Official Sony KDS-XXA3000 OWNERS THREAD! - Page 100

Very nice information. I was starting to wonder if the A3000 would hit A2000 retail prices from last year by the end of November. It could be a typo though, because the A3000 is priced less than the A2020. I would have to think they messed up because there's no price drop comment for the A3000 like there is for the A2020.

Best Buy is now showing the same as regular prices (not on sale) on their website.

Yep. Very interesting. I don't know if the A2020 was on Best Buy's site before, but it's not now. I didn't think the A3000 would get cheaper than last year's A2000 retail around the same time with the A2020 being in the lineup. Figure in a 12% off coupon and my 50" was only about $100 cheaper than the 60" A3000.

Hi after reading all the posts decided to get the kds60a3000 a step up from my kdf55e2000 that i've had for 10 months thinking i was going to get a better picture and boy was i wrong hd is very blury i have tried to adjust but it is really bad has anyone else had a problem

hd is blurrier on the A3000? then the e2000? thast odd, every e2000 i have ever seen looks like poop. are you watchign 720p stuff? in that case the e2000 is a 720p tv and woudl prolyl look sharper cause the A3000 doesnt upconvert signals that well. but it exceed in 1080p stuff in my opinion.

Sorry about that, I thought all RPTV were DLP.

I'm planing to get a HDTV in the next couple of days.

But I'm stuck between the 60A3000 or the 61 inch Samsung LED DLP?

I notice the 60A3000 cost more, is there any advantages it has compare to the sammy.


I heard alot of problems with the sammy led including the Halo prism Effect and Bowing issue.

Also if this television is not a DLP or LED, then what is it?

Does this use Color Wheel which could cause the rainbow effect?


Thanks in advance

The Sony tech is called SXRD, like LCD, but better. No color wheel. beween Sony and Sam ,I've go with the Sony, seems be be less issues.

Sony's display tech is called Liquid Crystal on Silicon or LCoS. Here's a link to edumacate yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lcos

The following are all technologies that have been used in RPTVs:

• CRT (The original "big screen" TV's - they are pretty much gone now, except I do see that Best Buy does list one from Phillips)

• LCD (Sony E2000 would be an example of this)

• DLP (Both lamp and semiconductor light {LED/laser})

• LCoS/SXRD (SXRD is Sony's brand for LCoS)

There are pros & cons to all of them. Besides particular brands might have their own set of problems (geometric distortion on Samsung DLP's and color uniformity issues on Sony SXRDs are just two examples)

Yeah, I noticed that.

$2199 for the 60".

This makes me wonder how much the 70" XBR5 will cost. Hopefully less than the original $5999 MSRP.

After many, many months of deliberation I finally got a 60A3000 last weekend. Unfortunately I've been pretty busy this week so I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to play with it. But here are my impressions so far:

Pros:
- Beautiful, smooth picture that looks great with only a few tweaks. I'm expecting it to get even better once I have time to experiment with the settings.
- Viewing angle is pretty good - PQ is equally good from any point in my long couch (L-shaped, about 8' long). I'm about 10' away from the screen. Of course it gets dimmer if I stand off to the side at the far end of the room, but it's still visible.

Cons:
- Brightness issues: It's sitting on a BDI Avion 8527, which is 22.5" high. At first I didn't notice any issues, but last night I noticed that it's a bit darker at the top of brightly-lit scenes. I haven't noticed any color issues related to height. (Also, my couch sits a bit low, so I'm sure that's contributing to the problem.)
- Geometry problems: Like many other people here, my picture bows in about 1/4" at the top. The bow starts about halfway up.
- Weak tuner? I have analog cable, and it was barely able to pull in some low-numbered stations that my 10-year-old Trinitron never had a problem with. This persisted even when I wired it directly to the wall (i.e. no splitters). Adding an amplifier fixed the problem. OTOH, the A3000 can display some QAM channels that my Vizio can't.

I think I could live with the brightness or geometry issues by themselves, but I'm afraid that the two together may just be too much of an annoyance, especially after paying $2K for a TV. I'm going to live with it another week or so and then I'll decide whether to keep it or try my luck with a swap.

