Television seems to be all about extra dimensions these days.
To tell a quick story, our projection LCD TV blew another bulb Saturday, and getting those replaced involves a 40 mile trip to a TV repair shop and over $200 to get a new bulb put in the housing.
So Monday we went around shopping for TVs, intent on getting something in the 50 inch class with a nice picture for about $1000 and break the bulb replacement cycle.
The one we selected was out of stock, but we picked it up in store yesterday and now I’ve had a day to break it in.
The TV that ended up getting selected was a KDL-55EX723, which is fancy for saying a Sony TV, 55 inch screen, EX line, model 723, which is a special version of the 720.
So some interesting things. The Sony Style store only sales the EX720, after a bit of research I found out that the EX723 is an exclusive from Best Buy that has built in wi-fi, whereas the EX720 requires a USB wi-fi adapter that costs about $90. The bizarre part? The EX723 was $1,480 and the EX720 is $1,800.
At any rate, the EX720 line is actually the entry level Sony 3D TV for 2011, but it just so happens that at that price a 55 inch edge lit LED LCD TV is a good deal without the 3D. Well, a little bit much for a 55 inch, but it does have a very nice picture, both in contrast and colors, even at moderate settings as opposed to overly vivid showroom settings.
Honestly, there isn’t much 3D content. The PS3 has been updated to play 3D Blu-rays, but there are precious few of those, some of the best 3D BRs out right now is Legend of the Guardians(the one about the owls), Tangled and Gnomeo & Juliet. Avatar is out on 3D BR, but only as part of an expensive bundle with other stuff. Upcoming 3D BRs include Transformers (all 3 I think), Green Lantern and Thor.
3D gaming on the other hand is quite nice and movies and games both will be a good reason to go 3D next year.
It just so happens though that LCD TVs have progressed to the point where displaying 3D content just means having a active 3D sync emitter optional or part of the TV(at least for the kind like Sony that use active 3D glasses).
Speaking of which, the Sony 3D glasses for 2011 are surprisingly comfortable and have quick charging batteries that are charged like PS3 controllers. Although a bit bigger than 3D movie glasses, they rest very comfortably on the face while worn.
As for the TV itself, it’s 50 inches by 30 inches and just 1 ⅝ inches thick, it actually felt like handling a mirror while attaching it to the stand. Besides being uncomfortably thin to handle, it only has an inch of border around the actual screen, so from in front all that is visible is a big vivid picture with a glossy black frame.
Speaking of the picture, it really is nice. To put how nice in easy to understand terms, the TV it is replacing is an LCD projection TV, which already has a nice sharp picture, yet the picture on this TV is so much better, watching Wall-E on Blu-ray felt like an all-new experience, the picture was just that rich and clear.
Speaking of the included wi-fi, moments after setting it up I hit the Internet video button, selected the Sony 3D Experience channel and had a selection of quickly streaming 3D HD content to watch. Although they were just 2-3 minute clips, some, particularly the 3D nature shots in Japanese zoos and aquariums were nice to watch, just to check out what 3D is like on the TV.
What’s the 3D like? Pretty much like seeing a 3D movie in the theatre, although some home sources of 3D aren’t as good. The nature video we bought to watch had some bad parallax caused by switching between wildly varying 3D scenes or over-doing the 3D effect. While playing some 3D games (Motorstorm Apocolypse) there were a few instances of a parallax, mostly when pausing the game and a flying box or piece of debris would rotate near the camera. (Parallax ghosting is when the left/right images of an object on screen don’t overlap properly, yet the rest of the 3D objects are in focus.). Overall the effect is very nice, and video games generally have options for tuning the 3D effect, just be wary of watching poorly done 3D video content.
Downsides of the TV? Honestly not much, for being the ‘cheapest’ 3D TV Sony is making this year, it’s a very nice TV, but here are the odd points.
