Picture Quality

Weight

I must say this TV is for video enthusiasts. Casual Monday
night NFL watchers may find set-up of this model too much
of a bother. But If you are like me and picture quality is
the numero-uno, and if you don't mind taking the time, then
this set will reward you with stunning detail and luxurious
vivid colors.

I owned a KV-36 non XBR set before I purchased this one so I have a good comparison. Yes there are some pixel artifacts on some standard cable programs, (I have Time Warner Cable and the lower channels seem weaker), but come on! If the stronger channels do not have these artifacts and DVD is near HDTV quality so how can I blame the set?

It is like buying a $800.00 car stereo and then complaining that the AM reception sucks. Hey, AM sucks don't
blame the stereo.

I purchased a Pioneer DV-434 DVD player and using the component video inputs and with the TV and DVD set in progressive scan mode the quality is outstanding and I was just using a regular set of video cables, (left, right, video), for my component inputs!

If there is any complaint it would have to be that there is a little too much contrast and the whites will blind you some times but that seemed to be the movie (Mystery Men).
(A Night At The Roxbury) looked excellent. I found myself going through all my old DVD's and re-watching them just because the picture was so improved. One thing I did was use my pre-set picture settings for each source. Brightness and picture increased for DVD in progressive scan mode, brightness and contrast decreased and interlaced setting for cable.

Bottom line is this is a great television. And like many cutting edge products, a little controversial. I think this set is capable of much more than first meets the eye. I think a little ahead of its time and as cable and DSS systems offer better signals this set will only get stronger.

Similar Products Used:

KV-36 WEGA not XBR

This is an update to my previous reviews. Addresses brighter right side & progressiven scan performance.

This is an update to my previous reviews. Addresses brighter right side & progressiven scan performance.

Those of you who've read my previous posts know that on my set I've found a blobby area on the right side of my set that is brighter than the left. Many people might not even notice it, but I like to watch my DVDs with the lights off, and in this environment the brighter right side is very obvious, annoying, and unacceptable to me for a set that is supposed to be Sony's "top of the line". I've received numerous e-mails from other owners who have this exact problem and "Stereophile's Guide to Home Theatre's" review of the XBR400 also noted this exact problem. Though the review dismissed it as "merely academic" only showing up in black screens, I cannot dismiss this problem on my set, as it has a very obvious lightening effect on the blacks on the right side of my screen. Lowering the brightness helps make this a lot less noticeable, but I have to lower the brightness below the level that Video Essentials even recommends. With brightness at proper levels, the lighter blob is painfully present.
Well I finally got some promising info to add to this thread. A technician that Good Guys sent to look at my TV, stated that Sony, as well as the Good Guys, are aware of this issue. Many customers have complained about it. The technician said that Sony has issued a revised circuit board in response to this problem. He didn't go into much detail except to say that they changed some resistors, and that he "thinks" this could solve the problem. They have ordered the new board for me & upon receiving it, they will come install it for me. When they actually install this new board, I will repost as to whether or not this truly alleviates the problem. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
Another topic I have some info to add on is the progressive scan topic. The big question being, does it really make a positive difference? Both "Stereophile’s Guide to Home Theatre" and "Home Theatre" magazine have reviewed the XBR400 in their most recent issues. Both magazines found very little difference between the interlaced & progressive picture. In the end, both preferred the progressive picture, but didn't give very convincing explanations as to why. So I decided to revisit this issue.
My previous post on this issue stated that I felt progressive was just slightly better. But I was curious to reevaluate my findings because I learned from the magazine articles that the progressive picture bypasses DRC. So, as someone else previously stated, interlaced gets a 960i output, while the progressive is 480p. I'm really impressed by the XBR400's DRC internal line doubler, and was curious as to whether or not a progressive picture without DRC could truly rival a DRC line doubled image. I spent a few hours scrutinizing the progressive versus the interlaced output of my Toshiba SD-5109. Testing was done under my typical viewing environment for DVDs, which is with all the lights off, VSM off. Both formats were tested with the same Canare component video cable. My initial impression while using “Blade” as a reference, was that interlaced was sharper & more detailed than progressive. The magazine articles mentioned above stated this also, that progressive output was noticeable softer. So I compensated the progressive signal by increasing the sharpness a little, this brought the two pretty close, but interlaced still seemed to have the edge. I tried some test scenes on Gladiator & Bug’s Life, and it was on Gladiator that I was able to come to the decision that I personally, preferred the progressive scan output. The winning characteristic of the progressive image was its stability and smoothness. For those of you with the Gladiator DVD, watch the chapter of “The Battle of Carthage”, from the point where they introduce the Gladiators to the point right when the chariots burst in. Interlaced output gave considerable flicker along fine lines of the coliseum, of the fine details in the clothes of royalty, and also along the lines of Russell Crowe’s facemask when they zoom up on his face. This flicker is an inherent quality of an interlaced image, because of the constant refreshing between odd & even lines. Dense line patterns & fine lines will flicker when they are panned across. I noticed this flicker along fine lines & edges in various instances on all the DVDs I tested with.
Maybe others will not be bothered by it, or might not even notice it, but this makes the picture very distracting & unnatural to me. In addition, I probably sit closer to my set than most people, and I’m also a web designer so in our field we’re used to scrutinizing the tiniest graphic details. With progressive output, the flicker is significantly minimized if not completely absent. The degree of improvement varied from scene to scene & DVD to DVD, but all scenes had significantly less flicker, panning was more stable, & the picture was smoother and more film-like. In my opinion, these improvements that progressive scan brought, far outweighed the marginally sharper image that interlaced provided.
In the end, the choice is up to personal preference, viewing environment, and budget. If you are not bugged by the flicker of interlaced output, and already own an interlaced player, then stick with it. The higher price and subtly softer image of a progressive player probably wouldn’t merit themselves. But if you are the type of person who can see the fine differences in video & want the more stable & film-like image, I would recommend you go progressive. It’s worth mentioning that progressive player prices have dropped a lot. $1000 used to be the typical entry fee, but nowadays, players like the Toshiba SD5109 & Mitsubishi 6000 line run around $500, and Pioneer makes the 434 progressive model that you can get for under $300. Remember these are just my opinions, I’m not a professional reviewer or tester, but I have tried to relate my personal findings to you all in hopes that they may be helpful to some.

