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

[Ed Oscuro]

@ SNK-NEO-GEO:

The ASUS PG279Q has been out for a while, has the same price as the Acer.

It's hard to know what to make of online reviews by people who have been returning both like mad, but this reddit post suggests the two stack up like this:

Essentially I'm trading a longer start up time and a worse OSD for much improved BLB, a cooler stand, what feels like a sturdier frame, and better crosshair options.

Many people claimed that their Asus monitors had a color tint to the IPS glow, while the Acer's IPS glow was more silver, but I've seen some dispute this also.

[RGB32E]

Dell 4k OLED monitor shipping at the end of March for a cool $4,999! The model number is UP3017Q.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac ... 504/review

The 2016 Sony XBR models finally dropped the fixed side mounted speakers. Let's see if they lower the lag (<35ms), and provide integer scaling for 720p and 1080p sources!

http://www.sony.com/electronics/televis ... 30d-series

[Xyga]

Wow, either Dell are opportunists, or they custom-ordered this panel just to offer what is indeed a luxury item.

[Josh128]

0.1ms response time
400,000:1 contrast
120Hz refresh

CRT-like response?! This is very impressive. The contrast ratio (is this measured, or manufacturer claimed?) being 10+ times that of Panasonics flagship VT60 plasma (measured though) is awesome.

5K awesome though? No.

[Ed Oscuro]

The UP3017Q isn't a perfect monitor. For example: you can rotate the machine to present a vertical image, but the image won't automatically shift with the hardware.

Why I Hate Tech Reviewers, in a nutshell. Basically tech-illiterate and so write misleading articles with no information other than what's in the press release, so they stuff it full of nonsense complaints like "but there's an ugly power brick," thankfully not used this time (I guess they're saving that little nugget for the "full review"). At least, however, I could say that this time they came up with something interesting, though I personally would not want an accelerometer in my display (i.e., something else to go wrong).

I don't know if there's a clean way to do this in Windows or another operating system. They did mention that Samsung has some kind of software to do this, but it sounds like a kludge. I don't think DisplayPort has any facility for sending accelerometer data, which would seemingly be the better way to achieve this.

Of course, who knows what standard this is even using - my guess is that this will be a DisplayPort 1.3 display, but they neglect to say - no surprise. You know, just a little detail that they should have included so readers would know what's needed to use the thing.

Also, "pixel shifting" sounds familiar...I don't think this is "overprovisioning" like with a SSD; you probably can't achieve that on OLED without blank spaces. Instead it sounds like they will be screwing around with the image as you leave the monitor turned on...so people who disable this feature in order to get critical image quality won't reap any benefits.

[Xyga]

The connectivity seems to be the biggest issue here, other people say it's probably the latest Thunderbolt.

The pixel shifting thing shouldn't be problem, it wasn't really intrusive with plasmas and now with that PPI I guess even less so.

It's clearly intended as a premium product for wealthy Mac users. You're paying the oled but also the unique 4K@120Hz, the 'first' of some new type of product is always incredibly expensive and not the best there'll be.

[Fudoh]

I think DP has no problems driving two 4K60 displays on a single connection, so 4K120 on a single one shouldn't be a problem either (?)

On the pixel shifting I'm not sure what's the point, unless you're shifting 100+ pixels. Critital for burn in on daily desktop usage are icons and the taskbar, so shifting just (let's say) 10 pixels, might blur the edges of the icons to be burned in, but that's all it does.

And a big thumbs down to Sony for not even announcing a single OLED screen. (Although their backlight master drive demo looks extremely cool....)

[Xyga]

I don't know how pixel shifting is supposed to work to be of use on oleds but maybe the requirements are not the same as they were with plasma (?)
IIRC the LG and Panasonic sets feature something like that, as well as a 'night cleaning' feature, so far I haven't read any comments or complaints about it...

