The Perfect Vision
Sony KDS-60A3000 Additional Notes and Technical Ratings
Under the Hood | Adjustment Notes | Test Discs | Technical Ratings
Under the Hood
A refresh rate of 120Hz is becoming common among LCD flat panels, but this is the first RPTV that offers it as far as I know. It makes sense to use 120Hz with an LCoS or LCD RPTV, since both form their images with liquid-crystal pixels, which tend to respond relatively slowly to changes and are thus susceptible to motion blur.
Sony calls its implementation of this technology Motionflow, which creates a new frame between each pair of actual frames in the video signal. Users can control exactly how the set creates, or “interpolates,” the new frames with two settings: Motion Enhancer, which turns Motionflow on and off and determines how “aggressively” the new frames are created (that is, whether the resulting image is more natural or has less motion blur), and Motion Naturalizer, which darkens the interpolated frames to one degree or another.
Other notable features include modes optimized for viewing photos and playing games as well as the ability to attach a Digital Media Extender (DMeX) module to access video content directly from the Internet. Sony calls this capability Internet Video Link. Bravia Theatre Sync is Sony’s implementation of Consumer Electronics Control (CEC), a feature of HDMI version 1.3 that integrates the control of multiple devices connected via HDMI.
Adjustment Notes
The Cinema and Custom picture modes exhibited reduced horizontal detail; the high-frequency burst was completely rolled off. According to Sony, these modes are filtered, which is a mistake the company will correct with a firmware update. The Standard picture mode did not roll off high frequencies nearly as much, so that's the mode I adjusted. Fortunately, picture modes can be independently adjusted for each input.
Just before these notes were posted, Sony sent me a USB thumb drive with the firmware update, which I immediately installed. Sure enough, after the update, all three picture modes exhibited about the same horizontal resolution. However, it looked to me like they were all a bit more rolled off than the Standard mode had been before the update. I can’t be sure of this, because I didn’t look carefully at the resolution test pattern in Standard mode right before I did the update, and human memory is notoriously unreliable. Also, I couldn’t “downdate” back to the previous firmware version to check it out. Still, I think the update is probably a good thing to do.
Contrast could be maxed without clipping whites, and brightness only needed to be set one notch lower than default. Ringing was evident on test patterns at all sharpness settings except Minimum, so that's where I set it. For 1:1 pixel mapping, set Display Area in the Screen menu to Normal, though the optical engine crops at least 30 pixels from each side of the screen. Setting Display Area to +1 lets you see all pixels, and it puts a black border around the image, but it also does some scaling, so I would avoid it.
Each control in the Video Options menu has settings for each input, which seems a bit strange, since the other picture settings are independent for each input as well. It’s also somewhat cumbersome to have to scroll through all inputs to adjust the one you want. The Color Matrix control includes separate settings for each signal resolution coming into the component and HDMI inputs; these inputs can also be set to Auto. All color primaries and secondaries were nearly perfect, closer than most TVs I've seen. With color temp set to Warm2, grayscale was also very close to correct.
Setting the iris to its minimum (most closed) fixed setting still resulted in lots of light output and an excellent black level, leading to a very high peak contrast ratio. However, like virtually all RPTVs, light uniformity was poor, as demonstrated by the ANSI contrast measurements, which varied quite widely.
Test Discs
On the HQV Benchmark HD DVD, the Sony’s NR control reduced noise quite nicely; the High setting softened the picture just a bit, so I used Medium. There was no flickering in the video resolution loss test, but the high-and medium-frequency vertical bursts had a distinctly magenta hue. The film resolution loss test had the same magenta problem, and most bursts flickered constantly. Motionflow really smoothed out the pan across the bleachers, though it didn’t do anything about the flickering in the burst pattern. Jaggies were barely visible at the lowest angles.
Turning to Microsoft engineer Stacey Spears’ test HD DVD, the set’s processor picked up 3:2 pulldown at 1080i immediately, but there was still a hint of artifacting in the bleachers.
Moving on to the HQV Benchmark DVD, the high-frequency horizontal and vertical bursts were both very rolled off, and there was a lot of noise along the edges of the vertical burst. Jaggies were moderate on the first test and severe on the second test and the waving flag. As with the HD DVD, the NR control was remarkably effective, but the MPEG NR control softened the picture quite a bit. The processor picked up 3:2 pulldown at 480i quickly, but the video text crawl across the bottom of the screen overlaid on 3:2 film was very jerky and shredded; setting CineMotion (film mode) to Auto2 smoothed it out somewhat.
On the HD DVD of Mission: Impossible III, the pan across the long staircase that starts Chapter 8 was pulsing with moiré distortion, but shadow detail in the catacombs was reasonably good.
Technical Ratings
Customer Service
Advertisement