No 3D glasses included. Active glasses are $70 right now and come in adult or child sizes, but honestly there is little 3D content this year and next year looks better, so holding off a year or two to buy glasses is actually a good idea. The TV will work with newer or older glasses, but the 2012 glasses are likely to be better than the 2011 glasses. As a reference, the 2010 glasses were uncomfortably front-heavy and cost $150.
Weak Speakers. The downside of having a super-thin TV is the TV has two tiny 10W speakers mounted on the back. It’s still decently loud, but it has to be turned up a bit higher than other TVs to reach the same sound levels.
Remote. It’s fairly basic and not backlit. The face also has an odd concave curve to it(ie the face with the buttons curves inwards, creating a valley). This was a bit odd since Sony TVs generally have nice remotes, but I did find the lovely trick of this remote. The recessed buttons mean the remote can be placed on a table upside down, revealing a smooth black monolith remote with a Sony logo and a single stylish power button.
This TV also has something called a Presence Sensor, which can be turned off. It’s basically a motion detector that can turn off the TV screen if it doesn’t detect movement within X minutes. I currently have it set to 5 minutes for my own amusement and have to wave at the TV every once in a while because my laptop is apparently hiding me while typing. Under normal sitting conditions, even sitting still and watching a movie it seems to detect me just fine.
The odd part? The more advanced Sony TVs can track eyeballs to the degree of aiming speaker sound at the viewers and warning kids if they get too close to the TV. No, seriously.
One final part of this little adventure is using Bravia Link for the first time. I told my PS3 to allow HDMI control. I told my TV to use HDMI control. What does that mean?
When I turned on the PS3 this afternoon and put in the Wall-E movie, the TV detected the PS3 coming on and switched over in time to show the PS3 start-up screen. I then sat down and used the TV remote buttons to navigate the PS3 menus, start-up the movie and basically never had to turn on a PS3 remote to handle it. When I took the disc out afterwards and hit the power button the the PS3, the TV automatically turned back to what I was watching before.
That was some nice icing on the awesome picture cake.
To tell a quick story, our projection LCD TV blew another bulb Saturday, and getting those replaced involves a 40 mile trip to a TV repair shop and over $200 to get a new bulb put in the housing.
So Monday we went around shopping for TVs, intent on getting something in the 50 inch class with a nice picture for about $1000 and break the bulb replacement cycle.
The one we selected was out of stock, but we picked it up in store yesterday and now I’ve had a day to break it in.
The TV that ended up getting selected was a KDL-55EX723, which is fancy for saying a Sony TV, 55 inch screen, EX line, model 723, which is a special version of the 720.
So some interesting things. The Sony Style store only sales the EX720, after a bit of research I found out that the EX723 is an exclusive from Best Buy that has built in wi-fi, whereas the EX720 requires a USB wi-fi adapter that costs about $90. The bizarre part? The EX723 was $1,480 and the EX720 is $1,800.
At any rate, the EX720 line is actually the entry level Sony 3D TV for 2011, but it just so happens that at that price a 55 inch edge lit LED LCD TV is a good deal without the 3D. Well, a little bit much for a 55 inch, but it does have a very nice picture, both in contrast and colors, even at moderate settings as opposed to overly vivid showroom settings.
Honestly, there isn’t much 3D content. The PS3 has been updated to play 3D Blu-rays, but there are precious few of those, some of the best 3D BRs out right now is Legend of the Guardians(the one about the owls), Tangled and Gnomeo & Juliet. Avatar is out on 3D BR, but only as part of an expensive bundle with other stuff. Upcoming 3D BRs include Transformers (all 3 I think), Green Lantern and Thor.
3D gaming on the other hand is quite nice and movies and games both will be a good reason to go 3D next year.
It just so happens though that LCD TVs have progressed to the point where displaying 3D content just means having a active 3D sync emitter optional or part of the TV(at least for the kind like Sony that use active 3D glasses).
