I think the viewing angle complaints about VA panels tend to be vastly overstated. It’s literally a two degree difference between VA and IPS. It isn’t anywhere like a TN panel where you can’t deviate at all from the sweet spot. The black level advantage is pretty huge, though.
That HDTV guy is great, just watched a few more of his videos. The X900E seems really impressive. The X850e seems like the same panel but without local dimming - maybe worth the savings if you’re not obsessed with dark room viewing. These TVs do look pretty great these days.
I bought the Sony X900E and installed it on the weekend. The picture quality of this set is heart-stopping. Seriously, it’s actually tough to watch more intense movies and scenes, it’s so immersive. I thought about going OLED 55 for more money but the 65 Sony is just awesome, I don’t feel I made the wrong decision at all. The local dimming is great. The upscaling is great too, I was even impressed at my kids’ shows which are SD and how sharp they render, 1080p looks amazing, 4K HDR looks amazeballs.
Also the conventional internet wisdom is that motion-smoothing frame interpolation blows chunks… but actually it is much better. Maybe its a user preference thing, but jaggy 24p vs smooth seems pretty obvious to me, and I’m glad I didn’t turn it off immediately like I’m supposed to.
Anywho, super happy with my purchase.
Cool! Rtings just posted a specific tuning video for the X900E. Spoiler alert: keep everything in the middle. It does otoh go through what the functions actually do, which is the most useful thing. One weird thing about the Sony is that you have to manually turn on the HDMI signal format to advanced when you first get it for HDR content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgoRqaO8o4M
I also picked up an x900e. I also got had some Dell Promotional Credit and Financing to make it 1/2 as much as an OLED, so why not. I got the 49" though because i like smaller TVs (i also get smaller laptops and smaller desktop monitors, so it’s definitely a me thing. I even use the smallest iPad!) and there were no better TVs at that size.
It looks about as “visually stunning” as i could hope! These higher end Sony’s really seem to be the best at being well-rounded so there aren’t really any drawbacks, and their chipsets and processing are some of the best in the business. I do see a bit of blooming in certain cases but it’s NBD to me. I had a plasma for a decade, and the colors and brightness are worth it here.
It was a pain, otoh, to get it to work with my old (but good) Panasonic Sound Bar/System. The trick was to use ARC (HDMI 3) and disconnect the optical cable. And THEN, weirdly enough, keep the soundbar turned off and let the TV turn it on. Keeping the soundbar on and manually switching signal inputs just doesn’t work. Took me a maddeningly long time to figure that out.
Thanks for the link, just watched it and made a few adjustments. My HDMI sources are just a PS3 for Blu Ray and a Chromecast, both sent through a receiver, so I don’t need to worry about hdr or 4k via HDMI yet, though I’m mulling over my options such as an Xbox One. The inbuilt Android isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, it has a lot of garbage apps but is snappy and easy for Amazon video, Netflix, and YouTube. Netflix HDR looks good on the app; I saved Stranger Things 2 so looking forward to it.
Sound wise, I actually used the optical out from the TV to run a line back to my receiver and it works well though I need to use two remotes. By the way, I just use my receiver for stereo sound via two decent speakers, so it’s probably similar to a decent sound bar.
Check out the “Animation” instead of the “Game” video mode setting if you’re playing adventure games like Life is Strange or even Uncharted via PS4. It uses that frame interpolation to essentially become a gsync style panel for games even though coming at it from entirely different methods. Once I discovered this the actual game mode is all but dead to me the, difference is so dramatic. This should probably work for 1080p games PS3 gamea as well.
It does seem to add input lag though.