Official Sony XBR4/5 Owners Thread(NO PRICE TALK) - Page 18

wow, I have to say, much better than my green Toshiba lx177

Say it isnt so.

Here we go again. It's like deja vu, stud!

Just curious, whats your backlight setting at? brightness?

Looks like one of the great things about the XBR4 is the ability to view it from angles. If you mount it on the wall, do you think there needs to be a tilt mechinism on the mount or even an articulated type of mount? Or is it ok just flat on the wall?

I'm trying to figure out if it is needed. I don't want it to stick too far away from the wall with a fancy mount unless it's needed.

I see blur on the singer's hand, the birdies and the Nascar flag. Was this due to a slow shutter speed or by motion blur of the panel?

In my tests ( at www.hdguru.com), motion caused resolution to drop up to 45% on the KDL-46XBR4.

Just got my new 46XBR4 and Harmony doesn't have the Set in its database. Anybody else have any ideas how to program it.

wtpittman,

when I was testing the same model, I found an older Sony remote (it think it was from a XBR2 or XBR3 had the same codes and buttons. did you try substituting one of those code sets?

IMHO, that clouding/flashlighting is quite bad. If you can't calibrate it out and your dealer is receptive, I would try to exchange it for another in the hope it will be much better.

you should link your review Gary, despite some kneejerk anti-plasma reactions you'll find here, i've really enjoyed (and learned from) your articles in the past; very very thorough. Thank you.

a couple things about your (in my mind, excellent) review on hdguru:

you mentioned MotionEnhancer had no noticeable effect but to first hand users here (including me) it's been VERY noticeable. Admittedly its not always beneficial depending on content (24p movies), but very apparent nonetheless and potentially a big advantage with TV sports or games over Sony's cheaper MotionFlow-less cousions. (could you do a W3000 review? Please!)

you also didn't mention a major reason people prefer LCD over Plasma being it's flexibility with Gaming and HTPC applications, a quickly growing market.

when can we expect a review of the Samsung 81 series, and what's your take on glossy vs. matte screens? Thanks again.

Thanks for the objective review! I have a 40XBR4 on order and am currently using a PS3 for my DVD/Blu-ray player. Thanks for the tip on the “custom” mode - that should take care of the resolution issue you identified. The 3:2 pulldown issue is still confusing to me. If I feed the set a 24fps or 60fps signal no pulldown is necessary (becasue of the even multiple of 120?) - correct? I thought the whole benefit of the 120hz panel was to bypass 3:2 pulldown for all sources. Please try to put this issue into laymans terms if you can. Thanks!

studdad, good to see you over here on the XBR thread! I finaly gave up on the LX177 after all the issues you folks had and now have a 52XBR4 arriving next Friday. Can't wait. Seems like some folks here have issues with the SD, but I think that can be resolved in a number of ways. How's the LX coming along? Did you ever get it fixed properly?

How much heat does this unit put out? Does it run hotter than let's say Sharp or Samsung?

It aint so...for me.

Brandon

THIS would suck!
Has anyone else seen any additional information on this?!
I love to see some links if you run across any Sony production details.

Part of me hopes my 52XBR4 arrives next week, cause I've been waiting over a month...part of me screams "you don't want a production error LCD TV.

P.S. Watching football in plain old NTSC is awful. I think I need some aspirin.
Hell, after thihs news I'd better go pour a drink.


SPEED08 - Wow. Great shots! That TV is stunning.

The settings during the clouding are
Backlight 5
Brightness 48

I've gone back in since then and tweaked it a little.
There's a bit of improvement now.
Backlight = 3
Brightness = 41

When I started this post I was watching Discovery HD Theatre, "Becoming A Man In Siberia" which has some night scenes. The clouding wasn't as prominent in that program.

