dont really see SSE.... anymore, but I dont even recall ever being bothered. If you cant learn to ignore it like some do then take it back, dont worry....

[quote=htwaits]What is a "Wii"?QUOTE]

The new Nintendo game player. Man. you are behind the time. Just kidding.

Mmm thanks for the reply. And yea, like bimmerguy288 said, its the new Nintendo, and its highest resolution is 480p. I was just wondering how good that would look on this set, but you cleared it up nicely.

I was at my local CompUsa too to trying to capitalize on that deal. Though I intrepreted the ad to include an xbox 360 as well if you bought that TV since it was over 1799. So my intention was to buy the TV for my dad, and snag the free 360 for myself

The heading of the bonus special was "UNADVERTISED BONUS OFFERS".

Right below that, the banner states "FREE XBOX 360 CORE WITH PURCHASE OF ANY UNADVERTISED TV 1799 & UP".

So I waited in line for an hour and half just to get an argument over the verbage in the ad. To add to the confusion, the webserver was overloaded and they couldn't get to the website to verifty the ad! The CompUSa sales mgr finally relented and sold me an xbox 360 premium for $150 off (250 + tax) with the purchase of the 60a2000 for $1999.

I thought it was the deal of the century. But now I see the same 60a2000 advertised for 1999 at Sears.com & CircuitCity.com. I wonder whats going on, maybe they're trying to get rid of their inventory to sell the XBR series. Funny thing to, on circuitcity.com, the 55a2000 is actually advertised HIGHER than the 60a2000!


By the way, the compusa black friday offer I'm referring to is located here:

http://www.compusa.com/specials/sale...bonusdeals.asp

-Bill

You got the 360 CORE for FREE??????? Good for you! The sales MGR at the CompUsa said that the 360's were only free for UNADVERTISED TVs though I tried to show him that the Ad was titled "UNADVERTISED Offers". Complete idiot. I finally did get him agree to sell me the xbox premium package for 150 off (250 + tax).

It drove me nuts that the compusa Sales staff aren't even aware of their own sales!

Hey guys,

I have had my kds60a2000 for almost 2 weeks now and I have noticed a green blob when I first turn the tv. The blob is located in the middle of the screen off center to the left a lil. It eventually fades away after an hour or so of watchign tv and dvd's. Is this an optical block problem?

Any help would be appreciated.

thanks.

If you had your set professionally calibrated and you have posted your reaction to it let me know. I will include a link to your post in the calibration list that is linked at the bottom of my post.

You're right.

I probably lost interest in computer games before you were born.

No real reaction posted... but hey.... here I go!:

I got the TV 1 week before he was supposed to show up. I fiddled with the settings only a little bit to make it look just a bit more tolerable. Knowing that he was coming I didnt bother really trying.

When he showed up we talked for a good 20 minutes before getting going. He took all the measurements and readings from the TV to tell "where I had it when he found it", this way he know how I had it and how the TV was to start with.

While he was explaining the hows and whys of Calibration he was doing many things, I asked a lot of questions and he was very helpful and super friendly. (we even talked about our similar taste in Animation and Movies).

While he was telling me how and why, he started to test and correct the white levels, taking the blue out of the white to make them "white white" and not "blue white". The difference was immediate. A big plus!

Then, he started to correct the black levels, did all the testing, then using the patterns he made it so I couldnt see the "black black" anymore but could see the other shades of black / grey to varying degrees. Looked great. He used a test pattern and a more realistic example of contrast. A man wearing a white shirt in front of a black background. With a big black "X" pattern beside him, the point was to make it dark enough so that you could pretty much NOT see the X anymore.

After that he explained a lot of stuff and we talked for quite a while (iam very interested in this kind of stuff). He then got onto doing the grey test with his expensive equipment. Finding the middle ground for the almost perfect grey that the TV can produce. After explaining how and why this needs to be done to ensure better quality.... he got what he wanted and set everything. After fiddling around in the service menu some more doing a few things, he positioned the screen properly to fully display the picture.

