Owen

Everything is scaled so it makes little difference what the pixel aspect ratio is.

I have no vertical viewing angle issues what so ever on my 70”. Standing up or sitting down the picture looks the same. From what I have seen viewing angles are tighter on the 60”. My 70” also has excellent geometry, with only a pixel or two error an all sides after a little fine tuning.

HD resolutions are not required or even useful on a 38 or 48cm TV. 720x576 or similar is heaps unless you are going to sit on top of the damn thing. 1366x720 or similar would be extreme overkill.

Could be, it’s one of those LCD jobs with pathetic blacks.

The SXRD has much better blacks then the Panasonic standard. Being able to improve on the already good blacks with a few mods is a just icing on the cake. Sony TV’s have dreadful default settings and the SXRD’s are no exception, which in a direct comparison with the Panasonic 65”puts the SXRD at a disadvantage. Colour accuracy is outstanding as standard on the Panasonic, but is way off on the SXRD, with way too much red and a little too much green. Once the SXRD is set up properly it looks much better and easily competes with the Panasonic and betters it in most respects IMHO. Advantages of the SXRD are outstanding shadow detail and colour detail as well as a super low noise floor, as it does not need to dither like a Plasma. The only visible negative I notice on the SXRD is SSE, which is only sometimes noticeable to me and I can live with it. I could not live with the Panasonic due to its poor blacks. Good blacks are required for a top quality picture on a large variety of content and any display with poor blacks is fatally flawed in my view.

Thanks mate, but I don’t understand the “red push” on my forum tele icon. I have had this before but the bar must have been lifted as it went back to blue. 3070 posts seems a very arbitrary number, how does that work? Do I win a prize, or just get a kick in the bum for spending so much time on an internet forum? I know what my other half would say.

Buying disks is fine if you want to watch them again, but spending $40 on a disk that will only be played once is a bit much, that’s why I hire disks not buy them. How many years until we can hire BluRay or HDDVD? Till that happens the net rules for HD content. The majority of content is not available on HD disk anyway, so if you want to see it you have to wait until it is transmitted in 1080 HD on free to air, cable or sat somewhere in the world and posted on usenet unrecompressed. You can keep the recompressed rubbish on the torrents, not interested.

Yes I have used those settings on 6800GT, 7800GTS and then 8800GTS, and the difference it makes is minimal IMHO. In a double blind test I would not be able to pick the difference between having the features on and off, but that may be because TheaterTek enables them automatically. I have not used FFDShow for a while since it disables hardware deinterlacing and I mainly watch HD content. For sharpening I was using the sharpening functions in my Hitachi, and still do so on my SXRD. There is a lot more to the 8800 then sharpness or detail, image sharpness is not really any different to previous cards. However the 8800 has vastly superior colour rendering then any previous video card I have used. Compression artefacts and posterization that was sometimes noticeable on older cards has either dramatically reduced or disappeared completely. Colour rendition is a lot more natural and image quality is quite a bit cleaner and less digital looking. Aliasing on true interlaced SD content is also significantly reduced. FFDShow just cant do what the 8800 can, not even close IMHO.

It’s the blue light leakage from the optical block and reflections inside the cabinet that are the problem mate. Nothing you do to your room will make a significant difference. If you want the best performance you will have to take the screen off the SXRD and do some mods, either that or live with it as it is. It’s not like the SXRD is bad in standard form, but it can be substantially better when modified. I am surprised you would want to run the SXRD in a dark room, the blacks are not good enough for that. Some bias lighting in the room helps a lot with the blacks and makes the glow from your wall insignificant.

It’s the blue light leakage from the optical block and reflections inside the cabinet that are the problem mate. Nothing you do to your room will make a significant difference. If you want the best performance you will have to take the screen off the SXRD and do some mods, either that or live with it as it is. It’s not like the SXRD is bad in standard form, but it can be substantially better when modified.

I’ll bet the majority of 65” Plasma owners will not mount them on a wall, but on a stand. When stand mounted the flatness of a panel is of no practical advantage and the SXRD looks the same except from the side. After seeing the 65” Panasonic and the 70” SXRD side by side, you would really have to want a flat panel to choose the Panasonic over the Sony. Even if the relative pricing were reversed I would still take the Sony over the Panasonic no picture quality grounds.

Stay away from LCD you don’t have to worry about pixel update times. SXRD=2.5ms

I don’t think that’s right, despite what the specs say. I have seen the 65” Panasonic displaying 1080p from a Panasonic BluRay player that outputs 1080p and even up converts DVD to 1080p. This setup was right next to a 70” Sony SXRD, and we pulled the HDMI cable out of the back of the Panasonic and put it into the Sony and the Sony reported the signal as 1080p. So unless the Panasonic player can change its output on the fly, it would appear the 65” Panasonic can accept 1080p. As far as I know the US model 65” 1080p Panasonics also accept 1080p over HDMI.

The XBR2 manual is the same except for a couple of minor details boys and girls, just download that.

