New Sony KDL-EX403

JulesBadass

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Bought one of the above before Christmas. Despite several adjusting sessions, I'm still not convinced I'm happy.

My source is the in-built Freeview (only SD at the moment, no HD until 2012 here)

It just seems too dark somehow.. In low light scenes, peoples faces often seem to have a greenish hue, often with a slightly misty appearance across the entire scene. Indoor shots on dreary soaps look terrible. Conversely, bright, outdoor scenes look great.

I'm no home cinema geek, but I know relatively well what I'm doing. I've tried all the preset "scenes" (mostly horrid), so used the "cinema scene" as a basis and tweaked everything from there. The best compromise I've found is backlight on max, contrast around 90, colour and brightness around 60 - 70 each, white balance neutral, and I've knocked the hue a couple of stops away from green into red. I also turned down the two green sliders slightly in the advanced settings. I think I have white booster on high too, in an attempt to lift the blandness I'm experiencing. All the other filters are off.

Is this to be expected in SD? Only my 8 year old 28" Sony CRT gives a much more satisfying picture with its inbuilt freeview tuner, not as sharp granted.

Comments welcome.
 

JulesBadass

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Any thoughts?

Done some searches on this forum and there is some mention of the 40" version of this series of Sony TV's having a backlight issue. Does anyone know if the same problem extends to this 32" model

Any input would be much appreciated.

A little nervous since it's been more than 28 days since purchase (Comet) and I've been using it.... I wonder what my options would be if if an engineer said it was fine but I still wasn't impressed.

Thanks.
 

lcd4ever

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Hi Jules.....I have this TV in my office, set up for PC use, but also used for Freeview and DVD, I have been very impressed with the picture and have it set on the following.....

Backlight 2

Contrast 65

Brightness 45

Colour 55

Hue 0

pic mode STD

colour temp WARM 1

sharpness 20

all other settings factory

I think this should put you in the right area, with just minimal tweaking for your personal taste, I have 3 Sony LCDs and all are more or less on these settings, I think the most important setting from above is keeping the backlight set low, that way you don't get that fake piercing brightness that most lcd owners seem to go for on their TVs....

No backlight issues

HTH

Craig
 

JulesBadass

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HI Lcd4ever,

Thanks for that, i will give those settings a bash and report back, although I'm already sceptical that such a low back light will be acceptable on SD digital TV dark scenes... hope I'm wrong! I'm not normally one to set something to max, but it was the only way I found of lifting dark scenes.

I know what you mean about fake brightness and massively over saturated colours....no chance of that on this set form what I've seen.

Cheers.
 

JulesBadass

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So, reset the TV to the "Natural" scene and adjusted the various levels as suggested. Result was way too dark (for my eyes - daytime, ambient sensor off, watching tennis). However, knocking the backlight, contras and brightness up a bit I got to the best results I've had with this set so far.

I found out the reason for the "misty" appearance - I had the brightness way too high in an attempt to lift the dark scene performance.. an error in hindsight. I'd started off with the "cinema" scene setting, and tweaked from there... it seems I didn't tweak in the right order.

Watching TV this evening and it's looking better than ever - think the main thing has been reducing the brightness, combined with whatever default settings the "natural" scene presets. Faith has been restored!

Thanks again Lcd4Ever.

Cheers,

J
 

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