I'm going to hook up the GretagMacbeth Eye-One Photo spectrophotometer Monday evening (I use it to calibrate my Barco's and digital printing presses at work) and try to figure how to get some good data to see how the clouding behaves at optimal settings.
I'll visit the calibration thread at this site and see what luck I have hooking it up to a computer.

And yes to some other question: I noticed a little greenish cast in my mid gray-scale programming. However when running through the HDNet test pattern that DirecTV broadcasts sometimes, that was not a problem. Can't explain it.


I'm not connected to DVI-HDMI yet but I'll try to pick one up at Best Buy tomorrow. I saw your link to the software to download.
Will my mac (ATI graphics card) connect correctly if I am running Parallels?
That's the only DVI capable graphics card I have that isn't running Linux (NVIDIA graphics card) unless you can hook me up with a Linux utility that will yield similar results.

Every potential buyer of these new Sonys should read this review I just found on the XBR2.

http://www.lcdtvbuyingguide.com/lcdt...2-review.shtml

Not sure how this review of an XBR2 relates in any way to an XBR4/5. Different technology; different pricing, etc...

This review refers to clouding and settings. I think it's pertinent, but it's your choice to read it. Very interesting observations about 1080p vs. 720p, too. This reviewer believes 1080p is more hype than performance. People who don't want to be informed shouldn't read the review.

Just the SD, Cable box only.

I think your panel is bad, your colors look too washed for that low of settings. Your BD logo looks like the backlight was at 9/10 and brightness about 90+.

How the heck do you get your pics so clear? so jealous. good camera. are you pausing with a DVR? I dont think it's a green push in your grey shadows, it's probably just a setting you need to adjust, but which one. Having seen green push on an LX177 I returned, it's like the toxic waste scene from Modern Problems movie. WOW where did that come out of my mind?

"Imagine an animal that needs not be fed nor cleaned very often. Much of what this animal does is unseen by the naked eye. These traits are what characterize a three-toed sloth. What exactly is a sloth? A sloth is a mammal found in the jungles of Central or South America. He spends much of his time hanging on trees and eating leaves. Sloths rarely come down from their trees unless they need to relocate.
I believe there is more to the sloth than meets the eye. He is a magnificent creature that contributes more than he has been given credit for. In the next few paragraphs, I will argue that the sloth is actually a creature of worth, a valuable worker, and a caring animal. My hope is that this paper may convince those people who disregard the sloth to reevaluate their opinion of this magnificent creature.
One might argue that a sloth is a worthless creature. Those who would argue this point might base their argument on the persistent hanging a sloth does from a tree. It is true that much of the sloth's time is devoted to sleeping in a tree. However, the sloth is actually rather important and is more useful than some may suppose. Because of his low rate of metabolism, the sloth can live on relatively low amounts of food. Additionally, he does not drink, but gets his water from eating juicy leaves and licking dew drops. Because he eats and drinks so little, environmentalists have deemed his species as one of the earth's most helpful conservationists. Sloths help preserve the foliage and water supply of the earth while other animals do not.
In addition to being a great conservationist, the sloth is a valuable worker in much of the rain forests where he dwells. Unfortunately, the sloth is commonly refereed to as being
lazy. "Do not be slothful" is a phrase found even in the Bible. In this way, the sloth is compared to a work ethic that epitomizes laziness. Again, the sloth is misunderstood because of his appearance. Believe it or not, the sloth is considered to have a "job" within its environment. His job is to be a sanctuary of refuge for hundreds or even thousands of tiny
insects. These insects cling to the sloth's fur and make their nest inside the deep rooted hair follicles of the sloth. Without the sloth, many of these insects would not survive, as the sloth's fur acts as protection from harm. Conversely, if the insects did not take refuge on the sloth, he would not be camouflaged to protect himself from his predators, such as a large snake, bird, or a jaguar. Thus, there is a common interest between the two groups. The sloth serves his environment well. This proves the sloth has a "job" and actually is not lazy.
One could argue that the sloth, because of his large claws, is a mean spirited animal. This is a common myth based on the assumption that the sloth is somehow inherently evil. On the contrary, sloths actually have a very level-headed temperament. Specifically, mother sloths are a good example of this as they are the protector of their young ones. While some animals abandon their young at an early age, mother sloths continue to nurse and protect their young until the child is ready to leave. There is not one moment when a baby sloth leaves the mother's stomach (if he was at her side, the baby would fall off). Baby sloths have a very low chance of being harmed because of this close proximity to their mother.
On the surface, some might refer to the sloth as being somehow "odd" or "weird." However, I prefer to use the word "unique" to describe the sloth. What makes the sloth unique from other animals? First, the sloth's hair is pointed in the opposite direction compared to
other animals. It flows in an upward motion whereas most animals' fur flows downward. This is to help house the insect life previously mentioned. If the sloth's coat was not created this way, the insects would not be able to use the sloth as a refuge. Secondly, a sloth's stomach, intestines, colon, and other important organs are all upside down. This is to accommodate the sloth's mostly "upside down" life. Without the organs being situated in this position, the sloth
would not function properly. Lastly, the sloth can live to be 45 years old or older. With the low amount of energy he exerts, this contributes to the longevity of the species. What a unique creature!
The more information known about the sloth, the more the sloth can be appreciated. The sloth was placed in his environment for a purpose. Its job helps other species survive. While definitely unique, the sloth continues to fascinate many people around..."