A few more little tweaks here and there, we popped in King Kong on HD-DVD watched a few scenes, flipped between the Calibrated settings and the "before" settings. The difference is immediate. The colors are more realistic, shadow detail is much higher and it just has a nicer look to it all. Plus the whites are actually WHITE, not blueish "whiter than white".

So over all reaction? Defenitly worth it and Iam very pleased with the results. A few hours later after he drove back home he sent me via email a before and after Adobe PDF file that showed how it was, then how it looked after. Everything was in line and looking great on paper, and it looked that way on the display too.

Iam very happy with my 50" SXRD 1080p. Thanks to him and his skill my girlfriend and I enjoy movies and my HD gaming to a new level. A bit long of a post, but hey.. Im happy about it.

I tried to get the compUSA deal. But the store I lined up at did not have it in stock. Anyways, a local retailer matched it. But no Xbox.

Can anyone point me to the recommended settings ? The OOB stuff is too dazzling.

Thanks.

Pulled the trigger on a Black Friday Sears deal on the 50" A2000 and got the set today. It has a November build date and so far so good. I even hooked my PC up via DVI / HDMI cable and there was no overscan (ATI X800 graphics card). SD on most channels look good and the 1080I looks stunning. This is before any tweaks or calibration. My next stop is to the tweaking forum. Thanks for all the great posts in this forum.

-Eric

Conrats on the new TV!! And welcome to the forums... and welcome to 1080p!

Get your tweaking done and come back and tell us more about your experiences!

I recently got 480p component cables and for my Gamecube... WOW, HUGE DIFFERENCE. Worth every penny. Even in 480i the clarity improvement was amazing. Composite really is that bad.

Just as an FYI, I've had the A2000 55" for two weeks now--and have hooked up just about everything there is to hook (except the Wii.) But I can promise you that the GameCube's progressive scan widescreen 480p has never looked better--and I've seen it on innumerable HD Monitors/Sets.

The Wii is largely a more powerful GameCube with a new control paradigm, wifi, and a better GPU. I understand that GameCube titles run at nearly double the framerate on the backward compatible Wii.

Our Wii is awaiting Christmas Tree Day with family before it gets opened (one of the hardest things I have ever done.)

I suspect that it has to look at least as good as RE 4, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart, et al look--and they look damned good.

Thanks for the report. If you post your calibrators name I'll be glad to include it in the list that's linked at the bottom of my post.

So far, so good.

Picture is awesome! Just watched Cars... WOW!

SD PQ is pretty good... definitely a downgrade from the 35" CRT... but not as bad as I was fearing. I am running through S-Video, so once I get the new Dish Network set up with HDMI, it should get better still.

I have no color abberations... everything is clean and as it should be. Haven't done any calibrations yet... looking forword to seeing what that does for the PQ.

Overall I'm happy with the set. Looks GREAT in the livingroom!

Michael Chen - he is a member of AVS and he does work all over Canada, mostly the West (I think).. but yes, great guy, great calibration work.

http://www.lionav.com/mmichaelchen.html


Hes great. Thanks!

All good points, I even agree with the SSE comments. But "SD" refers to a lot of different types of material:

o VHS - 240x480
o SVHS - 400x480
o Laserdisc - 528x480
o Broadcast TV - 330x480
o Satellite - 425x480
o DVD - 720x480

The above (partially from memory) is only the capability of the technology. The use of the technology, source quality, compression, etc can still vary. But all are SD material (Standard Definition 480 lines) and each offers very different quality. Saying "SD looks good" or "SD looks bad" is only part of the story.