Yes definitely PROVIDED you use an appropriate viewing distance for the size of the display. No use buying a 40” 1080p display and then view it from 4 meters. You would be wasting your time and money. For your eyes to fully resolve 1920x1080 a 70” screen needs to be viewed from no more then about 3 meters. Smaller screens will need to be viewed from much closer, which does not suit everyone. For the screen size – viewing distance used by most people a 720 or 768 display is more then enough. In general display resolution is the least important factor in creating a good image. Other aspects of performance such as black level, video processing, colour accuracy etc are much more important.

I seem to remember that someone was after a user manual for the SXRD. Here is the US XBR2 manual, which is almost identical to our models. http://www.sonystyle.com/intershoproot/eCS.../2699721141.pdf

Problem is that Canon and Toshiba are the ones that have spent a lot of time and money into getting a marketable product happening. They are not going to just give that expensive R&D away now are they? Any other player will either have to start again or pay big dollars for Canon-Toshiba’s work. The delay involved with having to start from scratch will probably mean the death of SED.

Dr and MLXXX, what you have observed regarding the pollution of blacks caused by reflections is normal for a RPTV that has not been “fixed”. Blacking out the cabinet will not improve black level on an all black screen, but is will make a noticeable improvement when there is some bright picture content (improved ANSI contrast) and an even greater improvement when the bright content is in overscan area. Overall black level is dramatically affected by the service menu iris tweak and even more so by the ND2 filter. The blue light leakage from the light engine affects black level and causes a blue tinge to blacks that cannot be fixed by colour adjustments (blue cut). With the light leakage fixed and both the iris tweak and ND filter installed, I expect black level to drop about 70% below standard. That’s impressive by any standard and puts the SXRD so far out in front of any other digital display for blacks it’s simply ridicules. With the ND filter installed, light output in low power lamp mode may be insufficient for brighter rooms, and require the normal or bright lamp mode to be used. My intent is to improve performance in dim or dark environments, which is an area that the SXRD does not currently excel. Even after all my efforts the SXRD will still fall well short of a good CRT RPTV for blacks, but it will be mind blowing by digital standards. The tape used to mask the lens is an unusual very stiff type that is not likely to fail with age, however it seems of little use since in comes no where near to masking the active image area. I plan on making a custom mask to fit inside the neutral density filter that will mask off as much of the overscan areas as possible. I also intend to mask of the unused area of the mirror. All my mods will be reversible with the exception of some black paint around the screen bezel and some other areas, however if the job is done properly it will look factory, and there is very little chance a service person will know that it should not be there. In any event there is no reason for a service person to ever remove the screen unless it got damaged and needed replacement. A light engine (optical block) replacement does not involve removing the screen, nor does the replacement of any serviceable parts. Even if the interior mods where discovered, they have no affect on the working parts of the set in any way, so Sony would have a tough time denying warranty. Personally I don’t care if warranty is void, as performance is much more important to me then a possible repair bill.

Don’t expect more detailed service info from other manufacturers. What did you intend to do with it anyway?

No I dont use FFDShow any more, the 8800 needs no help. There is no guarantee Sony will ever release the 1080 3LCD models here, and much less chance that a smaller SXRD will ever show. Unlike the US market where RPTV’s are very popular and always have been, the local market is fixated in flat panels. It all depends on the expected sales volume, which by all accounts is not high.

I paid about $750 for a 640Meg Leadtek 8800GTS. The extra pipelines and memory of the GTX are of no use for video. If the current low memory versions of the GTS where available at the time I would have gone for one of those, as 640Meg is a total waste for video, it’s the 8800 chip architecture and its scaling and colour processing capabilities that are important.

The Sony manual is quit basic in scope, but not untypical. It’s intended for basic service and repair only, not modification or alteration from factory defaults. Things that should never require alteration or adjustment from factory default (just about everything in a digital set), are not documented. The manual for my Hitachi, and my Toshiba before it where much more detailed, but in an analogue CRT sets there is a lot more to adjust. Basic testing and measurement procedures, as well as fault finding technique are often assumed to be known, which is no help to the amateur. I have a background in electronics and fault finding so I don’t have much trouble.

No

I never said anything about 480p. What’s wrong with 1080i or even 720p out of the PS3, of cant a PS3 output in those formats? Are you are assuming 1080p with look better then 1080i? Of just as much importance, what size display do you intend to purchase and how far away from the set will you be sitting.

What I noticed after upgrading from a 7800 (7xxx) to the 8800, was an immediate improvement in colour accuracy and a reduction in Posterization, to the point where it is no existent on all but the worst source. Scaling is also much better, with SD and DVD’s looking better then I have ever seen them, even with FFShow scaling. Deinterlacing quality has also improved on SD and 1080i, although it’s more noticeable on SD. Aliasing on edges is significantly reduced. The 8800 also has an overall cleaner image then the 7800, which was previously the best I had seen.