[Josh128]

On a 4K screen, even a 100 pixel orbit is pointless. Pixel orbiting in general is pretty useless in plasmas. Its more of a comfortthing devised to ease burn-in conscious consumers minds, I think. I have 3 and dont use it on any of them. To this day none of them have even a hint of burn in.

That said, if I was silly enough to plunk down 5K on a TV, much less a PC monitor, I'd probably use the orbiter to help my "peace of mind".

[Xyga]

Just read about the LG sets on avs, actually a program detect still images and after 1 hour or so if there's still no movement it dims the picture to safer levels.
Does the opposite with completely dark pictures apparently, some kind of brightness control it seems, not pixel shifting (maybe it's there too but I don't know).
And when the power is off there's indeed a 'cleaning' feature.
So far no user has reported burn in, apparently you really have to ask for it for it to happen. Image retention does happen though (quick very dark to very bright transitions for instance) but it's not a big deal.

I just wonder who makes that Dell's panel, if it's Samsung that's scary because last time they didn't do woled.

And a big thumbs down to Sony for not even announcing a single OLED screen. (Although their backlight master drive demo looks extremely cool....)

And no word about their (hopefully new and better) middle-range yet it seems...

[SNK-NEO-GEO]

@Ed Oscuro - I was looking at that model but I am no longer in the market for the 27" model.. I am going ultra wide, curve, 34" IPS, Gsysnc all the way. thanks for the link...

quick.. someone teleport me $30k
http://4k.com/news/hdr-oled-4k-all-come ... or-793025/

But in all seriousness.. I was in the Market for a new TV during Black Friday, mostly for TV/Movies and Anime viewing.. I ended up getting the UN65JS850DFXZA from Costco. It came down to the 65EG9600 vs the UN65JS850DFXZA but OLED was too hight. Now we are in January and I still have the "wowwww" factor from watching movies/TV/Anime.. Like any reasonable person, I connected my Wii U and loaded up Super Mario Maker.. I was like.. OMG.. that is freaking beautiful, the picture the colors. Then, I started playing a level and the lag was the first thing that I notice.. yes there is a lot of lag. but everything else was great.. there was a bit of blur when the game was moving but is was so minor that I said.. hell, if it was not for the input lag, this TV is as good as the FW900 in performance. Then, I google, how to sect the TV to game mode. I setup the TV to game mode and read the warning, picture quality might decrease bla bla bla. Boom, the input lag was no longer noticeable but the picture quality suffered a lot.. let me repeat that again.. a lot and Mario looked horrible, we are talking over %35 of picture quality lost. I went, F that, unplugged the Wii U and looked at the FW900 and said "I love you":). I was going to plug in my PC rig and test 4k but why bother...now..time to check my teleport machine and see if there is $30k in it:)

[Ed Oscuro]

I looked at the ultrawides too, and ultimately decided against it. Look at some reviews for comments on the way the backlight interacts with the curved format. Personally, I find the resolution x frame rate of wide monitors to be a bit strange and I don't think I'd be able to deal with the distortion of a curved monitor either. There's also the higher price of many of the better monitors. That said, I'll look forward to some reviews

[Xyga]

Well, here's a relatively more affordable OLED http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/01/08/ ... ing-laptop
13" though. :p

[Ed Oscuro]

TFT Central dropped their Z35 review a few days ago, missed it somehow - http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/ace ... or_z35.htm
Turns out it's a VA panel and has roughly twice as long a pixel response. Shows up vividly in the results too.

[lettuce]

@ SNK-NEO-GEO:

The ASUS PG279Q has been out for a while, has the same price as the Acer.

It's hard to know what to make of online reviews by people who have been returning both like mad, but this reddit post suggests the two stack up like this:

Essentially I'm trading a longer start up time and a worse OSD for much improved BLB, a cooler stand, what feels like a sturdier frame, and better crosshair options.

Many people claimed that their Asus monitors had a color tint to the IPS glow, while the Acer's IPS glow was more silver, but I've seen some dispute this also.