I sorry to see a few are having clouding issues, because this is great TV. Still I don't think it's to the extent of last generations TV's. Even my VCR, yes VCR looks good, I have a 100 or so old Doctor Who episodes I can't live without. Tho I am slowly converting them to DVD+R. BTW the XA2 plays DVD+R, greatly, but for some reason not in the specs.

1. Model Name - KDL-46XBR4
2. Bought Date and Place - 8/19/07 at CircuitCity.com
3. Manufacturing date and place - Mexico of Aug 07
4. Software Version - M-BMN-A-H-C-D-L-A-N
5. Firmware Version -
Digital
DM1.012A00LA
DD0.000A00LU
M2.001C

SUB
SM1.007W00AA
SD1.003W00AA
SB1.002W00AA

BE
BM1.011A00LU
BD1.013A00LUX
BB1.000W00AU

7. Detected Issues - None so far. When I first powered up the set and put it on a blank input in a pitch black room with the Backlight cranked all the way up I thought I spotted some faint clouds, but I couldn't be sure of it. About an hour later after watching some content I put it back on a blank input and either the clouding was so faint that I couldn't spot it again or it's just not there. Either way I'm satisfied with that aspect of it. I also turned the backlight down to 5 and day-to-day haven't spotted any uneven backlighting issues or mura. So far so good. Honestly, I think I'm paranoid about the mura issue and trying much too hard to spot it. I've dubbed this new phenomenon "Muranoid."

8. Comments - For the context of the following comments keep in mind that I don't have any ideas for calibration so I am running the picture in "Custom" mode with the backlight at 5, sharpness down a bit and Warm1 color mode.

• The black levels haven't wowed me or blown me away but I don't really have any barometer for that. In any event the PQ has wowed me. I happened to have Bridge To Terabithia arrive on Blu-ray arrive on Friday (same day the set came) so I popped that into the PS3. The PQ was excellent and really did impress me, but it's always hard to tell how much of that is from the upgrade in processing from my 3 year old HDTV and how much of that is from the upgrade in size from my previous 32", 720p LCD TV. In any event, I have been very impressed. The movie on the other hand was so bad to me that I just skipped through the chapters to see how the TV performed on different scenes.

