1st post, a shame it is not a happy one.
Just bought one of these sets but have to say, so far it's been a massive disappointment.
Initially all seemed well, but noticed problems in low light scenes or when playing games. I noticed that shadow areas tend to be discoloured and suffer a weird halo effect.
To this end I connected the set to a computer and did a bitmap at 1920x1080 with a colour gradient from blue on the right, to black at the left. This shows exactly why the set has issues with shadows. The gradient is in no way linear, it's full of spikes and discolouration. At shades of blue near black, the set just gets it wrong and displays browns and greens. Approaching black, the colour/brightness actually goes up, then down, then back up again just on the verge of total black.
This explains the halo's and weird effects I'm seeing in shadow regions. They just look like egg whites plonked ontop as the edges of shaded regions are higlighted. Noise that should be so close to black that you can't see it shows up as a weird green/brown stipple effect, especially noticable on titles and credits of movies, which tend to have black backgrounds.
Console games look particularly poor on this set, as they tend to contain lots of low brightness transparencies for dust and explosions, or light shafts against black backgrounds, which is exactly what this range of sets don't appear to be able to handle at all. They look stuck on, and don't feather out to black correctly.
Ironic that a Sony set bought to play Playstation games makes the games look very poor indeed.
I have since had the set replaced by the retailer, but subsequent sets all suffer identical problems. 🙁
I attempted to contact Sony, but I'm getting the impression their scripts don't cater too well with well reasoned fault descriptions. All they seem to be able to suggest is to get it replaced, even after having it replaced. The retailer tells me that all the sets he has in stock from this range suffer identical problems, and believes it's an inherant design or manufacturing problem.
I also own a 3 year old 40V3000, which has a flawless colour gradient
and doesn't suffer any of the visible issues the EX403 range has, it displays the same colour gradient flawlessly, so it's not like I'm expecting too much in terms of fidelity from the set.
So, judging from the information given by my retailer it looks like I can't actually source one that isn't faulty, I guess it's time to try a different brand. A great shame, it will be the first non Sony TV in our houshold for nearly a generation.
Had great hopes for this TV, had been holding off until FreeviewHD was integrated but as it stands the picture on this range of sets when viewing dark scenes is the worst of any set I've ever seen. You might expect such problems with your Matsui's etc... but not from Sony.
It will be interesting to see a proper review of this set from the WhatHiFi review
staff, but for the minute, all in all, I'm gutted 🙁
I would be interested to hear of any other users viewpoints regarding this set, but for the minute my advice is "Avoid".
Unfortunately I don't appear to be able to upload the pics of the screen that shows it's abysmal colour fidelity, a limitation of this site 🙁
Just bought one of these sets but have to say, so far it's been a massive disappointment.
Initially all seemed well, but noticed problems in low light scenes or when playing games. I noticed that shadow areas tend to be discoloured and suffer a weird halo effect.
To this end I connected the set to a computer and did a bitmap at 1920x1080 with a colour gradient from blue on the right, to black at the left. This shows exactly why the set has issues with shadows. The gradient is in no way linear, it's full of spikes and discolouration. At shades of blue near black, the set just gets it wrong and displays browns and greens. Approaching black, the colour/brightness actually goes up, then down, then back up again just on the verge of total black.
This explains the halo's and weird effects I'm seeing in shadow regions. They just look like egg whites plonked ontop as the edges of shaded regions are higlighted. Noise that should be so close to black that you can't see it shows up as a weird green/brown stipple effect, especially noticable on titles and credits of movies, which tend to have black backgrounds.
Console games look particularly poor on this set, as they tend to contain lots of low brightness transparencies for dust and explosions, or light shafts against black backgrounds, which is exactly what this range of sets don't appear to be able to handle at all. They look stuck on, and don't feather out to black correctly.
Ironic that a Sony set bought to play Playstation games makes the games look very poor indeed.
I have since had the set replaced by the retailer, but subsequent sets all suffer identical problems. 🙁
I attempted to contact Sony, but I'm getting the impression their scripts don't cater too well with well reasoned fault descriptions. All they seem to be able to suggest is to get it replaced, even after having it replaced. The retailer tells me that all the sets he has in stock from this range suffer identical problems, and believes it's an inherant design or manufacturing problem.
I also own a 3 year old 40V3000, which has a flawless colour gradient
and doesn't suffer any of the visible issues the EX403 range has, it displays the same colour gradient flawlessly, so it's not like I'm expecting too much in terms of fidelity from the set.
So, judging from the information given by my retailer it looks like I can't actually source one that isn't faulty, I guess it's time to try a different brand. A great shame, it will be the first non Sony TV in our houshold for nearly a generation.
Had great hopes for this TV, had been holding off until FreeviewHD was integrated but as it stands the picture on this range of sets when viewing dark scenes is the worst of any set I've ever seen. You might expect such problems with your Matsui's etc... but not from Sony.
It will be interesting to see a proper review of this set from the WhatHiFi review
staff, but for the minute, all in all, I'm gutted 🙁
I would be interested to hear of any other users viewpoints regarding this set, but for the minute my advice is "Avoid".
Unfortunately I don't appear to be able to upload the pics of the screen that shows it's abysmal colour fidelity, a limitation of this site 🙁
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