Has anyone learned anything about manual geometry adjustments? There was some discussion earlier in the thread about adjusting the A2020, and the fact that nobody has yet figured out the equivalent adjustments on the A3000. I poked around for a while last night and even opened up the portholes on the sides looking for a place to adjust the geometry, came up empty. As this is a purely mechanical issue, surely there must be a simple way to fix it, even if that means a service call. Right?

Just ordered a 60A3000 from CC for a song. At the moment (at least, a moment this morning) they were still on sale and included a gift card.

This bad boy is going on an Ikea Leksvik stand, 18.5" high. I checked the stand out in person, and it looks a lot more expensive than it is, especially if you like a stand that doesn't really *look* like a TV stand.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70115187

Since I have the room, I'm putting two dim paper lamps on either side & slightly behind the TV where it tapers off, for both making the blacks look as dark as possible and alleviating eye strain.

Woo, can't wait for delivery next Wednesday!

it seems that peopel that sent back the tv that had geometry issues got a new one back that was fine.

...is very, very good. As compared to my last TV anyway, a 1996 Hitachi ultra vision. Maybe there is a set-up problem with your antenna system or cable box.

RIch

1/4" distortion at the top sounds miniscule, considering the width of viewable screen is 52.3". But, if you're seeing it and upset about it, its an issue.

Any chance of shooting a picture thats shows this distortion (aka geometry problem) so that those of us who haven't seen it could get up to speed on what to look for?

Sony's official position for geometric distortion seems to be: less than 1" is normal.

If you are sitting well below the centerline of the screen, you may notice the some darkening at the top of the screen image, depending on viewing distance. The closer you are to the screen, the more pronounced the light-falloff at the top appears. This is normal for this set and swapping sets is unlikely to change that. Either raise the viewing position, move farther back, or lower the set.

That's a massive center channel speaker - it makes the A3000 looks smaller than it actually is!

(I'm a strong advocate of placing the center channel speaker above the screen, as you've done, with the front left/right speakers on the same line as the bottom of the screen, creating a triangle. This has the effect of pulling the dialog downward and centering it "on screen".)

I'm wondering how many A3000 owners have placed a small center ch. speaker on top of the set, without a wall-mounted bracket like yours?

Sony just dropped price; in consideration of I seem to be moving big time toward the Sony over the Mitsui. Any opinions regarding same?

Boy, *did* they drop the price! Can't believe I ordered earlier today and it's already a few hundred less. Sweetness.

On the video lag issue, it is without question there. I spent the few weeks up to halo 3 playing halo 2 system link with my friends and durring that time i was on the old crt. moving from that back to my old dlp the lag seemed accentuated. I got the new tv at that time so i had the crt timing down and like i said its very noticable. I even hooked halo 3 up to the crt to see if maybe they just made the game more 'floaty' but thats not the case, its still as tight as ever on the crt. To those of you who dont notice it, great. But for those of us who play seriously its quite noticable. The game mode does help a lot as the poster who was gettin owned in melee and sniping points out (thats my biggest problem too, its nto really an issue for standard shooting but if your trying for that headshot from a distance the delays the difference between a miss and hit, same with timing melee attacks with that split second prescision) but even then its still not totally gone. if i had to pick a number id say its between 1/8th a second and 1/4 second.. probably around 3/16th of a second or so

to the guy who asked, no im not gonna return the tv. Like i said i dont think theres any dlp or lcos rp display out there that has absolutly zero lag. Really the only option for that would probaly be plasma, and burn in is a serious issue for me for my long gaming sessions (6+ hours at a time) Crts dont really count anymore, and lcds in the size i want have pretty crappy response times. Im just gonna deal with it and play in game mode when needed, i just wish the option to turn it on and off was easier to get to than crawling through so many menu options =( Its certainly much better than my 2 year old sammy dlp

here's my settings for those curious i usually just play on standard unless im doing competitive multiplayer or something.. does anyone know what edge enhancer does? ive asked several times and never got an answer i seriously notice no difference with it