• I'm running HD Cable from a Motorola 3416 STB, and the HD feeds from HBO and ESPN have been excellent, but I haven't spent too much time on that content. The SD feeds have only had marginal improvement to my eyes so far. Comedy Central gets a lot of airplay in my living room and it was pretty horrible on my previous set, and there seems to be slightly less artifacting on the new XBR4, which may be more impressive when you consider the picture is 14" larger from my previous TV. I haven't been able to watch any HD Sports on the display yet, which I think is my last, biggest, concern. When watching my two favorite sports (Football on network channels and Boxing on HBO) there has always been some macroblocking on certain channels. Fox is usually pretty good, and NBC is usually pretty bad with football. I'm anxious to see how the Motionflow impacts this, if at all. Hopefully this weekend I can update that.

• The effect when having Motion Enhancer on "High" and Cinemotion on "Auto1" is one of the weirdest things I've seen on a television. It's almost cool to watch for a few minutes, but it looks unnatural. There is also some artifacting as mentioned before, but it's hard to reproduce so it seems to be a bit arbitrary in nature. There is some difference when using Motion Enhancer and Cinemotion on "Auto2" for the benefit of the viewer. And watching a BD in 1080p24 was beautiful on Bridge To Terabithia.

• I'm loving the Full Pixel option which gives 1:1 pixel mapping. I didn't really realize what I was missing before. It's very nice to have.

• Despite the display appearing slightly more reflective than my previous matte LCD out of the box, it still performs great with blinds completely open and sun glaring through directly on the TV. This was a big deal for me, because I had been strongly considering the Samsung 81 for several months now.

• I haven't used game mode at all, and there has been no noticeable lag at all. For me, lag always set in when playing a baseball game. The pitching meter is based on timing and it has to be very precise. I have yet to turn game mode on, and I've been able to play the game without problem. The Motion Enhancer set to high appeared to affect the performance of the game, but the problem is I couldn't tell if it was for better or worse. I'll play with that more later and give some impressions.

• Using the HQV Blu-ray disk, I was able to do some testing on the TV:
• Noise Reduction Test-When the TV's NR setting is set to "low", it scored pretty well on the test. When setting NR to "high" noise was reduced greatly, but at the expense of loss of detail. Bottom line, you choose what you want with this setting and it's nice to have all 3 options.
• Video Resolution Loss Test-The TV scored a perfect score in this test on my Custom settings. However, I was able to reproduce the HDGuru failures by setting the TV to Vivid mode. I isolated the failure to the "DRC Mode 1" option. For whatever reason, this causes resolution loss in both Film and Video Resolution Loss tests.
• Jaggies Test-As was expected, the top two bars of this test were smooth and the last bar exhibited some jaggies. Turning Cinemotion to Auto2 and Motion Enhancer to "High" only reduced the jaggies on the last bar by a very slight amount.
• Film Resolution Loss Test-Showed slight strobing, with the same comments from Video Resolution Loss Test above applying here.

Lastly, I'm going to try and read up in the manual about the DRC modes. Whatever processing it does seems to affect the PQ/performance dramatically. Setting it to Mode1 and using the other default settings from "Vivid" mode cause complete failures. Setting it to Mode2 (which is used in "Cinema" mode, makes the picture appear very blurry to my untrained eye. Anybody have any insight as to when DRC mode should be used and what it's supposed to achieve?

Well, those are my initial impressions. I would post pictures but since I moved recently I can't find the charger for the proprietary battery in my Canon PowerShot S60 . If I find it I'll try and upload some.

Brandon

LOL, I know.

Brandon,

After you get done hunting for your camera battery, would you elaborate on the 1:1 pixel mapping?

I'm not sure I understand.

I even read this: Does your TV support 1:1 pixel mapping?

Are you saying that the "trimmed away" strips on the top/sides/bottom are visible?

Do you leave it on all the time?
Does it sometimes cause flickering bars on an edge??

John

Thanks for this. You have covered so much ground in so few words. I was wondering if youu had tested it on a PC yet.

Thanks, and no I did not. They are sending out a replacement, should have in 10-15 days. If it is green, I am hoping for my money back so I can look at this set or the Sammy 71.