im looking into this set, can i get a picture of the entire rear. thanks a ton

Sorry, but I could not effort to read all the posts in this thread, so I don't know if somebody already posted it somewhere. I'm an owner of a 55a2000 in Italy (so the European version) and I have 2 questions:
1) does somebody has experience with a Crystalio2 and the a2000 linked together
2) is there some thread around which explains how to get to the inner service menus? In the European manuals I haven't seen how to do that. We get the complete electrical drawings (10 pages) with it, but not so much the more restricted information. Thanks

Try searching the Video Processors Forum; I've seen a few posts that included the A2000, but I do not remember the Crystalio2/A2000 combination specifically (from what I've read about the C2, I don't see how you could go wrong though)...
See the 2nd post here: KDS-XXA2000 Tweaks Thread; more settings and adjustments are scattered throughout the thread--search for posts by Googer for starters...

Just got my 50A2000 a couple hours ago and am still fiddling with the settings.

This is replacing my Samsung HL-S5087W, so I can compare the two.

So far it seems to me the Sony is better on HD and DVDs. The picture is sharper and handles fast movement better. Fewer artifacts. I like the color better on HD and DVDs as well. The color seems truer and handles blacks better.

The Samsung seems better on the SD channels. On the SD channels the Sony is giving me some instances of the slight green color to the faces. That varies depending on the channel and the scene. But when that phenomenon is not happening and, also, the cable channel is sending out true color, the picture is outstanding. Not sure yet if the green face thing happens on HD channels, but seems like if it does, it is much less than on SD.

I haven't noticed any significant difference between the two insofar as SSE.

I should also note that I see some very very slight green when playing B&W DVDs, such as Casablanca. Never saw this on the Samsung. I may be noticing that though because the messages here have trained me to look specifically for that. LOL

It's unfortunate that if I connect my cable box to the TV via HDMI I can't get 5.1 sound. I connect to an SA 8300HD cable box. (I have my cable box connected to the a surround sound receiver via optical cable.) To get sound I then have to change the cable box audio setting to "HDMI", instead of "dolby digital". That HDMI setting doesn't send out 5.1 sound. So I use component cables instead of HDMI, and that passes through 5.1 sound beautifully.

Thanks for the interesting technical information.

I'm not sure how to make use of it without making the explanation I was attempting even murkier. It might also lead to bit rates and why all HDTV isn't equal.

I think you already are--720 vertical lines would be dispersed horizontally across the display; along with 480 horizontal lines dispersed vertically gives us the familiar "720x480" NTSC resolution. 720 pixels can form a horizontal line and there can be 480 of them stacked vertically upon each other and vice-versa.

I may have swapped the horizontal and vertical (we control the horizontal) but the point is that 720x480 (DVD) is not the same as 240x480 (VHS) or 330x480 (broadcast TV). Too often people refer to them all as "SD" when they are very different qualities.

TRIVIA QUESTION: How many lines was Betamax? 260x480 (12% more than VHS)

I wasn't going to go there, but your post did remind me of Betacam, Betacam SP and ED Beta, which I believe were capable of 300, 340 and 550 (?)lines...not bad for analog. I believe Digital Betacam could do the full 720...

Just noticed the green face effect on ESPN HD. Decided to show a picture - attached. (The blurriness is just my unsteadiness - not the TV.)

I keep reading and seeing screenshots of the "green" problem, however I can never see it! I am guessing it is because I am colorblind (green deficient), but I'm surprised I don't notice ANY abnormality. All the posts about this have got me worried though, because im sure other people that watch the tv with me will notice it. I just placed an order for the tv a couple days ago, but it is not shipping for a few weeks. I'm not sure what to do, I don't want to regret my purchase. Btw, I was going to get the Samsung DLP, but chose not to because other people might be able to see the RBE even thought I cant.

The next time you see this with SD material on an HD channel (as in the picture you posted), could you try setting the color matrix for the appropriate HD resolution (720p for ESPN-HD) to 601 (from auto) and see if it makes a difference?

Thanks. I've tried to clarify the post you are quoting. It was even more misleading when you read it the first time.