Official Sony KDS-XXA3000 OWNERS THREAD! - Page 63

He is refering to a problem that my 55" A3000 has where if you look at a very dark scene, or even easier to see on a screen with no input, the bottom right corner of my screen is much much brighter than the other 3/4ths of the screen. It is more blue than black in that corner. It's been established that the blub is in this corner, but I've been trying to determine if it is all A3000's that have this problem or just mine. So far others have reported that it is probably just mine. I'm going to the store tonight to see if I can reproduce this problem on the display model. I will also try to take a picture to show what I am talking about.

I have been trying to resize the desktop on my HTPC connected via HDMI 1 to a 60A3000. I have an nVidia 8600 GT and just installed the latest offical driver beta 163.67. Within the nVidia Control Panel Dektop Resize Window I move the slider and the arrows move. I hit OK and it drops back to the control panel, but there is no change in the Desktop.

On the Wide mode menu, I have the TV set to Full mode. Normal squishes the desktop into a 4:3 aspect.

Question: Is there some sort of TV setting that is preventing the desktop from resizing?

That's the way the Nvidia 8 series drivers act with XP, so your best bet might be to use do not resize desktop and use the TV scaling. Alternately if you create a custom resolution on XP it will show up in the lower right of what seems to be a 1080p resolution, but I don't know if the TV settings can reposition the image. On Vista 158.45 can be used for custom resolutions, or the newest Vista drivers work correctly with the resize desktop scaling.

Ok, I did some more adjustments tonite.

First off, I highly recommend the first thing(s) you do when you get one of these is

1. Press Options on the remote and go to the Picture menu, change the Picture Mode to "Standard".
2. set Advanced Iris to "Auto 2" - try the other settings too.
3. set Color Temperature to Warm 1 or Warm 2 (I'm using 2).
2. Scroll down to the next page, turn Sharpness all the way down to "Min".
3. turn Noise Reduction to Off.
4. turn MPEG Noise Reduction to Off.
5. Go down to Advanced settings, and basically turn everything there OFF. Make sure not to miss "Detail Enhancer" and "Edge Enhancer" - you have to scroll down to the 2nd page of the Advanced menu to see those. I think those 2 especially add a lot of noise / grain that you don't want. I did leave Color Space on "Wide", it does improve the color reproduction quite a lot.

After that, adjust the Brightness (black level), Picture aka "Contrast" (white level) and Color to suit the lighting in your room and/or your eyes. Make sure you test the Brightness with a scene that has shadows. I turned it up a good bit so I can see details in the shadows. It makes the background a little grey, but I'm not done trying all the Iris modes. The Black Corrector (under Advanced) does darken the blacks down to black, but at the expense of shadow detail a little bit. I'm going to have to play with that one some more also.

Couple other notes...

- Don't try to adjust the picture when you first turn the set on cold. Let it warm up for a good 5 minutes, if not 10... The bulb takes a while to come to full brightness.

- My fan was making some funny noises after I first turned the set on tonight after work... sounded like a car horn honking... (softly) honk.... honk... honk... But after I let it warm up for a while it sounds ok now.

- The inputs aren't really on the back of the unit... They are on the LEFT SIDE. I mean you can pull this thing out 6-8" and easily reach all the wires. Very nice, actually, though I had to search around a bit to find them at first!

- The opposite side where the bulb and fan are emits a LOT of light. If you have a truly black "theater" setup you will NEED to deal with this light spillage...

This is my third week with my 60" A3000. I must say that I get happier each day with this TV. Here are some recent observations:

- My set does not exhibit the lower right corner issue some of you are concerned about

- Geometry is nearly perfect

- SD broadcasts look better on this set than my old 40" XBR CRT

- I am liking the Detail Enhancer setting at the moment. I messed around with it last night and liked the initial results.