Similar Products Used:

KV-36XBR250

Great Picture

Have this baby delivered or face heria repair

If you have satalite or use mostly for DVD or Hdtv buy this
TV. I look at a lot of TVs and other than the Pioneer 510
which was out of my price range no other TV even came close
to geting the money out of my pocket. I love this Sony it
has almost a 3d picture at times.

Similar Products Used:

None

Hi,

I have gotten several emails on the following questions from Wega owners. I plan to send the complete report to everyone after I have gotten all the emails: But if you could answer the following questions, that would be great:

1. What is your perfect settings and why? (i.e. Movie, picture:100%, brightness:75%, color: 30%...etc or you can write Movie, picture: 70 bars, Brightness: 50 bars... so forth)

2. Do you have more distortion when you add an extra connection? (i.e. some wega owners have dvd with componet video and when they put an s-video for their PS2 or other devices, it creates a distortion when viewing the dvd or tv for that matter)

3. On Movie settings, when you increase the brightness past 50%, do you get distortion or just bright black screen? (ie. most wega owners say that when past 50%, the black becames distorted and snowy).

Email me any questions, you would like to ask the wega group? Thanks in advance.



Claudio

Hi,

I have gotten several emails on the following questions from Wega owners. I plan to send the complete report to everyone after I have gotten all the emails: But if you could answer the following questions, that would be great:

1. What is your perfect settings and why? (i.e. Movie, picture:100%, brightness:75%, color: 30%...etc or you can write Movie, picture: 70 bars, Brightness: 50 bars... so forth)

2. Do you have more distortion when you add an extra connection? (i.e. some wega owners have dvd with componet video and when they put an s-video for their PS2 or other devices, it creates a distortion when viewing the dvd or tv for that matter)

3. On Movie settings, when you increase the brightness past 50%, do you get distortion or just bright black screen? (ie. most wega owners say that when past 50%, the black becames distorted and snowy).