I have the PG279Q, and it had a fairly large IPS glow area in the bottom right corner but was only really noticeable when you had the monitor turned on and in a 'no signal' state (so not display anything), but over the weeks it has appeared to have improved the more the monitor has had time 'burn in',....maybe these customers who had sent the monitor back because of this fault would have noticed the same effect over time .

Im massively impressed with the monitor and its nice to get 100% smooth scrolling in emulators now thanks to 144hz/G-Sync (i dont bother with 165hz)

[bobrocks95]

So, do we have a 144Hz IPS Freesync monitor yet that syncs to a decently wide range?

On a 4K screen, even a 100 pixel orbit is pointless. Pixel orbiting in general is pretty useless in plasmas. Its more of a comfortthing devised to ease burn-in conscious consumers minds, I think. I have 3 and dont use it on any of them. To this day none of them have even a hint of burn in.

That said, if I was silly enough to plunk down 5K on a TV, much less a PC monitor, I'd probably use the orbiter to help my "peace of mind".

Just as a side comment, pixel orbiting was hilariously obvious on 480p plasma sets, I have no clue why they even thought to include it for such low PPI sets.

[Andrei671]

Greetings everyone, I have a few questions about subject.
Currently enjoying 42W654, a really great TV for movies and games. However PS 1 games look like crap on PS 3 through emulation even with smothing and upscaling on (and my TV settings are neutral and all precessing is off in game mode), so there is a dilemma of how to make ps one games look decent on the TV.
I'm on my way to buy used fat PS 2 to use it with the component cables - as it says in the review Sony W handles 480p pretty good through component signal. As we know, fat ps 2 has ps 1 hardware bult in but i'm sure if ps 1 games will even show up on the screen as if ps2 won't upscale 240p signal and the TV set may not support 240p at all.
Basically, I ned to choose which is the best way to play ps 1 games:

1) Fat ps 2 through component with some upscaler (if it will work at all)
2) fat ps 1 through scart (it's the best cable for ps 1, right?) with some upscaler

Thing is, I'm not much into retro gaming and buying xrgb mini would be an overkill for me. I only have 1 retro console (ps 1) and don't have to connect multiple of them to one expensive device. Maybe there are cheap byt decent chinese scart/hdmi converters + upscalers (like wii2hdmii, ps2hdmi and so on). Lag is important, but not that much, I'm not fighting games maniac or something (I guess the W6 is pretty fast so it may compensate insignificant added lag).

I'm not also not sure about best suitable resolution for ps1 games being upscaled. I suppose that 3-4x resolution (960x720 or 1280x960) may be max allowable for those textures, text and models made for old 240p games - please correct me if I'm wrong.

In summary, I want to find a way to play ps1 games on original harware in good quality upscaled in "right" resolution, with minimal added lag and without buying expensive devices like xrgb mini.
Еhank you in advance for your replies and sorry for my awful english

[Fudoh]

not sure what look you're aiming at. Smoothing should always be off on your PS3. Instead you could try to lower resolution to 480p or 720p instead of using 1080p output. All these will still look better than anything else directly connected to your TV.

[BONKERS]

You seem to want UpRendering. You won't get that with anything but emulation.

Good upscaling is still going to be pixellated and low res.

[kel]

Find a cheap decent CRT and use a PS1 or PS2. Apart from emulation it's the only way that some PS1 games in particular will look half decent and even if you had a Framemeister it would end up looking pretty much the same as the PS3 running PS1 games. Some PS1 games in particular will probably never look good when upscaled due to the dithering that ends up looking even worse than ever.

[Andrei671]

Thank you for your replies. If I got the point, the best I can do with ps one games on ps 3 (in case of Sony W6 TV and ps3 through HDMI cable) in terms of picture quality is to set ps3 video output at 576p (576p is minimum, maybe because of european region), turn of smoothing and upscaling and set 4:3 aspect ration through tv remote. And even in this case top processing devices like xrgb-mini won't be A LOT better than that. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, speaking about CRTs, i guess RGB scart cable would be better than component on both ps1 and ps2?

