Sony W6 series LCD review - 2013's best gaming TV

[austin532]

Separately, 480p sources look a lot better when plugged into the TV, but those darned jagged edges are crazy. This is why I miss CRTs sometimes.

Glad I'm not the only one who hates jaggies. Also nostalgia goggles can take a big effect on the picture as well. I've tested several games that have severe jaggies on a HDTV and compared them with a CRT. Low and behold they were still noticable on the CRT.

[Windfish]

Separately, 480p sources look a lot better when plugged into the TV, but those darned jagged edges are crazy. This is why I miss CRTs sometimes.

Glad I'm not the only one who hates jaggies. Also nostalgia goggles can take a big effect on the picture as well. I've tested several games that have severe jaggies on a HDTV and compared them with a CRT. Low and behold they were still noticable on the CRT.

Wow. So are we going to have to suck it up and suffer these jaggies? fudoh, how does that DVDO work for Wii? Worth it?

[austin532]

Unfortunately yes. The PS2 is the absolute worst when it comes to jaggies.

[austin532]

I'm a bit confused now. It seems at least one W7 model made it to the US. The KDL50W700B

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-50-cla ... Id=7870004

Is this basically the same as the KDL42W700B which I believe is the Canadian version of the KDL-42W705B? Or is it just an inferior TV that is re-branded and exclusive to Best Buy?

Anyone have any experience with the KDL-47W802A which is probably the KDL-47W805A? I notice it also has low input lag at around 1 frame.

Is it too soon to declare the 2014 winner?

[Xyga]

It's not official from Sony, but yeah some genuine W7's are available in selected stores, like bestbuy and ncixus. After all they have stock in Canada so it's not too hard for them to move some into their US warehouse(s).
Ncixus are too expensive and bestbuy.com didn't have stock every time I watched. Bet they don't bring much in, or not very regularly.

We discussed the 50W7 in this thread (there are at least two owners), over the 32" and 42" it's got some MotionFlow settings enabled and the lag is slightly higher but only by 1-2ms as mentioned by Fudoh just a few pages back (was it?)
EDIT: oh and there's a 50W79 that adds 3D as well, someone bought one here I believe.

KDL-47W802A/805A was last year's W8 series, featuring 3D and about 17ms lag, but a weak IPS panel.
In 2014 it's become the W95 series.

So there's really nothing very new with those, the current basic W7 and W9 sets are technically 99% identical to last year's W6 and W8.
It's the current W8 series (2014) that's really new and has an extensive number of models and variants (not all are available in every country of course);
W80
W829 (Europe only?)
W85
W815 (Europe only?)

But AFAIK none of the current W8 come with sub-1 frame (total) lag, they're rather in the 20ms area, which doesn't make a big difference in the end (well surely robots can feel a 5ms difference...)

[julencin2000]

A month ago we purchased a KDL-42W706B, it looks pretty good but I don't know if this is a sub-1 or not. This is/was available in a local mall, costed around 599€.

[Xyga]

A month ago we purchased a KDL-42W706B, it looks pretty good but I don't know if this is a sub-1 or not.

It is, as stated several times in this thread.

Mmh... @Fudoh; I think it would be a good idea to update the thread's title and add a note to your review about the W7/2014 update, if you don't mind of course!

[Fudoh]

done.

[Xyga]

Thanks !

[Zer0-2k11]

Got in the 50W790B last night and holy shit, it's amazing . Blows my old 40V3000 out of the water. Lag feels even better than my last set.



Though would anyone know what screws i would need to mount it on my cantilever TV stand?

Got a TV stand where you mount 2 bars to the TV and you hang it on the TV stands base



I found this listing here and negotating with the seller to make an exception, but if i could just goto home depot/hardware store with the exact screw requirements (and get the VESA adapter?), that would be even better.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VESA-Wall-mou ... TQ:GB:1123

[julencin2000]

Thanks Xyga for the heads up and Fudoh for the review

[austin532]

Got in the 50W790B last night and holy shit, it's amazing . Blows my old 40V3000 out of the water. Lag feels even better than my last set.


Though would anyone know what screws i would need to mount it on my cantilever TV stand?

Got a TV stand where you mount 2 bars to the TV and you hang it on the TV stands base



I found this listing here and negotating with the seller to make an exception, but if i could just goto home depot/hardware store with the exact screw requirements (and get the VESA adapter?), that would be even better.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VESA-Wall-mou ... TQ:GB:1123

I've been thinking about getting the US version of this which is the 50W800B. How is the motion blur and ghosting while in Impulse mode? Is the flickering as bad as people say it is? How long does it take for the TV to power on?

[dosu]

What is the purpose LED Motion Mode for and can other people handle it because it seems to give me eye cancer

[bobrocks95]

Good God this has become the most confusing thing I've ever tried to wrap my head around. So here's an incredibly stupid question that I'm sure has been answered before: do we have a sub-10ms lag television available in America? I had thought not before but it's like a new model shows up every post and I've gotten really mixed up at this point...