- I ordered the full, 4-disc HD-DVD set of Planet Earth from Discovery's online store. Note this is the American release with Sigourney's voice. After watching it for a few minutes, I had to go get a spatula from the kitchen to scrape my jaw off the floor. I highly recommend these DVDs to see just how good your set can look. There has not been anything I've watched that delivers the WOW-factor like this. In case you are interested, the BBC version is quite a bit cheaper ($66), but I find the American version ($99) to be far less annoying since the BBC version features Richard Attenborough's weird voicework.

- I have built a custom stand for my 60" (I'll post pictures once I stain it). I wanted to hit the sweet spot between standing and seated positions. The stand is around 23.5" high. This height is nearly perfect for all vertical viewing angles. If I were to do it over again, I'd shoot for 22.5"

Walk: I've noticed this as well. In a really dark room with a very dark picture is the bottom right corner of your screen much brighter than the rest of the screen?


Knewrome: I agree with your review of the set. It does have a great wow factor. Have you definately tried a very dark room with a screen with no input to ensure there is no problem with the right corner being too bright?

Knewrome,

Is your reference for comparison the Sony KV-40XBR800 ?

What is your source for SD content? My SD content is coming off a DirectTIVO R10 over S-Video. I upgraded from a KV-32XBR200, and i'm sorry but there is no comparison, the CRT was hands down better for SD content.

I should have said 'uniformly black' I guess. I don't see any bright spots anywhere on a black screen.

I have not seen any fading on a white screen. The DirecTV commercials or whatever they are that have a full white screen with the DirecTV text/logo in the center of the screen appear uniformly white I'd say. But they do show what I assume is SSE. (I've never had an LCOS/SXRD set before, but from what I've read here the 'brilliance/shimmering' I see would be SSE?)

An observation on 'blackness' on the screen - When I was watching The 4400 in SD with sidebars I noticed during the intro on full black screens with white text in the center that the black SD background was brighter than the black sidebars where there was no SD signal. I adjusted brightness from 50 to 45 and then the black SD background nearly matched the sidebars. Perhaps not a scientific approach but I'm happier with the black broadcast content.

Yes that is correct.

My source for content is Charter cable running through a Scientific Atlanta HD box with component. My XBR simply does not look as good. Obviously, this is strictly an opinion, but my wife and I feel that pretty much everything looks a lot better on the A3000. An SD broadcast on a 60" HDTV leaves a lot to be desired, of course, but the picture seems clearer, more distinct and has less "wash-out" of color when using similar picture settings.

I realize a lot of people are unhappy with SD performance out of this and other SXRD sets, but it is definitely not an issue for me. I have been pleasantly surprised.

Yes, I have watched a few movies and played a ton of Bioshock in a completely darkened room. I have been meticulous about examining my picture for bright or dark spotting. I have noticed no problems. I will be happy to double check again tonight, though. I will use your method for testing this.

Do you think these sets would be able to handle a few pounds worth of weight on top? ie, a very light center channel? Or a fraction of the weight of the center channel?

I'm still trying to find a way to set up my center speaker as best as possible.

This has been my general impression - that the old CRTs do SD much better than the newer plasma, LCD, SXRD technologies ON THE SAME SOURCE.

I have a new 42' Panny that when viewing SD in 4:3 mode has the same diagonal as my old MITS 36". The Panny is terrible at SD. Not even close to the old CRT. The early reviews of the new Pioneers don't sound so hot with respect to SD despite claims of improved processing. I've yet to see a new technology TV that leaves me thinking - wow that SD is a lot better than before. In nearly every case the reaction is - man is that disappointing. The best SD picture I've ever seen was on a Philips plasma surprisingly.

There will be lot of excuses offered for poor SD - quality of the source, larger picture, don't ever intend to watch it .... - but in a direct and fair comparison I'm still looking for the set that can match the CRT. I'm still have a ton of archived SD material that I fear will never be watchable on these sets without a high cost processor.

Never thought that looking at my old CRT.

