Sony's 2017 premium UHD-TV's the X800E, X850E, X900E and X940E series (1 Viewer)

[Lakersfreak]

Need help please! I've had my 75X850E for only two months. Last night I noticed a rectangular ambient light (about 3" by 0.5") located just under the top bezel, about 20 inches in from the top right corner. Very obvious when the picture is dark, or when watching a movie and the image is cropped with the black out on top and bottom. Can't see it when the image is bright. Should I call Sony? Or perhaps there's a setting I need to change?

 

[Sam Posten]

Call Sony

 

[Sam Posten]

Just ordered an x700, as Sony dropped a firmware upgrade to let it play DV to the 940e. It will be here Monday. Sounds like the patch is buggy as **** tho.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnar...tvs-but-its-all-a-bit-of-a-mess/#58cf4a9f548c

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Just ordered an x700, as Sony dropped a firmware upgrade to let it play DV to the 940e. It will be here Monday. Sounds like the patch is buggy as **** tho.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnar...tvs-but-its-all-a-bit-of-a-mess/#58cf4a9f548c

No auto detection of Dolby Vision by the player is ridiculous. Hopefully Sony fixes that with a future update. I am instead waiting on the Panasonic 820 for an upgrade to provide DV in my setup.

 

[gadgtfreek]

I actually prefer being able to toggle DV off. Dolby is starting to move to controlling the whole ecosystem, not a fan.

 

[Sam Posten]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnar...date-this-week/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

[Sam Posten]

I started watching Red in DV last night, it's been waiting for this patch since June of 2017. The pans are craaaaaazy jumpy. Gonna have to figure out whether I have something set wrong or the 700 is just bad.

 

[Robert_Zohn]

Very happy to see OPPO's firmware update for Dolby Vision profile 5 with low latency to support Sony Dolby Vision HDR.

@Sam Posten, try a cold a/c reboot by unplugging the TV and X700 BD player for a full 10 minutes to see if that fixes the jumpy image issue.

 

[Carlo_M]

Ugh. Just got the dreaded 4 blinking red LED light, TV won't stay powered on after startup. Tried a hard reset. Unplugged for hours, etc. Nothing works. Luckily I bought it in Jan so I'm still within my 12 month warranty...barely. I'm sure they'll send either a tech to repair or offer a refurb unit to be shipped. I had a Sony LCD TV crap out on me years ago too. That's why my in-between set was a Samsung (KS8000) but the 900E was on sale last January and offered FALD (vs. Sammy's edge-lighting) so I pulled the trigger on it. Now I'm wondering if Sonys aren't what they used to be (I was a Trinitron Man back in the tube TV days and those things were built like tanks and lasted forever).

 

[Carlo_M]

Just got off the phone w/ Sony warranty support. They're going to replace my set with either a refurb of the same set, or if they're out, a newer set of equal/better features. Not sure I'm going to hold my breath for the latter. The good news is that the replacement set will come with a 2 year warranty, so I'll be covered until Dec. 2020, which is about the time I'd be looking to upgrade this set anyway, in terms of size and performance (it doesn't do Dolby Vision).

I submitted the requisite pictures of the set, along with the proof of purchase from BB/Magnolia, and they're supposed to review within 24 hours, and then issue the order for the replacement. So hopefully by end of next week I should have my replacement set (they said 5-7 days from shipment authorization to receipt). Sony has a strong corporate presence in Los Angeles, so I'm hoping they also have an electronics warehouse somewhere near the area, so that it won't take the full 5-7 days, but who knows.

 

[Carlo_M]

I hesitated updating this thread for a little bit because I didn't want to jinx it. But now that the delivery men have dropped off the replacement set (and took away the old set) I thought I'd give the resolution to my Death of My 900E saga.

First of all, shout out to CEVA Logistics white glove delivery service, who unboxed, installed the feet, and placed on my stand my replacement set, in about 1/10 the time it would have taken me to do it. Also they boxed back up my old set and put it in the replacement TV box and now that's on its way back to Sony.

