Many problems Sony 46W4500

[Anonymous]

Well thats eases my mind.

I though you were being given free Sony LCD sets at WHF.

If he had to buy using his own cash, I been wrong all along.

There's a first for every thing you know!

 

[Clare Newsome]

We don't even get a press discount on Sony kit, let alone free stuff - in fact it's incredibly tough even borrowing review kit off them: I had to buy more Sony kit for our tests last year than from any other company.

 

[Anonymous]

Clare Newsome:We don't even get a press discount on Sony kit, let alone free stuff - in fact it's incredibly tough even borrowing review kit off them: I had to buy more Sony kit for our tests last year than from any other company.

How ungrateful Sony must be , considering you recommended your dad buy a Sony. If you are watching Mr Sony, I think you should be a little more co-operative. Especially in these tougher economic times.

Mind you Clare, that would just open another can of worms with allegations of bias from WHF. Can't win either way.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Seriously, the difficulty of getting hold of kit - from any manufacturer, but especially one of the size and resources of Sony - makes me more angry than just about anything! They are a nightmare.

And yes, we can't win either way....

 

[ElectroMan]

D.J.KRIME:Clare Newsome:

but we've yet to see a properly calibrated set with these issues.

But how many members of "Joe Public" actually have either the know how or equipment to correctly calibrate their TV's? and IMHO using the THX bit on a DVD does not result in a properly calibrated TV!

The fact is that the vast majority of peple simply want to go and buy their new TV and get it home, turn it on and enjoy. Now seeing as this paticular model is one of Sony's higher end ones then IMHO both Sony's response and quality control stink.

To be honest, I think anyone who buys a TV like this and doesn't bother trying to set it up properly isn't going to notice backlight problems anyway - at least not if they accept the default settings ('vivid' and everything set too high). I have friends who I don't think have changed any of the picture settings on their Panasonic plasma since they bought it a few years ago. The picture looks far too bright with exagerated colour - and everything is displayed in widescreen (even 4:3)! But they like it like that.

As for spiders, I have more than enough of those at the back of my equipment to need another one!

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Clare

This is my first post on this excellent site, have followed this thread for a while, and have actually had 2 40W4500's from House of Fraser, both had the dreaded clouding problems, and i decided just to get a refund. But was unbelieveably impressed with how good the TV was.

I now have the money burning a hole in my pocket. Availibility of these sets is now very scarce, hopefully the new batches coming into the country for 2009 will be fault free.

My dilemma is....... Do i wait and see if the new TV's are fault free and buy one of those, or do i buy a Panasonic Plasma PZ85 from Comet for £799?????? I would welcome advice from anyone who has either TV's.

 

[Anonymous]

alfred44:This is my first post on this excellent site, have followed this thread for a while, and have actually had 2 40W4500's from House of Fraser, both had the dreaded clouding problems, and i decided just to get a refund. But was unbelieveably impressed with how good the TV was.

It is a testament to how stunning the W4500 series can look that you are still considering one after experiencing two sets with unacceptable levels of clouding. If you have been following this thread then you will have tried the various recommended calibrations, presumably without satisfactory results.

At risk of sounding like a member of the pro-plasma faction I will just say that the 40W4500 was top of my list from showroom viewings, but I didn't want to risk going through what you are experiencing now. I plumped for the Panasonic 42PZ80B and I am delighted with it, especially the standard definition performance which exceeded my expectation.

This model will save yoiu about £200 over the 40W4500, and the PZ85 about £100. I'd say you have given Sony enough chances and you should at least try a Panasonic plasma.

 

[professorhat]

smithdom:I'd say you have given Sony enough chances and you should at least try a Panasonic plasma.

That sounds very fair to me - they deserve at least an audition.

 

[Anonymous]

I have finally received my KDL-46W4500 - and I am very happy with it..(touchwood!)

Its a set manufactured in Dec-2008, though amazon took a long time delivering it

(ordered on 28-12, recvd on 20-01), but it was worth the wait..

Day-1 I did notice the clouding/bleed - whatever you may call it, but by Day-3 - it has completely DISAPPEARED.