What about if you dip below center.. i'm guessing the white becomes shady on the top part of the screen.

I know it did on a blue screen in the store, again, not as bad as the LED which i still have.

If only this TV had 3d ability, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat most likely.

My only complaint is my geometry isn't perfect. Horizontally it is as close as I can tell, but I am getting some minor trapezoid, with more angle on the left side than the right. I'm very sensitive to such things, and no one else that has seen the TV recognizes it till I say something.

I still have a few weeks on the return window, and I may return it just to see if I can do better. That is really the only flaw I have though, and overall I would grade the set very, very good.

I haven't noticed any light spillage on (inside) the screen itself, only out the vents in the back. The way my setup is, with my tower speakers up to the sides of the tv/rack, I can't really see it from my seating position, but it does light up the wall back there pretty good. Some black felt or something would probably fix that nicely (hanging on the wall, not covering the vents!)

Coming from a 46" RP-CRT I can safely say the viewing angles are a lot better, and especially the "sweet spot", where you don't get that dark-corner effect, is MUCH bigger. Other than what you'd expect from a RP-TV I don't see anything nasty about dark spots, edges, etc... That's all pretty normal, I have to say. If you want a perfectly uniform picture from a large variety of viewing angles I'd say you have to get a plasma. Though, I don't think you're going to find a 50"+ 1080p plasma for under 2 grand...

edit: A 120hz 50" 1080p plasma...

Speaking of motion enhancement and cadence and pulldowns and such. If you have the Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one) Blu-ray and a PS3 or other 24p capable player (and you should) pull it out and go to 10:42, the scene where the camera flies over some castle wall. Look at it once with Motion Enhancer off. I see some "judder" if you call it that, the edge of the stone wall seems to "stutter" a little ,and I even think I see a d-d-double-image kind of thing going on.

Ok now watch with Motion Enhancer on Standard - stutter gone! Smooth as silk.
Now watch it on High - WOW you are flying! "High" really is amazing with certain scenes, though I've seen some weird effects with it on some scenes so I'm generally leaving it on Normal.

I watched that movie this afternoon on my Sammy 4065F via PS3 and at the scene you mention there major motion blur, macro-blocking, judder etc....whatever you want to call it, but it drives me friggin nuts and even more so via D* Hr20 for sports especially racing.

A couple of comments (and a nitpik):

First the nitpik: a 42" 16:9 TV has a 34.2" diagonal 4:3 window (a bit smaller than your old 36" MITS)

I've had the same "outstanding SD" experience with the SXRD's that others have noted ==> with an excellent quality cable signal as the source. Until I moved it to a different room, we had both the 60" SXRD and an older 53" XBR CRT-based RPTV side-by-side being fed the exact same cable signal (with a unity-gain amplifier, so there was no signal degradation) ... and the SD picture on the SXRD compared very favorably with the CRT set --> wife thought it was actually better; I thought they were essentially the same.

With regard to your comment that you "... still have a ton of archived SD material that I fear will never be watchable on these sets ..." ==> the "archived SD" comment indicates these are recordings ... if they're VHS tapes then what you're seeing may simply be the poor quality of that media; especially if they're 2nd (or later) generations. These aren't really even "SD" quality --> a VHS tape only resolves 240 lines. Plus tapes degrade with time ... so if you've watched older VHS recordings then I'm sure that the excellent resolution of your HDTV has very accurately displayed all of the inherent flaws on these recordings. The picture quality is, as has been noted many times in this forum, only as good as the source.

Since I have the inside of my TV (when the fan for the bulb got replaced). There are 3 areas where dust/dirt cold cause a problem. The lens on the optical block, the mirror that is attached to the back of the TV and the "channel" that feeds the light to the optical block. And last, the screen itself. I would bet on 1 and 2.

You could have a Tech come out and look and then clean the inside if necessary. Or just return the set for a new one.

