Official Sony 32" XBR2 Thread

I got one last week. I haven't completely tweaked the settings yet, but so far I'm very happy. PQ is execellent w/ very good off axis viewing for LCD. Stand is a little bit flimsy and I would have liked a tilt function, but those are my major complaints. Also, an extra HDMI would have been nice.

did you compare it to the ln-s3296d? i have that and was wondering if hte xbr2 is better.

These are the same 2 TVs I'm trying to decide between right now......It seems that you can't really go "wrong" with either one though. For me, its going to come down to whether the sammy can display 480i content over the HDMI inputs or not, and how it looks. I haven't been able to determine that yet...

AFAIK, Sammy DOES design the panels hand in hand with Sony, last I checked, so you'd be great to go to either one, but for me, I'd go right to the source with Sammy, since they designed the panels, they should have an equal or better TV to that of the Sony XBR2... Just my two bits, tho, your opinion could be a bit different...

How do you figure? S-LCD (which makes the panels) is a joint Sony-Samsung venture, 50/50. They're not Samsung panels any more than they're Sony panels.

Since the panels are the same, the difference would be in the video processing, since each uses its own electronics.

Damn! I knew I should have used "Official" when I started an earlier thread!

Apparently just not much interest in this TV. Now that we have 46- and 52-inch LCDs, 32-inch sets are just so 2003...

Anyway, glad you like your XBR2, vindicator. Are you going to tell us more? What other 32-inch sets did you compare it to? I'm interested in a Sharp LC-32D50U myself.

Yep, same with Sony and Samsung getting together on the Blu-Ray project, yet Sony's gonna have it cheaper in their PS3 than Samsung has as a Blu-Ray player only. I get it...

Anyway, seeing Sony at a local club store recently, I was impressed to see the output of their XBRs, but vs. some Toshibas and Panasonics, I really can't see any difference in quality, since all of them seem to have some features that has the picture looking exactly the same at default settings.

My friend is getting the 32" XB1 in a week or so. We looked at all the major LCD brands and concluded that Sony had the best picture, enough better than the Samsung to justify the price. Other panels including Westinghouse did not seem to look as good, their colours were off, often too much red in flesh tones, and many of them did not look good from more than 45 degrees off centre. We could not see much of a difference in PQ between the XBR2, the S, and the XBR1. The XBR2 seemed to have slightly better blacks than the XB1, but the XB1 had a better selection of inputs and a cablecard slot.

Like me, she is also a bay-area Comcast customer, and so is basically stuck with most of her content coming in analog SD. This is my major concern with this set and the main reason I'm still using a CRT, which looks good with both SD and HD. We will be trying OTA HD with her set, analog SD from cable, and DVDs through component inputs. I will post what we discover.

I'm a pretty big CRT PQ snob, and hadn't been TV shopping in a while. The plasmas I saw looked terrific, particularly the Pioneer 5070 and 1140. Unfortunately size restrictions required my friend to eliminate plasma from consideration. I was frankly amazed at how good LCDs have become in just 2 years - they are now competitive although still to my eye not equal to plasmas for PQ. I will definitely look at the LED backlit models next year, along with what I hope are lower-cost next-gen 1080p plasmas.

Nice thread is about time we get one . How do you guys compare the xbr2 to other 32" Sony LCd's .

Thank you . My mom friend owns a Sony shop so im stuck with Sony .

My friend's 32" XB1 arrived yesterday. This is last year's model, replaced by the XBR2 this year. The quick summary:

1. The set works fine and does not appear to have any stuck pixels.
2. We were able to find settings that looked OK on various content sources; the settings are very similar to the "standard" mode.
3. HD content looks wonderfully detailed and clear. DVDs look good as well. Analog SD is watchable. VHS tape is awful to watch.
4. The picture looks best on bright, contrasty material such as Jeapordy. Darker material such as Lord of the Rings suffered from an apparent loss of detail.
5. We did not see any motion blur but the real test will be watching football this weekend.