standard
advanced iris auto 1
picture 76
brightness 50
color 65
hue 0
temp cool
sharp 50
noise reduction off
black corrector low
gamma off
clear white off
color space wide
live color high
detail enhancer medium
edge enhancer off (i seriously dont see what this option does)

for the custom settings that it goes to when i turn game mode on i have it at
advanced iris high
picture 76
brightness 50
color 65
hue 0
temp cool
sharp 45
noise reduction off
black corrector low
gamma off
clear white off
color space wide
live color high
detail enhancer off
edge enhancer off

hey they did!

its 100 dollars cheaper than what i payed for it last week at circuit city.. wtf.. wahts circuit city's price policy dont they give you the difference if you find it cheaper in like 30 days or soemthing? iw ant that extra 100 bucks

Just got $118.00 back at BB on the 60 day price protection from prior purchase of 60a3000. Sweet.

damn they dropped it alot, im gonna ahve to call them and get re imbursed i only purchased mine 5 days ago and its still on back order wait.

Is game mode "global", meaning game mode would affect all inputs when its on/off ? If it doesn't affect all inputs, couldn't you set game mode "on" for the game console input individually, so that you wouldn't be menu diving everytime you switched to that input. Just a thought.

There must have been a lot of people waiting for the price drop because both the 55" and 60" are now again out of stock at Sonystyle, but were available yesterday... lol

I'm planing to buy this solely for gaming, especially with my 360 using HDMI cables.

But now this talk of lag is scaring me, I hear different thing from different people.

One said there lag even with Gaming Mode on and another said there no lag even with it off. Can anyone confirm if this tv is good for gaming? or this tv was not made for it because of Lag. i dont whanna lose mY major rank in halo 3 because of this LoL

Gee they dropped the price on the 50" by $400. Does Best Buy have a price guarantee type thing? It's been barely a month.

Full refund of difference for 60 days from date of purchase. 110% of competitors lower price.
I imagine most don't recheck price but they can count on me to check until day 60.

Could someone please tell me how to post a photo on this forum?

When I go to insert a photo, a box opens asking for a http: address.
Say what?

I did a search using their FAQs and nothing came up when I put in
"photos", "inserting photos" ect... Arrr......!

After many months (years?) of lurking around on this site, I'm finally ready to come out into the open because I need some urgent advice.

I've been debating whether or not to get an A3000 since earlier this summer but now that Sony has significantly dropped their price I want to act quickly in case the sale expires this weekend. The only problem is that I don't know which size to get (50, 55, or 60).

Facts about me...

• I only watch SD television channels
• I have a Playstation 3 and tons of games
• I watch a fair amount of Blu-ray movies
• 50% of the television I watch is on VHS tapes
• My couch is exactly 10 feet from the TV stand

So because VHS-quality SD content is such a big part of my life, getting the 50" makes more sense because the image won't be stretched as much. But having the 60" would be great for gaming and watching Blu-ray movies. And then part of me wants to get the 55" just because it's the middle ground, though I don't want to regret it later.

So which do you guys recommend, given that the prices are only $200 apart? And is buying directly from Sony really worth the risk if there's a technical problem with the TV?

Oh yeah, and can somebody please tell me the exact dimensions of the base on the 60A3000. Perhaps it'll be too large to sit on my 48"x18" stand.

Yeah, I can try to do that tomorrow. It's probably a little more than 1/4", as it's clearly visible from the couch, 10' away. It's definitely less than 1". Not surprisingly, it's only noticeable when watching 4:3 content, which I still watch a lot of.


True - I understand that this is just an inherent quality of this set. I didn't mean to imply that a different unit would correct this.

Regarding the tuner quality - I had problems with the A3000 even when connecting it directly to the wall; my old CRT was run off a 3-way splitter. I suppose it could have been due to the individual coax cable I was using, as I didn't pay attention to whether I reused the one from the old TV. Anyway, I'm happy with the PQ now with the amp in there. I was just surprised that I needed it at all.