I had faith in the reviews of WHFI and I took the plunge...Claire, you were right about the "batch" being faulty, so i waited untill the "fresh" batch arrived from Spain.

Thanks to everyone...

 

[Anonymous]

ahmed_knp:
I have finally received my KDL-46W4500 - and I am very happy with it..(touchwood!)

Its a set manufactured in Dec-2008, though amazon took a long time delivering it

(ordered on 28-12, recvd on 20-01), but it was worth the wait..

Day-1 I did notice the clouding/bleed - whatever you may call it, but by Day-3 - it has completely DISAPPEARED.

I had faith in the reviews of WHFI and I took the plunge...Claire, you were right about the "batch" being faulty, so i waited untill the "fresh" batch arrived from Spain.

Thanks to everyone...

Oh it will be back, ALL W series suffer from this, some worse than others. WHF didn't pick up on it, thats all.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Martin Gman:Oh it will be back, ALL W series suffer from
this, some worse than others. WHF didn't pick up on it, thats all.

Ridiculous, contentious and unfounded - the perfect whathifi.com forum post.

By the way, what happened to

Martin Gman:Ive finished with Sony and WHF now. Over and out and god bless you all.

 

[rob_981]

Andrew Everard:

Martin Gman:Oh it will be back, ALL W series suffer from this, some worse than others. WHF didn't pick up on it, thats all.

Ridiculous, contentious and unfounded - the perfect whathifi.com forum post.

By the way, what happened to

Martin Gman:Ive finished with Sony and WHF now. Over and out and god bless you all.

That's what I was wondering....

Martin Gman, we know you're annoyed with Sony, and you're not the only one, but come on, you can't make accusations like that. How can you possibly speak for everyone who owns one of these tvs? I have one, and you're welcome to come round and try and spot the bleeding or clouding. I don't fancy your chances. And there are plenty of other forum members who are very happy with their tvs.

You can advise people against the tv all you want based on your own experiences, but please don't assume that just because your tv isn't perfect, then everyone's must be the same, because that simply isn't the case.

 

[Anonymous]

Martin Gman: "Oh it will be back, ALL W series suffer from this, some worse than others. WHF didn't pick up on it, thats all." YOU must have the franchise for commenting on (ALL W series)

If you can see Clouding/Bleeding on mine, you must have cataracts.



YAWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

 

[Anonymous]

Just a comment to say that I picked this LCD for my Dad, it was his first LCD HD buy. It doesn't suffer any problems at all after being calibrated, I can see why it has won a WHF award.

 

[Anonymous]

I received my Sony 46W 4710 (same as 4500) from JL yesterday.
I noticed some clouding as soon as I switched it on but it doesn't seem too obvious when I'm actually watching something. Had a panic when I'd used the set this morning and noticed a very prominent cloud on the left hand side which was still there when I switched it off. After looking at it for a while, I noticed it was palm sized(!) so concluded I must have accidentally touched the screen at some point. I tentatively attempted to wipe it off using a clean microfibre cloth. There's still a bit of smearing but it's a lot better than it was.
A couple of questions:
Can anyone advise the best method of cleaning a large LCD?
I have an IXOS cleaning kit with gel spray which I use from time to time on my PC's LCD but I'm not sure if this would be suitable for a TV. I understand I should not spray anything directly onto the screen (and realise 'Mr Sheen' is unsuitable).
My next question concerns picture quality. I know the set can produce fabulous pictures as I also bought the (recent whf test winner) BDP- 51FD blu-ray and the full HD picture is excellent. However, I am extremely disappointed with the picture from SD Sky.
I have connected my Sky box using a high quality scart to scart input 2 and both this and the box are set to RGB. The picture quality still appears to be worse than input from a standard aerial and is quite unpleasant to watch. It's not particularly noisy but images are washed out, lacking in detail and colour balance appears to be off despite endless tweaking. I had excellent performance from the same Sky box with my previous CRT TV. I realise the extra resolution of the TV will highlight any faults but I wouldn't expect a worse experience than using the analogue input. Can anyone recommend anything to improve matters?
I'm a bit disappointed with the upscaled DVD pictures too.
Sorry about all the grumbling!