The set was hooked up to Comcast cable, which is nominally analog, but suprised us by having some previously "hidden" digital stations. We hooked up the other antenna input to a small indoor HD antenna and were able to tune all the SF bay area HD and digital OTA stations. The DVD player was hooked up to component video inputs, and the VCR was hooked up via composite video.

The set was in Vivid mode out of the box. Setting it to Standard made everything look a lot closer to right for us. We cloned the standard settings to Custom and spent a little time tweaking them. Colour temp looked best to us set to Neutral; the other settings looked either too bluish or too yellowish. We left color and tint at the default settings (centered). We played with the brightness (black level) but did not find any improvement by lowering it. (The set has a noticeable black pedestal when tuned to a blank input.) Raising the brightness washed out the blacks, so we left this set to the default (slightly lower than center). We lowered picture (white level) by 10-20%, and settled on 10% (90 on a 100 scale). This compensated for having raised the backlight a notch to 7 from the default 6. We disabled NR and DRC, but didn't notice much either way. In the advanced tab, we played around and found that turning off the black enhancer was a very bad idea; dark scenes definitely looked worse with the enhancer off. We settled on medium. We tried various settings for gamma but did not notice a huge difference and decided to leave it at the default.

Bottom line is after all of this, we had settings that looked reasonable on a wide variety of bright and dark content. Critical for me was that flesh tones looked correct even on some of the darkest, most compressed analog channels (on Comcast, those would be USA, TNT). My previous experience with LCD was that I would see too much red in peoples faces on these channels, unless I overcompensated in a way that made things look awful on other channels. We also did not see the "clay face" effect that bothered me about LCD in the past. I did see a bit of false contouring in a few scenes, though it was subtle. (I will note that I sometimes see that on my Sony HS CRT as well.) The disappointment was that we could not see much detail in dark scenes, something I guess is to be expected with LCD technology. Sitting too close to the set I could see some of what I'd call the "vaseline" effect during slow camera pans, something that bugged me previously about LCD. The effect disappears if you sit at a more reasonable distance. We did not see any motion blur but did not really challenge the set with e.g. ball games.

The SF area has a good selection of OTA digital content. A very nice feature of the set is that it lets you know what the incoming signal is. I found that our stations are about evenly split between 720p and 1080i broadcasts. There are also some 480i digital broadcasts. Comcast had a few of these same stations available, which surprised us because she doesn't have digital service. Apparently they're not encrypted and the QAM tuner did not have any trouble picking them up. We did not see any noticeable difference in quality between OTA and cable, nor between 720p and 1080i. Real HD looks terrific. 480i digital looks OK, though the picture is fairly soft as you'd expect. We watched some news shows, and you could see a big drop in resolution as they cut from the studio (real HD cameras) to remote feeds. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeapordy in HD, both of these looked terrific as they play to LCD's strengths. We watched some sort of nature show on PBS, again it looked terrific in HD on this set. We watched some darker HD shows, including NCIS and Law & Order. These looked clean and reasonably sharp, though you could tell the set was struggling with the limitations of LCD technology in darker areas of the picture. We watched parts of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. The resolution is noticeably lower than HD, but still clean. Same observations about the darker scenes in these movies. (This was also why she decided to raise the backlight a notch.) We tuned in some of the analog stations and found them watchable, though noticeably grainier than the 480i digital stations. The very challenging TNT and USA networks were watchable, a big improvement over the LCD I tried a few years ago. Input from the VCR was truly awful. Watching shows tuned by the VCR looked only a little worse than the same shows tuned by the XBR, but taped content was filled with wavy vertical artifacts. This is one step above what I would call a "snowy" picture. This is unfortunate as the VCR is my friend's only way to time-shift shows. I guess it's time to look at HD VHS and/or DVRs.

People with the xbr2 how does it look with a pc hooked up to it and how do u have it hooked up ?

Update to previous post.

We have now tested pretty much everything on my friend's new 32" XBR1.