Changing the bulb is not a big deal. The tech went over the steps because the bulb chamber had to be removed as part of the process of replacing the fan.

My limited interaction with tech support was via a on-line chat and during the day. Went pretty well. Did not use the phone.

OK, first complaint. I use a HTPC and sometimes watch TV with audio via audio system. I normally have my harmony remote mute the tv as part of the setup for these "activities". Unforunately, the numnuts at Sony decided to put a "mute" banner on screen (lower left) when the TV is muted. This is killing me.

Question: Is there a way to turn this "Mute" banner off or set the TV directly to minimum volume without having to send 15 VolumeDown commands?

I have an issue on my 60" as well, again mostly on the left. The lines are straight on both sides, but they trapezoid slightly. The left is actually off from top to bottom almost a quarter of an inch. I may replace the set, simply because I can. One could live with it pretty easily though, and most people don't notice it. Crosshatch patterns don't do a good job of detecting it, as the lines are still quite straight.

GaryCase

What is this ( unity-gain amplifier ) that you mention and where do people get it and how does it hook up ? I am amazed at how much some of you know about so much of this HDTV stuff

Thanks

A unity-gain amplifier is just a high-bandwidth amplifier with just enough gain to offset the effect of splitting the signal ==> so each of the outputs has the same signal level as the input (thus "unity" gain).

It looks like, and hooks up like, a distribution amplifier ==> the cable signal is connected to the input; and each of the outputs can be connected to whatever you want. In my case, I have a distribution amplifier in the attack that amplifies the incoming signal and distributes it to each of the TV outlets in the house; and a unity-gain amp at our main TV, where I split the signal to the TV, a cable box, and an HTPC with 6 tuners (thus 6 inputs).

This is the unity-gain amp I use (it works perfectly): http://www.electroline.com/en/produc..._ug/index.html
If you need fewer outputs, they also sell a 4-port version. Their distribution amps are also quite good => I use one of them as well.

Note that if you're simply splitting the signal, and it's already a good signal, you should use a unity gain amp ==> amplifying a signal to too high a level will actually degrade your picture.

Note: There's an Electroline dealer on e-bay (I tried to leave a link here but it doesn't work when embedded). Just go to ebay ... search for Electroline ... click on any of the amps; and then "Visit Seller's Store" to see all of the choices.

The picture diagonal on the 36" Mits is actually 35.25 " The comparison to the 42" at 4:3 is very fair from a size standpoint.

The archived material I have includes VHS, Hi8 and mini-DV (the last two sourced through S-VHS). I actually have taken my camcorder to stores and viewed tapes on HDTVs. I have yet to see a picture better than the old tube. I would say that 90% are worse and worse by a wide margin - borderline embarrasing.

Yes, the source has a huge effect. But I can't change the source of my archived material, but I can continue to hope that I'll find a $ 5000 HDTV that can show SD without making excuses. (or save some of my money for a good stand alone processor).

In reading these forums and various reviews, I've yet to see someone say that the SD is heads and tails improved - despite a lot of promotional talk about improved processing (DRC, latest Pioneer improvements, etc.).

Well ... this TV costs less than 1/2 of that ==> so you could buy the TV and a good processor (e.g. VP20) with change left over if that's your targeted budget ... or forget the change and get a VP50

... as for SD being "... heads and tails improved ..." ==> won't happen. You can mask deficiences to some extent with a high-end processor; but clearly you can't actually get better resolution than you start with. I (like you) was very skeptical of whether or not SD broadcasts would be "viewable" on this set (based on a lot of comments in these forums) ... but have been VERY pleased with the quality ==> as I noted before, it's certainly on par with our 53" XBR CRT-based set (which was professionally calibrated).

By the way ... you can't (as you noted) change the source of your archived material. But you CAN get it in the digital domain!! ... I'd copy those tapes to DVD's as quickly as you can ... once their stored digitally at least they won't degrade any further