Picture quality on XD93 55

[untameddoughnut]

Hi all, I had the XD93 55" TV for a few months now and I'm feeling a bit disappointed about the picture quality especially when in dark scenes. Seems to be a colour banding issue that happens on occasion on HD channels via sky hd. For a £1800 TV I'm surprised how bad the picture quality can be!

As seems to be the recommendation I tried using the THX optimiser to sort out the contrast and brightness but don't seem to be able to get to the required black level. The picture is so bright!

I have set the picture mode to Cinema Pro on default settings. Any recommendations or tips on improving picture quality for this model?

Cheers

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi there

This review from the AVForums has a good picture settings guide and imbeded picture settings video too:

https://www.avforums.com/review/sony-kd-55xd9305-ultra-hd-4k-hdr-tv-review.12266

Cheers

[untameddoughnut]

Thanks for the reply but the black levels in certain scenes seem to be a particular problem. It almost appears green sometimes. With the picture settings in line with your previous post is there anything further I can do to improve black levels?

[Jonnymack]

Is it only sky HD?

How are black levels with blu ray or streaming services like netflix or amazon?

My blacks are very dark, no banding issues.

[untameddoughnut]

I think the black levels are just related to bad quality content. For example watching 2012 on Channel 5 HD and American Horror Story season 1 on Netflix. In answer to your question, the 4K sources and Bluray are excellent since I did the picture quality tuning recommended in the previous post. I guess with some content if it's pretty bad anyway there is only so much Sony picture processing can do to improve it.

Thanks for the posts guys 😃😃👍

[Jonnymack]

Either the bit rate of the channel, or of course the quality of the cameras the film or programme was filmed with.

I generally never watch anything in sd anyway, and if I do they are on channels where I am not watching any movie content, just trash TV.

For me the TV is great in HD and 4k. my negative is that 4k content is generally no better that blu ray disc when streamed from Netflix or amazon 

[untameddoughnut]

Agreed I don't think anything streamed will beat physical media but still a good picture for 4K streaming. I'm curious to see a proper 4K bluray player release from Sony so I can try 4K on physical media.

[untameddoughnut]

Recently been watching Planet Earth 2 and Sherlock on BBC One HD (Sky HD). Both seem to suffer from dark scene colour banding where the TV cannot seem to process the dark areas in certain scenes. I feel really let down that something like this is happening on a £2k TV.

[L4ZAR0U]

I've owned mine for two weeks now and also have this issue with freeview/youview HD channels. It also appears on iplayer.  Have tried the recommended settings posted but issue not resolved, my KDL55W805 doen't have this issue though so i'm wondering if it's due to the panel being 4K or the processing is not as good? (thought it should be better though).

Apart from poor 4k image from Luke Gage on Netflix (very grainy) other 4k streamed content and bluray looks great.

[untameddoughnut]

Yeah it is a real shame that the flagship TVs seem to accentuate the picture quality issues with HD and below content which I thought they would be better equipped to avoid.

I've tried the picture settings too and they give a good picture but there definitely seems to be a panel or processing issue which will hopefully be fixed in the upcoming Android Marshmallow update for the XD93 due Q1 2017. As the update as already hit the US and Asia from what I can see there has been picture quality improvements in those updates so I'm going to hang for that and see where I am before I raise with Sony support.

On another note, I tried the THX optimiser disk but that was mission impossible. The panel was so washed out even with brightness on minimal when doing the brightness test.

Sent from my iPhone