 

[mikey2008]

The SD picture isn't great. I have Sky HD connected to 40W4500 and the SD picture is only bearable about 3m away. The only thing you can do is upgrade to Sky HD and watch the HD content which is much, much better than the SD pictures. Also, as you mention, the upscaled DVD pictures don't look that good either (from Sony S350 BD player).

 

[Anonymous]

I have actually ordered Sky HD now but, of course, it's only going to give me HD on selected channels so I'll still have to put up with the disappointing SD picture a lot of the time. I've improved the SD with a bit more tweaking; however, it's still not what I'm used to.

Also, I've now noticed some problems trying to achieve a 16:9 pciture using the Pioneer BDP 51FD and the Sony KDL46W. I've tried all the adjustments I can find on both the TV and the player but can't get BDs to play 16:9. They fill the whole screen rather than having a black bar top and bottom. It's only slightly out but the effect is to compress people's faces which is really annoying after a while and not what I paid the money for.

Actually, I've just tried running the same dsics on a DVD player through the TV and that has the same effect so I have to conclude the problem lies with the TV.

I've tried all the options I can find in the TV menu system. Can anyone please offer any advice?

 

[Clare Newsome]

mikey2008:The SD picture isn't great. I have Sky HD
connected to 40W4500 and the SD picture is only bearable about 3m
away. The only thing you can do is upgrade to Sky HD and watch the HD
content which is much, much better than the SD pictures. Also, as you
mention, the upscaled DVD pictures don't look that good either (from
Sony S350 BD player).

Well my Dad has exactly the same set-up (40W4500; S350; Sky HD) and the set looks superb on all but the lowest-bitrate SD Sky channels (ie almost anything ITV) - that's a broadcasting issue, not an issue with the Sony set.

And have you got the Sony BD player or the TV doing the upscaling (ditto the Sky box) - in both cases we found the set a better upscaler in his set-up.

Also, i'd strongly suggest turning off the sharpening mode right down (can worsen digital noise in poor broadcasts) and experimenting with MotionFlow settings rather than leaving them as default.

Decent cabling helps, too, of course....

 

[Anonymous]

That's interesting Clare. How would you set the TV to do the upscaling? I've not seen anything about that in the documentation. I'm using fairly expensive QED HDMI cables so I wouldn't expect them to be a significant cause of problems.

 

[Clare Newsome]

If you set the Sky box to 'Auto' and the BD player to 'native' (If I remember rightly, you have to set both the DVD and Blu-ray outputs separately on the menus). In that way the TV will be doing the upscaling (apart from the native BD content, where it's already at the perfect resolution).

Just a slight word of warning re Sky - if it's set to native, you will get the picture reset itself as it moves between resolutions (including ad breaks). Some people find this irritating....

 

[Anonymous]

Is that the Sony BD Player you're referring to? I'm using the Pioneer BDP 51FD.

 

[Anonymous]

On the Sky+ box, under picture settings, it only gives me the option to set picture format (16:9), Video output (set to RGB) and contrast (currently set to Medium but could be High or Low). Where is the 'Auto' option you mention please?

Thanks.

 

[Clare Newsome]

JohnK:Is that the Sony BD Player you're referring to? I'm using the Pioneer BDP 51FD.

All Blu-ray players have an option to alter the video output - sorry, but you'll need to explore the menus, as I don't have a pile of players to hand right now!

 

[Clare Newsome]

JohnK:
On the Sky+ box, under picture settings, it only gives me the option to set picture format (16:9), Video output (set to RGB) and contrast (currently set to Medium but could be High or Low). Where is the 'Auto' option you mention please?

Thanks.

Sorry, I was referring to Sky HD boxes, where you have various options. A Sky+ box will be outputting in SD and your TV already doing the upscaling - unfortunately, with Scart the best connection at your disposal, you're never going to get a great picture on a 40in+ Full HD screen.

Even with Sky HD's SD channels you'll see an improvement, as the HDMI connection is a good step up from Scart.

 

[Anonymous]

Ah right!

Not to worry, I should have Sky HD by this time next week so will have a look then.

Thanks for your dedication in trying to field all these annoying questions I'm coming up with.