LCD TV REVIEWS

Thanks for a detailed review. Do you have the detail calibration settings? 2D and 3D?

Thanks!

What disk type and player were you using in your 3D tests. For example, am I going to get 3480 x 1080 if I use a playstation 3 as my player with any current 3D bluray I already have in my collection? Or, am I going to have to invest in a new player type (Sony's 4K Ultra HD Media Player or PS4) or new disks (Mastered for 4K or other 4K format)?

Thank you

The sentence that begins "Switching to a wider color gamut on playback when the source is mastered to the Rec. 709 color standard, however, will merely distort the color choices made by the program producer." reminds me of earlier advertising claims by all manufacturers called "Deep Color." I've not heard this claim for some time. Has "Deep Color" been reintroduced to us under the 4K banner? If so, why haven't you referred to it in your 4K reviews to date?

While I have no personal experience with the PS3, the information available to me suggests that it will do 3D. You shouldn't need another player. (For the review I used the Oppo BDP-103 for 3D playback.) To clarify, however, the 3480 x 1080 you will see on the screen is an upconversion from the standard HD on the 3D disc.

Also, to be clear if redundant, the so-called "Mastered in 4K" discs are NOT true 4K. The 4K studio masters are downconverted to 2K when transferred to Blu-ray. There is, at present, no consumer disc format that offers a true, native 4K resolution, either 2D or 3D.

excellent review with no bias.

More hi-end sets need to have better speakers like the XBR-65X900A appears to have. I have a dedicated HT but in my living room I just have my Pioneer Kuro that comes with the removable soundbar. One of the best sounding tvs ive ever heard. Why dont more companies do that? Even though some people will add a surround sound and never use the internal speakers many live with the tvs internal speakers and more sets need to not try to cram those little speakers in the tiny bezels of the flatpanels of today.

" As with the other flat-screen sets we’ve tested (and we only added this test recently), if you connect a source with any form of DTS or Dolby Digital multichannel audio directly to an HDMI input, the Sony will only give you two-channel PCM audio at its TosLink optical digital audio output. This may be a concern if you plan to connect a multichannel powered soundbar to this output."

You made this claim with the 55W900A as well, but you were wrong. Are you sure this set actually lacks the ability to pass DD or DTS through optical from an HDMI source?

"Pause bug". That's a good one. I'll have to remember that. Thanks!

Great review! Thank you!
I'd really appreciate SHARP LC-90LE757E review :)

Sony is touting the capability to display x.v.Color (also known as xvYCC) in its new 4K sets, but that's not the same thing as Deep Color. Nor is it as yet certain that a new 4K delivery system will include either x.v.Color or Deep Color.

x.v.Color produces color beyond the current HD standard Rec.709 color gamut. Deep Color increases the number of bits used to represent color. Our current consumer system uses 8-bits per color (8-bits each for red, green, and blue). Deep Color uses 10-, 12- or even 16-bits per color. While there has been talk about providing such enhancements in a 4K format, the number of total bits required to add x.v.Color and Deep Color to 4K will result in a huge increase of data over a 4K system that otherwise adheres to our current HD standards. Whether or not this will be possible without creating other issues is still an open question, given the added compression required. More compression brings its own tradeoffs.

JustinGN, thanks for the clarification. That's entirely possible. For buyers who use on-board HD tuners this will be a useful feature. But these days few viewers use these tuners, so we don't test them in our reviews. Nor to our knowledge does any other review publication. And even if we did such tests it wouldn't tell a buyer how the set's tuner would perform under his or her unique reception conditions.

In future reviews I'll clarify that we're testing for the pass-through of DD or DTS from an HDMI input to the Toslink output.

Right now I have a chance to buy the Sharp Elite Pro60X5FD new in the box, or I could get the sony. I'm not interested in 4K at this time and both tv's cost $5,000. What would you guys do in my place?

I love this review, the details...
And especially the calibration report that's included! I know all panels are different, and one may still need professional calibration even after tweaking to these specs...but it's a good start!

I've looked all over, and can't find anything close to these calibration reports for the 850A...
Anything that doesn't just seem like someone's best "eyeball estimate"??? If anyone has similar calibration report for the 850A, I'd sure appreciate direction to that!