We fixed the VCR quality issue by switching on NR for that input and by turning sharpness down to 30. It's still, well, VCR quality, but not really worse than watching it on a big CRT.

I tested PC input by hooking a PC up to the VGA input. Watched a few 720p HD WMA demos downloaded from Microsoft, they look fantastic. Also used this to put up some test palettes and patterns, and to look for dead/stuck pixels (none found).

Watched some football on the set this weekend and did not notice any of the dreaded motion blur or ghosting. Perhaps I'm not as sensitive to it. I was sitting 2-3 feet from the screen. The picture was gorgeous, as expected given a high-quality and relatively bright, contrasty content.

We watched Lost and Jericho a few days back, both look very clean and detailed in HD, though, since both are dark, I could not help feeling that there was something lacking in the colors and contrast. I did not have a CRT side-by-side to compare with, though. Overall the programs looked great, I am not missing the CRT at all. Time to just sit back and enjoy this wonderful set.

dmcmahon: If you're talking about last year's XBR1, you're posting in the wrong thread. Although it looks similar, it's a different TV. Go here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=593405

There's also an owner's thread here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=618544

I just picked up the 32XBR2 this weekend. So far I really like the set. I am using the settings from the XBR1 thread to try and tune in my tv. So far, so good. With the current setting the set seems a little dark to me but the detail and color look the best set up this way. I am still playing though. I also have crappy Comcast HD service so I know that is hurting me a little. This is a bedroom set so I don't have a dvd player in there right now. I want to try OTA HD and see how that looks. Anybody that has settings please post so maybe I can try some other options.

By the way, I may have paid too much but oh well. But I did go to BB and get them to price match the SonyStyle website. There is no tax in DE so it was a decent call for me.

anyone else get this set yet?

NICE , NICE , NICE ! ! ! Got a great deal on one from B/B , using rewards coupons and price matching together ...
Check the 32xbr1 threads for settings , thats what i use with a some adjustments ..

post your best settings once you have them.

thx

I gotta ask about the motion blur on this lcd. If you have an xbox 360, download the demo for tony hawk project 8. Then move the character in the demo with the black shirt on back and fourth and see if you see the black motion blur of his t-shirt against the background. My 32 inch shows a black smear as I move him. I have a Vizio 32 inch with a 8ms response rating. If your a gamer, let me know if your seeing motion blur.

Let's hear some motion blur testing in games please....

As of this past Saturday, I am now the owner of a KDL-V32XBR2. Actually I was somewhat surprised since the Sharp LC-32D50U had been at the top of my list, but after a half-hour at Ultimate Electronics playing around with the settings on both sets, I just liked the Sony better. The Sharp gave people's faces an overly ruddy or red look that I was unable to dial out. The Sony was initially overly sharpened with slightly cartoony colors, especially greens, but I was easily able to adjust. The Sony was about $250 more expensive but still within my budget, so I figured it was worth it.

The Out-of-Box Experience
I was able to easily get it home myself in my little Subaru Forester. The box was slightly damaged on the bottom, but the sales rep said the TV should be fine, and it turned out that it was. I was happy that it came with the stand already attached (no assembly required!). Sitting atop my flat-top Sanus TV stand, it looks good. I like the matte black bezel a lot; I was worried that the silver frame would be too much, but actually it's quite subtle.

I connected my cable box and DVD player via component cables and turned it on. Initially it's set to Vivid, and it was awful. Too bright, poor blacks, lots of artifacting including macroblocking on some SD channels. So the first thing I did was set it to Custom and get to work on the settings.

Cable TV (Comcast digital cable via Motorola 6412 DVR, connected via component)
The first thing you have to do, if you want good blacks, is go into the Setup menu and turn on Power Saving. Low allows you to still make some backlight adjustments; High seems to lock the backlight into its minimum setting. Then I dialed up the contrast to get the most shadow detail I could, and also dialed up the brightness as much as I could without compromising the blacks too much; about halfway (it's helpful to be on a channel with pillarboxes while doing this to give you a base for "black"). I left the sharpness relatively low. I set most of the bells and whistles like noise reduction, black corrector, etc. to Off.