So what did Sony end up doing for me? They replaced my set with a current year XBR-65X900F. Shortly after I received their initial email, they followed up with "we apologize for the inconvenience but we no longer have your 900E model in stock. As such, we will be replacing your set with a brand new (not refurbished) 900F."

So although I waited a week and a half for the replacement, I now have a brand new, Dolby Vision capable set (the 900E only supported HDR10). I'm setting it up now, but so far, so good!

 

[Matt Hough]

Congratulations! Will look to hear more of your impressions of the new set and comparisons to the old one.

 

[Carlo_M]

Will be happy to post thoughts later Matt. Though to be honest, since I can’t A/B them and it has been two weeks since my 900E was last working...I’m not sure how trustworthy my recollection will be.

I will say this. Too bad Disney/MCU 4K doesn’t support Dolby Vision. I just watched Infinity War which I knew didn’t have DV...but the irony is that at the end credits (which obviously I watched all the way through ) had the Dolby Vision logo.

I’ll find a 4K title that has DV and watch it shortly.

 

[Carlo_M]

So I dialed in everything (using a combo of rtings recommendations and by sight, similar to what I did for the 900E) and I can already say that one particular "torture test" is rendered better on this set than both the 900E and my living room TV (Samsung KS8000).

It's the "who are you" scene between Luke and Rey in Ep8. A little history. I saw it in a digital screening (aren't they all nowadays?) Edwards theater in Irvine where I thought there was a real loss of detail in the faces in the darkness of the scene. I remember thinking at the time "I can't wait until this is on 4K and I can see it at home and see if it's just shot like this, where the shadow detail is all murky and I can barely make out Luke's face when it's not being lit by the rare beams of light in this scene".

When I finally got it on 4K months later, both my 900E and KS8000 displayed it better than the Edwards projection did, which made me happy, but also made me vow never to go to that theater again. Luke's facial features, when not lit by the strands of light, were still visible in both sets.

Now I'm watching it in DV for the first time, and it seems to me that his face is still a little bit more visible in the 900F. I'll bring the disc out later to the living room, but I realize it will be an imperfect comparison because it won't be side-by-side. And of course both sets are calibrated by sight and not by a professional.

This set also seems to have slightly more controlled halo/blooming than the 900E. When I pause the Oppo for more than a minute and the Oppo logo screensaver comes on, the halo around Oppo seems less than what I recall seeing from the 900E.

 

[Sam Posten]

Is this 4 lights thing widespread? Does it affect current models like the 940e?

 

[Carlo_M]

Is this 4 lights thing widespread? Does it affect current models like the 940e?

I do not know how widespread it is. I was on the *other* forum and yes there were some failures, but that thread is also hundreds of pages long so the actual percentage may be low.

And Sony never told me what was the problem. Checking the web, the diagnostic info for 4 blinking lights (it can be 1-8 blinks before a pause, each interval means a different thing) yields this:

a 4 blink code means either the backlight inverter board is bad or one of the backlights in the LCD panel has failed. It can also be the LD board or main logic board, check inverter board wires for arcing to ground.

I think the 1-8 blinking LED codes are Sony's universal codes for errors, and I've seen them going back as far as the 850B model in my web searching, so I'm going to guess they still use those same codes on every LED TV they make. It's the rate of incidence that we don't know, and one would hope that the higher cost models would be better made/more reliable but of course we know that's not always the case.

 

[Carlo_M]

I will say one major change I noticed they made from 900E to 900F. The E came with a big power brick that could get quite warm. The F has just a power cord, meaning they've moved the power supply to the inside of the set (and I do think the set is a little thicker overall). But if we believe Rtings' thermal scan, the 900F actually runs cooler than the 900E.
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900f
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900e
According to the FLIR scan, the 900F runs on average 3F cooler and has a 4F lower max heat output than the 900E...and that's even with the power supply now being housed inside of the set. If you look at the 900E FLIR scan, you see how bright the power supply is glowing off to the side (much hotter than the TV) so somehow Sony has managed to greatly reduce the amount of heat the power supply of the set generates and moved it inside of the housing.

I'm not saying the power brick was the problem, but we all know that heat is an enemy of electronics.