EDIT: Checked here again and unless they didn't review any recent Sony TV's, nothing's changed since I last looked earlier this year, and I can just ignore anything up until the 2015 models are announced at CES or something, is that right? Again, I'm just trying to wrap my head around all this nonsense.

[austin532]

I too am confused. If you go by the camera/CRT test the KDL-55W900A, KDL-55W950B are sub 10ms. If you go by Leo Bodner neither of them are under 14ms. I'm sure neither of them are 100% accurate however if I had to take a guess to which one was closer I'd say the camera/CRT test.

The only TV that seems interesting to me is the KDL-50W800B as the motion blur is good and should have under 10s input lag using the camera test like it's smaller 42" UK version the KDL-42W829.

[dosu]

The Bodner is of course more accurate than a camera test or it wouldn't be used by many sites, and different parts the LCD has different input lag that's why they test the top middle and bottom and take an average.
It's also not like a frame starts at 0 that you need a TV that's 10 or 14 or somehow when you hit 16-17 that means your TV has 1 frame of input lag, and 10 or 14 ms TV means no input lag. It always starts at the first frame.
Playing Street Figher III on a CRT and IV CRT and LCD in the arcades for years then testing it on a EVO monitor that has around 12 ms feels the exact same as my w700b(w705b) that has 14-15ms(Bodner test) and also feels the same as a CRT. Now playing on a TV that has 20-30 ms I can feel the difference, it feels like when you set the network to 1 or 2 extra frames on the w700b or CRT in training modes in fighting games and have trouble pulling off 1 frame links in SFIV and parries SFIII(Until you get used to the input difference of course)

[Sixfortyfive]

I too am confused. If you go by the camera/CRT test the KDL-55W900A, KDL-55W950B are sub 10ms. If you go by Leo Bodner neither of them are under 14ms.

A 60hz CRT has about 7 to 8ms of lag according to the Leo Bodnar device.

[austin532]

The Bodner is of course more accurate than a camera test or it wouldn't be used by many sites, and different parts the LCD has different input lag that's why they test the top middle and bottom and take an average.
It's also not like a frame starts at 0 that you need a TV that's 10 or 14 or somehow when you hit 16-17 that means your TV has 1 frame of input lag, and 10 or 14 ms TV means no input lag. It always starts at the first frame.
Playing Street Figher III on a CRT and IV CRT and LCD in the arcades for years then testing it on a EVO monitor that has around 12 ms feels the exact same as my w700b(w705b) that has 14-15ms(Bodner test) and also feels the same as a CRT. Now playing on a TV that has 20-30 ms I can feel the difference, it feels like when you set the network to 1 or 2 extra frames on the w700b or CRT in training modes in fighting games and have trouble pulling off 1 frame links in SFIV and parries SFIII(Until you get used to the input difference of course)

So if it doesn't start at 0 and starts at 16.7 then anything under 33.4 is less then a frame of lag?

Why wouldn't it start at 0 anyway? Don't CRT's have less then 1ms input lag so any thing after that is lagging behind even if it's not noticeable?

[Ed Oscuro]

HDTV test claims that there is some factor making the Bodnar register higher lag times than a CRT comparison test - however it stands to reason that if CRTs actually have a few milliseconds of lag, that could account for the apparent disparity (we make the assumption that the Bodnar starts closer to "T0" than the CRT displays). But I'm really not sure about that. There's other possible explanations, but I don't think any have really been tested. Edit: Thanks for that, Sixfortyfive. I assumed somebody had done a test - it's interesting that it comes out there. I'm not too surprised, though it's interesting that it's that high when people have been swearing up and down that the signal travel is near-instantaneous! I wonder how it looks on more analog or bare-bones sets.

I think what dosu is trying to say is that it's not a sea change when you lose a few ms so that you only get lag when you pass a certain amount - there's lag at 15ms just as surely as at 16ms, the difference being only 1ms and obviously not distinguishable. So dosu, despite the confusing first words, actually is saying that frames do start at t0, not t= 0.0166666 sec.

However I don't much see the point in making such a post, as it's easy to confuse with imprecise sentences, and nobody believes what dosu is trying to warn against. While I would not see a 1ms difference as very important when trying to rank two sets, all things being equal the faster set is the one to spring for. Yet we're talking about Sony sets, which are among the best out there. Additionally, when we push below 16ms, getting back half a frame, or even just a third of a frame, is not worth scoffing at. The point with these questions is that low input lag is now expected and we have already seen sets ranked around 10ms, so asking if we get them in the US is quite reasonable!

[Sixfortyfive]

You just need to understand what the Leo Bodnar tester is actually measuring, and the numbers will make sense.

There's a reason why it outputs three different markers to different parts of the screen. It measures the time between when the current frame was sent to the TV, and the time at which the specific marker that you're measuring is drawn to the screen. For most TVs, CRTs included, the top lines are drawn first and the bottom lines are drawn last, so even when measuring a "lag-free" CRT, the middle and bottom markers will return non-zero values. At 60hz, each frame takes 16.6 ms to complete, so it stands to reason that the bottom marker should have a reading of close to 16ms, which is exactly what is seen here:



Sites like Displaylag take the average of these three readings when reporting their numbers. For the CRT in this picture, that reading would be 8ms.

