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New Sony 40XBR800.....crooked letterbox? (1 Viewer)

Craig_TX

Auditioning
Joined
Sep 20, 2002
Messages
5
I got my Sony 40XBR800 delivered from Crutchfield yesterday and it is beautiful! The picture is just great....but I swear the letterbox is crooked. By this, I mean the top border on the right hand side of the screen is 2" but on the left hand side it's 2 1/2". Have any of y'all ever heard of this?

BTW-I think this forum is great....I did quite a bit of lurking when I was thinking about buying it.
 

Jack Briggs

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 3, 1999
Messages
16,805
Welcome to the Forum, Craig, and congrats on that beautiful set. You are experiencing some geometry errors, and they are correctable through the service menu. Since this is such a sophisticated set, you may as well call up the Imaging Science Foundation and ask if there are any qualified technicians in your area. It will cost you about $200 to get this set calibrated and corrected, but it is worth it. Keep us posted.
 

jeff lam

Screenwriter
Joined
Jun 4, 2001
Messages
1,798
Location
San Jose, CA
Real Name
Jeff Lam
1/2" really isn't that bad considering the size of the set. There should be a tilt correction in the user menu if it's off on the bottom too, this should fix it. Otherwise going into the service menu should fix it but you have to know what you're doing to make an attempt in the service menu.
 

Lew Crippen

Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 19, 2002
Messages
12,060
It’s a great set, Craig and congratulations. I second Jeff’s suggestion of seeing if adjusting the ‘tilt’ correction will help. This is easily done from the menu, screens. I’m pretty sure that this is changed from the setup portion of the menu screens. And if this does not work, getting back to your original settings is very easy, as its only one adjustment and you just reset to 0.
I suspect that Jack is correct and you may require some geometry adjustments. This can be done from the service menu, but this is not easily accessible. And once in, the various adjustments (mostly) have relationships with each other so its not easy to make changes. And there are a fair number, so its hard to keep track.
You can help yourself determine what needs to be done, by using either Video Essentials or AVIA as a guide. I am unfamiliar with VE myself, as I use AVIA to calibrate my sets and speakers, but I presume that either will work. AVIA will generate (among other things) patterns (such as a cross-hatch) that you can use to determine how close your set is to ideal.
Even without your noted problem, most on this forum would recommend one of these disks to help set the color and intensity of your picture to standards.
Three pieces of advice: (1) go into the menu, if you have not done so, and set the picture to standard, movie or pro (my recommendation) as the out of the box setting of vivid has settings suitable for showroom floors and not much else; (2) get AVID or VE and adjust the picture to a base and then adjust to your preference; and (3) if you decide to go into the service menu and change settings, make sure you write all of the settings down before you make any changes, so you can go back to square one, when needed.
There is a reason that both Jack and Jeff have advised against doing this yourself, unless you have experience along these lines. Many on this forum do have that experience or (in my case) experience in allied fields, and are competent to make such changes. You may be in this category and if you are you will know that you are and won’t need to spend the money.
And Jeff may well be right that this is only a tilt correction, in which case, jump right in.
 

MichaelFusick

Second Unit
Joined
Aug 14, 2002
Messages
301
There is tilt correction in the user menu.

Titlted black bars on XBR's is common.

The tilt correction ranges from -6 to +6 and zero being the way it comes.

Try it.... it should fix it.
 

Aaron Cohen

Second Unit
Joined
Jul 25, 2002
Messages
468
I have the 34 inch widescreen XBR Trinitron HD monitor and I had a similar crooked black bars problem but after going to the screen tilt menu it was easil fixed.

Just wondering, how is my tv picture quality compared to the 40 inch standard size XBR monitor? I was considering getting that one but I went with a widescreen one instead even though it is smaller.
 

Steve_Tk

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2002
Messages
2,833
When you say TV picture quality do you mean Cable/sat? I have the 40XBR and my TV quality is fine. I was actually very very surprised at my cable quality. No artifacts at all. I think the WS image for DVDs is a little better on the 34XBR. Someone that knows the technical reasons why can give you that info.

In general I think most people don't like the 40 because the cable image is blown up so large that it looks bad. I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones that does not have that problem.
 

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