Email me any questions, you would like to ask the wega group? Thanks in advance.



Claudio

Incredible picture. The future shouldn’t kill this television off any time soon.lots of inputs

Audio compressers still sucks for most movies with wide dynamic range, anyone’s audio compression. And when I can’t hear the dialogue we can all see me turn the sound up and down because I can’t get rid of that stupid on screen volume bare!!!!

I didn’t see any poor color clarity or bowing like the other guy mentioned. In fact I thought the color was great and I think I have maybe 10 or 20 more colors than I had before with my Toshiba. This TV picture has a great sense of depth and I had no idea how visible the scan lines where on my Toshiba until I got this 36xbr400 now I see scan lines on every ones television and they all look terrible. WARNING it will happen to you! If your friends don’t all have HDTV’s or the new xbrs there televisions will look terrible. Do you really want that? This TV is evil that way.

Similar Products Used:

Tosheba

Incredible picture. The future shouldn’t kill this television off any time soon.lots of inputs

Audio compressers still sucks for most movies with wide dynamic range, anyone’s audio compression. And when I can’t hear the dialogue we can all see me turn the sound up and down because I can’t get rid of that stupid on screen volume bare!!!!

I didn’t see any poor color clarity or bowing like the other guy mentioned. In fact I thought the color was great and I think I have maybe 10 or 20 more colors than I had before with my Toshiba. This TV picture has a great sense of depth and I had no idea how visible the scan lines where on my Toshiba until I got this 36xbr400 now I see scan lines on every ones television and they all look terrible. WARNING it will happen to you! If your friends don’t all have HDTV’s or the new xbrs there televisions will look terrible. Do you really want that? This TV is evil that way.

Similar Products Used:

Tosheba

Incredible picture. The future shouldn’t kill this television off any time soon.

Audio compressers still sucks for most movies with wide dynamic range, anyone’s audio compression. And when I can’t hear the dialogue we can all see me turn the sound up and down because I can’t get rid of that stupid on screen volume bare!!!!

I didn’t see any poor color clarity or bowing like the other guy mentioned. In fact I thought the color was great and I think I have maybe 10 or 20 more colors than I had before with my Toshiba. This TV picture has a great sense of depth and I had no idea how visible the scan lines where on my Toshiba until I got this 36xbr400 now I see scan lines on every ones television and they all look terrible. WARNING it will happen to you! If your friends don’t all have HDTV’s or the new xbrs there televisions will look terrible. Do you really want that? This TV is evil that way.

Similar Products Used:

Tosheba

Picture! Picture! Picture! Great remote, TONS of inputs, good sound, easy on-screen menus.

None, if you're smart and have it delivered for you and set up on a stand that can hold a TV up to 300lbs.

The perfect direct-view TV, hands-down! I can't say enough about it. Just perfect, couldn't ask for better.

My cable picture looks phenomenal. But then again, the levels are great in my area. It has four picture modes, I like Pro the best for cable TV so far.

I can't wait to get the new Sony DVP-S9000ES DVD player to make this TV look even better!

I plan on putting it through the HT tweaking DVDs (Avia, VE) before considering an ISF calibration, but from what I've seen so far it doesn't look like it'll need it.

In summary: this TV rocks!!! Best $2800 I ever spent!

(BTW, price was $2299 + $25 delivery + $5 lifetime labor warranty + $230 for 5-year parts warranty + NYS tax.)

Similar Products Used:

Nothing in this league.

six inputs, digital ready

none yet

Here we go again. This is my second time buying this model. I returned the first one. Maybe it was the tv. Anyway, I got a good deal on this one. I made an express bid of $2100 at LiquidPrice.com. That bid included taxes and shipping. I didn't expect it to work, but Sammans.com offered $2048. Again, thats the total price I paid for the tv, now sitting on my living room floor. I saved about $350 over my first purchase. I have purchased a DVDO iScan Plus V2 line doubler also (etronixs.com $560). If the picture still isn't great, then I'll have it ISF calibrated. I'll post another review when I'm all done.

Similar Products Used:

The same model that I returned. See my review from 9/21/00