If you're looking for a flatscreen HDTV with "1 frame of lag or less," by which you actually mean "less than 1 additional frame of lag when compared to a CRT," then your threshold should be about 24ms instead of 17ms when using the Leo Bodnar method.

[Xyga]

From what I understand when Fudoh writes 10ms (about the Sony W6) he's talking about the real 'bare' lag of the display's electronics.
The Leo Bodnar tester has a few quirks, like the counter not starting immediately, and the sensor expecting a target brightness level to actually read.
Surely I'm forgetting something here since it's quite a confusing topic to begin, but when I read Leo Bodnar results on review websites like hdtvtest, displaylag, rtings, etc, I try to keep in mind I don't know exactly under what conditions they did the job, and certainly they don't do the 'after job' of calculating the pure 'electronics' lag.

There are also different views on the pertinence of all the various methods, or rather to what is the 'lag' that matters and the display is actually accountable for.
Only taking the electronics delay into account may not be enough, some say the time it takes to display the picture is important, but up to where and how to measure it is still debated.
Some just make an average of all three Leo Bodnar tester, when some say it's stupid considering our eyes are almost always focusing on the general center area of the screen.
tftcentral take the 'electronics'/bare lag and adds half of the panel's average pixel response times to it, when other reviewers only give the bare, not taking anything else into account.
Yadda yadda yadda...

So who's right ? I certainly don't have the science to tell, what's more important is to understand anything that tops around 16ms even by Leo Bodnar 'brainless' standards, means it is damn fast !!!
Personally I always seek displays with very low lag because I'm almost always using other devices that add their own lag to the chain (processors mainly), not because I can feel 1 frame or under. I just don't want my total 'lag chain' to reach too close or equal to 2 frames, which is the lowest lag I know I've been able to feel ever.

[Sixfortyfive]

Using the average measurement absolutely has a purpose because some TVs wait and push the frame to the screen all at once instead of drawing one line at a time. When Displaylag launched, they used to use the bottom marker measurement for their results, but this would mean that a TV with 16/23/30 measurements would rate the same as a TV with 28/29/30 measurements.

[Xyga]

Using the average measurement absolutely has a purpose because some TVs wait and push the frame to the screen all at once instead of drawing one line at a time.

But aren't those a really small minority ?

[Ed Oscuro]

For the CRT in this picture, that reading would be 8ms.

Doh, I should have realized this That's surely the right explanation.

Really it would be nicer to have the three measurements available, instead of the mysteriously-obtained average reporting that misleads people into thinking that a set that gives an average 8ms time is still too slow, if in fact it's the fastest result possible according to Leo Bodnar.

At the same time, the section for plasma displays gives a hint that every field can be updated at the same time, which apparently means those panels hold early lines for a full frame.

A simultaneous full-screen refresh starting the moment data is available sounds nice, and should work well with G-Sync and strobing, but something tells me that bandwidth and speed problems will prevent this from being feasible, especially when pushing up resolution or frame rate (and frame rate reduces the importance of faster updates per frame anyway, since full screen redraws are happening faster).

What's left is probably a subjective question - a screen hitting 8 / 8 / 8 seems out of the question as the bottom field must be 16, and what difference would there be in the playing experience of a monitor with 16 / 24 / 32 while another has 24 / 24 / 24? The averages are the same, after all.

[austin532]

So I asked Cedric from Rtings about how they measure the input lag and got a response.

My question: How exactly are you measuring the Input Lag with the Leo Bodnar tester? Are you measuring all 3 bars and then finding the average or are you just going by whatever the middle bar says?

Cedric : Middle bar. Keep in mind that the input lag varies more than you think. Just turning on and off the TV usually gives a different result (up to +/- 4 ms in some cases, so a 8 ms gap). Even when reading the measurement it varies continuously between frames, but more like +/- 2ms.



Cedric Demers

Rtings.com

[Xyga]

IIRC blurbusters listed all the things that could go wrong when using the LB tester.
It's huge lol.

[austin532]

Such as?

[Xyga]

Such as?

Found it: http://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=641
It's an old thread, I think we have more info now (?) still.

EDIT: reading again, yeah, we know more now and it's not just about LB tester, but there are interesting bits.

[austin532]

Should I be concerned that none of the newer Sony TV's seem to have a Dynamic Range feature which I believe is Sony's version of Full Range RGB?

[Zer0-2k11]

I've been thinking about getting the US version of this which is the 50W800B. How is the motion blur and ghosting while in Impulse mode? Is the flickering as bad as people say it is? How long does it take for the TV to power on?

For this TV, it's about 10-15 seconds. Boots up to the last input you were viewing last, then if you want switch inputs it takes 10 -15 seconds before doing so.

I don't think that the 790B is the Canadian version of the the 800b though, because when i checked the specs on both @ http://www.sony.ca , The 790B uses the Motionflow 240 like the 700b but the 800b uses Motionflow 480 and I can get the 800b and the 790b at one store as well. No ghosting as far as i can tell .

800B:
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/ ... 827509en02

790B:
http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/ ... b5fd52en02