Speaking of which, the Sony 3D glasses for 2011 are surprisingly comfortable and have quick charging batteries that are charged like PS3 controllers. Although a bit bigger than 3D movie glasses, they rest very comfortably on the face while worn.
As for the TV itself, it’s 50 inches by 30 inches and just 1 ⅝ inches thick, it actually felt like handling a mirror while attaching it to the stand. Besides being uncomfortably thin to handle, it only has an inch of border around the actual screen, so from in front all that is visible is a big vivid picture with a glossy black frame.
Speaking of the picture, it really is nice. To put how nice in easy to understand terms, the TV it is replacing is an LCD projection TV, which already has a nice sharp picture, yet the picture on this TV is so much better, watching Wall-E on Blu-ray felt like an all-new experience, the picture was just that rich and clear.
Speaking of the included wi-fi, moments after setting it up I hit the Internet video button, selected the Sony 3D Experience channel and had a selection of quickly streaming 3D HD content to watch. Although they were just 2-3 minute clips, some, particularly the 3D nature shots in Japanese zoos and aquariums were nice to watch, just to check out what 3D is like on the TV.
What’s the 3D like? Pretty much like seeing a 3D movie in the theatre, although some home sources of 3D aren’t as good. The nature video we bought to watch had some bad parallax caused by switching between wildly varying 3D scenes or over-doing the 3D effect. While playing some 3D games (Motorstorm Apocolypse) there were a few instances of a parallax, mostly when pausing the game and a flying box or piece of debris would rotate near the camera. (Parallax ghosting is when the left/right images of an object on screen don’t overlap properly, yet the rest of the 3D objects are in focus.). Overall the effect is very nice, and video games generally have options for tuning the 3D effect, just be wary of watching poorly done 3D video content.
Downsides of the TV? Honestly not much, for being the ‘cheapest’ 3D TV Sony is making this year, it’s a very nice TV, but here are the odd points.
No 3D glasses included. Active glasses are $70 right now and come in adult or child sizes, but honestly there is little 3D content this year and next year looks better, so holding off a year or two to buy glasses is actually a good idea. The TV will work with newer or older glasses, but the 2012 glasses are likely to be better than the 2011 glasses. As a reference, the 2010 glasses were uncomfortably front-heavy and cost $150.
Weak Speakers. The downside of having a super-thin TV is the TV has two tiny 10W speakers mounted on the back. It’s still decently loud, but it has to be turned up a bit higher than other TVs to reach the same sound levels.
Remote. It’s fairly basic and not backlit. The face also has an odd concave curve to it(ie the face with the buttons curves inwards, creating a valley). This was a bit odd since Sony TVs generally have nice remotes, but I did find the lovely trick of this remote. The recessed buttons mean the remote can be placed on a table upside down, revealing a smooth black monolith remote with a Sony logo and a single stylish power button.
This TV also has something called a Presence Sensor, which can be turned off. It’s basically a motion detector that can turn off the TV screen if it doesn’t detect movement within X minutes. I currently have it set to 5 minutes for my own amusement and have to wave at the TV every once in a while because my laptop is apparently hiding me while typing. Under normal sitting conditions, even sitting still and watching a movie it seems to detect me just fine.
The odd part? The more advanced Sony TVs can track eyeballs to the degree of aiming speaker sound at the viewers and warning kids if they get too close to the TV. No, seriously.
One final part of this little adventure is using Bravia Link for the first time. I told my PS3 to allow HDMI control. I told my TV to use HDMI control. What does that mean?
When I turned on the PS3 this afternoon and put in the Wall-E movie, the TV detected the PS3 coming on and switched over in time to show the PS3 start-up screen. I then sat down and used the TV remote buttons to navigate the PS3 menus, start-up the movie and basically never had to turn on a PS3 remote to handle it. When I took the disc out afterwards and hit the power button the the PS3, the TV automatically turned back to what I was watching before.
That was some nice icing on the awesome picture cake.
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