[Fudoh]

Also, speaking about CRTs, i guess RGB scart cable would be better than component on both ps1 and ps2?

no, it's about the same.

if you set your PS3 output to 576p then you're locked to 50Hz output as well, so I'm not sure if a PS1 NTSC download would be properly displayed this way.

[Guspaz]

Also, speaking about CRTs, i guess RGB scart cable would be better than component on both ps1 and ps2?

no, it's about the same.

if you set your PS3 output to 576p then you're locked to 50Hz output as well, so I'm not sure if a PS1 NTSC download would be properly displayed this way.

The PS1 does not support component, it only supports RGB. HD Retrovision will be producing an adapter for their Genesis cables to do the RGB-to-Component conversion in-cable, but that won't be available for quite some time.

The PS2 supports both RGB and Component, but it uses the same output pins, and so the selection must be made in software. Reports are that image quality is identical with the exception that some models of PS2 may exhibit some additional noise on component outputs that is visible on digital displays (like a Framemeister) but not on analog displays like a CRT.

The PS2 does support 240p via component output, despite what you might read on the internet (PS1 games output the same resolution on PS2 as on PS1), but it's true that not all *displays* will accept a 240p component input.

[Xyga]

Never noticed before but the ZOOM setting on the W6 is actually an integer one.

It's too big (about 20% ?) for most scenarios, but when it comes for instance to integer-scaled games in MAME that unfortunately end up with huge black borders, then this setting is almost perfect.

Slapped unforgiving scanlines overlays on several games and none were broken by it.
Interpolation is heavy by default but since all picture controls are still well useable it's easy to make it look sharper and clearer without messing the picture with ringing and stuff.

Another good thing is that unlike the overscan settings it's directly accessible from the remote via the dedicated button.

[Fudoh]

I don't even know the zoom function. Is this one of the aspect ratio settings ? Not sure I ever used it. What resolution did you feed ?

Another good thing is that unlike the overscan settings it's directly accessible from the remote via the dedicated button.

this might explain it - I've never used the actual remote, but my HX remote instead...

EDIT: just grabbed the W6 remote, but I don't see the button. What remote have you got ? ED053 ?

[Xyga]

Yes it's that remote, just left of the '0' button, the small stylized TV with crossed arrows.

And let me take what I said back actually, I'm not 100% positive it'll work as well as I first though, dunno what I did exactly as I'm mixing up my settings between GM and RA now lol.
I had some 2x scaled games normally too small get almost to the top and bottom edges, like 19XX or Twin Bee for instance.
But for the Cave PGM it's a bit too much (you lose the score and kakusei meter in galuda).

Now what's more bizarre is that while ZOOM is active the overscan settings are still useable, which makes even more steps to deal with (I think I wasn't aware when doing my testing that I had some overscan active as well).

Gotta explore that thing in depht.

[Fudoh]

just left of the '0' button, the small stylized TV with crossed arrows.

that's the standard aspect ratio control button. I think it behaves differently depending on the source resolution (ED/HD versus PC resolutions) - hence my question what your source res actually was

[Xyga]

Sorry, PC HDMI, 1080p output with GM, 720p output with RA (yeah I took a screenshot of the whole output and to my astonishment RA seems to be outputing in 720p while I never asked it to).

[Fudoh]

zoom is the standard 4:3 to 16:9 mode for letterbox non-anamorphic material. I don't see how you can construct anything remarkable from that.
It's a 33% zoom.

[Xyga]

Well, nothing more than what I said; it zooms a lot indeed and that makes the tiniest integer-scaled games playable.
Unfiltered fractional-scaled games in those cases show a lot of scaling artifacts messing up the scrolling, keep'em integer-scaled instead and zoom: it's better.
Some benefit from it well, others don't.