HDTV Forum

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The following link is to a review by a calibrator (I think) of the Sony Qualia 006. It appears to
be well written and the comments which follow it are fairly intelligent... I'd be interested in hearing any comments regarding the review as to accuracy.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... did=528907

Hugh

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Hugh,

I did actually spend a few hours with this set today.

I always respect the view of others, exchanges of "what do you think" about X set has became a bit
like comparing art rather than technology implementation.

In two words, I confirm my statements about my earlier viewing 4 months ago, the set was demo in an
inappropriate environment and settings, I was able to control both at this time, although now I am
convinced that I would not spend $13K on this unit. Not in its first cycle, perhaps on the second,
not due to price relative to image, but due to image quality itself.

I used the set with different sources, expansion modes, color temperatures, video settings, seating
distances, etc. The 3 hours were worth the experience.

The set is impressive and it looks "in general" better that non-1080p sets, how much better than
your CRT Elite RPTV? not the 3 times its street price.

Scrolling credits on 1080i Discovery channel showed interlace flickering effect, perhaps the 1080p
de-interlacer was not working properly, I do not have this problem on a 1080i set I find
unacceptable to have it on a 1080p set.

I also noticed that the set was so revealing that camera and lighting errors (like out of focus, or
panning on 1080i faster than the format forgives) was made more obvious, and if you do not pay
attention it makes believe that is the set, although the high contrast/sharpness settings accentuate
the visibility of this factor.

In a good shot of 1080i Discovery with sunlight outdoors, a small girl face close up showed her skin
as a confusing mesh of active pixels without detail, unexpected on this set, while the wrinkles of
the face of an older lady right by her side showed with clarity and depth. The difference was the
skin tone, it appeared that the set becomes less able to handle detail on lighter skin tones. This
is exactly the same problem I noticed on the future AQUOS 65" LCD, which with 8 ms lag (an excellent
spec compared to the rest) made the pixel activity on lighter skin tones on close ups unpleasant.

Contrast was at 52 (on a 65 scale). To been able to get a decent picture, the setting, without ISF,
seemed as requiring between 48 and 53 out of a max of 65 (similar to DLP, which is also on the 90%
typically). Increasing the contrast a couple of notches make the images become too active and that
was the problem I found at CES with their demo, they probably had it at the "vivid" setting (the set
has 3 video settings: vivid, standard and pro, that I was able to alter for the input of 480p and
1080i independently.

One interesting feature was that 480p anamorphic input can be reframed to other ARs, it does not
lock into full mode, altering the geometry of a 2.35:1 movie to get rid of the black bars (a la HBO)
could be an attractive feature to people that can not yet get adapted to original AR bars (and do
not mind see people faces slimmer).

Viewing 4:3 480i DirecTV expanded to fill the screen was unacceptable in this set. If you watch
only HDNet or similar, or good superbit DVD recordings the set is impressive, but when you bring the
contrast down within the 80% range (48 to 53 out of 65).

Although the set looks slim from the front and at an angle, the depth of the cabinet is quite large,
close to your Elite, its presence is very appealing with the $1500 table below, if you like modern
style.

Darks are decent, had about 7% overscan on the left side, memorized video settings on the individual
inputs that were active but could not determine if that is also possible to ISF memories on service
mode, if there is one, (to confirm what we read from that ISFr, he mentioned that it did not permit
that), reds were nice, skin tones were fine (other than the problem I mentioned above), green
scenery of trees and leaves on 480i sources was a block of green, no detail, no variety of greens,
1080i sources with similar scenery were much better.

Casual visitors on that room were impressed but their comments indicated that they did not know what
they were evaluating. The person that sets all these TVs at the store chatted with me at the end
and he was not impressed as he expected, although we both agree that this is the first line, and
hope that the next cycle should be better.

I will still give another chance to this set on its second cycle after Sony could look into some
improvements and perhaps accept 1080p to match its native pixel rate.

As someone else said I am also not interested on creating a battle of opinion, and I respect the
views of the owners that are happy with this set.

Best Regards,

Rodolfo La Maestra

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If you are referring to those of us who prefer CRT RP to the
alternatives out there (flat earth); the reason is not a desire to hang
on to antiquated technology, it is simply an issue of better blacks
which in turn means better image quality which is what this whole is
about right?

Anthony

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So CRT advocates are flat earthers? There are reasons for our loyalty...

viewtopic.php?t=4268

viewtopic.php?t=4301

viewtopic.php?t=4314

Based on the review at AVS this display appears to have many of the same
problems I experienced with the Toshiba 44NHM84, artifacts that will not go
away. Having seen other digital displays that definitely give CRT the shove
as king these artifact ridden products continue to be a very disappointing
trend.

It would be great if everyone would swamp Sony with emails stating they
would love to buy this display if only it would really pass the full 1920
since it is a 1920 display and also provide a means to remove the artifacts
they are purposely inducing.

Richard