Sony's 60XS955 Any tweak advice??

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

"victor voul" <mouln@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:30da9028.0412041403.3ebea480@posting.google.com...
> Thank you all for your explanation on the side bars
>
> Mack: I didn't have that wierd OOB problem.
> Am really happy with this model, as I see you are.
> Have you done any video tweaking on the picture settings menu.
> I have seen on the AVS forum that several people have gone into the
> service menu using info codes from a knowledgable member. This would
> make me nervous.
> What have you learned about the tv video set up menu settings.
> It seems a lot of time and variables are involved. What if any changes
> to the default settings have you made?
> Appreciate your help!

What do you mean by "OOB"? The weird problem I had was with "Live Color".
When I first turned on the set, there were millions of tiny swimming black
worms all through the whites. I recall that this was true of SD pictures
but don't recall whether or not it was also in HD pictures. I thought there
was something wrong with my set or the cable transmission (I was using a
cable box at the time) until, after going through the video menu, I found
that "Live Color" was turned on, turned it off and the problem went away. I
have never turned on "Live Color" again. I do notice that they have a "Live
Color Demo" in there but I have not run it.

Like you, I would avoid the service menu, since I would not know what I was
doing.

I have messed around with the video settings but none of them seem to make a
real improvement, as far as I can tell. I have tried adjusting such
settings as picture, brightness, etc. but have generally come back to the
factory defaults (which Sony conveniently marks on the slider bars) as
pretty much the best setting.

Right now, we use the "Standard" picture, at the factory default settings,
most of the time. (Vivid is, I think, for store display and Pro is
convenient for trying at different settings.) Standard seems perfect for
HD, which is gorgeous, and as good as anything else for most SD. Color temp
is set to neutral, noise reduction at medium, mild mode off, power saving
standard. Advanced video (just apply to SD, btw): DRC at CineMotion, DRC
Palette at Custom 1. Live Color, as mentioned above, definitely OFF. There
are other adjustments on the advanced menu that are greyed out, not
available, apparently on the 955 -- unless there is some mode that brings
them up, that I have just not seen, for some reason.

SD picture quality varies greatly, depending on the quality of the picture.
It is better overall, via the CableCard we use now, than it was through the
cable box. With a really bad SD picture, I sometimes use the TwinView
feature, with the SD picture on the left and Ch. 700, which is just black
here, on the right. So, I am just looking at the one SD picture on the left
and I can vary its size. I adjust it down to about 32" diagonally and that
usually makes it look pretty good. Even a very bad SD picture can be make
to look good if you reduce the size of it down enough.

mack
austin

Archived from groups: alt.tv.tech.hdtv (More info?)

"victor voul" <mouln@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:30da9028.0412052237.3e3024f7@posting.google.com...
> Mack, thanks for your help
>
> OOB Meant out of the box. Those "worms" would have scared me. Lucky
> you solved that problem. After reading various problems some
> purchasers have had on the AVS forum with dead pixels and Screen Door
> Effect etc, I was happy to find everything working okay.

I have no dead pixels (knock on wood) that I have seen. A dealer I know
tells me that dead pixels, in his experience, are pretty rare these days,
but I don't know how you would get any accurate stats on something like
that. As for "Screen Door Effect", that is just the way LCD projections
appear on the screen -- any screen, I imagine. But you can't see that
unless you get up very, very close to the screen, so I don't see why it
would be a problem for anyone.

I once bought a small Panasonic DVD player with a 10" screen -- one of those
things you hold in your lap -- that I sent back because of screen door
effect. With that player, the effect was very distracting because you were
watching the movie from just a couple feet away, at the most -- not like
watching a TV set from across the room.

> The only quirk I've identified is that to listen to the audio through
> a sound system you have to go into the audio menu and turn the sets
> speakers off.

Why is this a "quirk"? Do you mean that you can't get an audio feed OUT
unless you cut off the TV speakers? I have not tried to do that. Or do you
mean something else? I think most people either use the TV speakers and
leave them ON as they are OOB (out of the box, I have now learned) or use
their sound system (as I do) and turn them OFF.

It would be a nice feature if the TV set had outputs for center, surround &
sub-woofer speakers. Dealers could sell a little package of additional
speakers to people who wanted them. Then you could use the TV's relatively
big side speakers as your fronts and the additional 3 or 4 speakers to get
surround or 5.1. Would not need to buy a separate receiver for TV audio,
unless you wanted extra power, quality, etc. A built-in like this would be
much appreciated, I think, by the majority of TV buyers who would avoid
setting up a whole home theater system if they could. Well, anyway, it
doesn't have that.

> Haven't experimented with the video setting yet.
>
> Did the cable card improve the HDTV video??

Was your "Live Color" set to ON OOB? If so, I'd be interested to hear from
you what changes it seems to make in your SD and HD pictures. What change
do you see if you turn it OFF? Have you run the "Live Color Demo"?
Frankly, after my initial experience with LC, I have not touched it on the
"let sleeping dogs lie" principle. It may be that the Live Color in my
particular set is defective. If so, it is not an egregious fault since we
have no complaints whatsoever with the picture, which is gorgeous without
Live Color, whatever it is -- or is supposed to be. If I ever have a
service person out here I will ask them to check it out.

I can't say if CableCard improves the HD video. It may but, if so, the
improvement is subtle. Where you really see a difference is in SD pictures,
which are much better via CC than through the cable box.

mack
austin