Once I was finished, I was surprised at the quality of the SD channels; they were as good or better than on my old CRT (a 10-year-old 25-inch Samsung TXE-2546). Some are somewhat soft, none is HD quality, but most were quite good at my 7-8-foot viewing distance. Very little artifacting, which had been my main fear.

HD looks excellent; in fact the contrast is a little too stark at times -- Conan O'Brien's pale face and hair against the dark blue backdrop on the "Late Night" set, for example -- so I may have to try backing off on the contrast without taking too much of a hit on shadow detail.

Watching football on Sunday was awesome. I noticed just a little bit of blur during quick camera pans, but no "ghost trails" or anything like that.

Two things I don't like: I'm still struggling with shadow detail; especially on SD, some shows that are not brightly lit (Law & Order SVU, for example) lose too many of the details in dark hair and clothing. I'm hoping further adjustment can improve this somewhat.

Also, viewing angle. The black level takes a hit at anything more than maybe 30 degrees (guesstimate) off angle. Color still looks pretty good, but the black starts fading to gray. Seems more severe at a vertical off angle than horizontal. Straight on, though, the black level is pretty good and I'm pretty satisfied with it.

One minor thing: If you have a brightly lit room like I do (living room with lots of windows and southern exposure), you will get some glare if there's direct sunlight in the room. Not like with a plasma or CRT, but kind of a diffuse white reflection. With regular room lighting at night, I don't notice any glare at all, but when the sun is shining in, it's not exactly "glare-free."

One note about the sound: I use the built-in speakers. The clarity is good, but it lacks some of the depth (if that's the right term; I'm no audiophile) and richness of my old Samsung CRT, which had great sound. But overall I'm happy with it. I'm using the TruSurround feature, which is actually a little distracting at times. I may tinker with that.

DVD (JVC XV-S300, connected via component)
Initially DVDs didn't look very good, and I thought, uh-oh, I'm going to need a new DVD player for sure; It's five years old and it doesn't even have progressive scan. Then I realized: The player was still set for a 4:3 display, and the Sony was automatically zooming the image to fill the screen. Once I set the player for 16:9, I found I got a really good picture. The TV was doing all the deinterlacing and scaling, and it did a pretty good job.

I haven't watched a lot of DVDs yet, but what I've watched so far looks good; reference DVDs look excellent. On the Superbit edition of "Lawrence of Arabia," I was amazed at the scene at the well where Sharif Ali first appears on the distant horizon. Never saw that level of detail on my old TV, that's for sure. I know it's not HD, but it's the best SD I've seen. Good enough that I may hold off for the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war to be decided before buying a new DVD player.

All in all, I'm a happy customer. My overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Settings (for cable; DVD settings are fairly similar)
Setup menu
Power Saving: Low
Light sensor: Off

Picture menu
Picture mode: Custom
Backlight: 2
Picture: 81
Brightness: 50
Color: 50
Hue: 0
Color temp: Warm1
Sharpness: 10
Noise reduction: Off

Advanced picture menu
Black Corrector: Off
Contrast Enhancer: Off
Gamma: Low
Clear White: Off
Live Color: Off
Color space: Wide
MPEG noise reduction: Off

Audio menu
Sound mode: Dynamic
Treble: +10
Bass: +10
Balance: 0
Steady Sound: On
Surround: TruSurround XT
BBE: High

I'm trying to decide between the Sony Bravia 32XBR2 and the Toshiba Regza 32HL66 LCD tv's. But I'm wondering about the 32XBR2's 1080i deinterlacing ability. According to the Home Theater mag report found here the Toshiba 32HL66 passes the deinterlacing test by not throwing away up to 50% of the 1080i information before scaling to it's native 768p display. Has anybody tried the test on a 32XBR2 to see if it passes this test?