Recommend a new TV!

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336 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1655521 21-Oct-2016 09:56

I bought the Sony KD-55X8500D last Sunday and so far have found it to be excellent. Noel Leemings have it for $2165 and Harvey Norman $2168 until Oct 25th. That's less than what I paid so I'll be trying for a Price Promise refund!

georgea

49 posts

Geek

#1681963 4-Dec-2016 08:49

Hi cb1,

How are you finding your Sony now that's its been over a month? The reviews talk about bad contrast, and therefore bad picture quality, but they appear to be comparing it to much more expensive options. I've got the TV on hold from a deal on Friday, but need to decide today if I go for it. I'm thinking I will, but it would be good to get someone's first hand experience of having at home. Are you still really liking it? any regrets? Thanks.

cb1

336 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1681972 4-Dec-2016 10:07

georgea:

Hi cb1,

How are you finding your Sony now that's its been over a month? The reviews talk about bad contrast, and therefore bad picture quality, but they appear to be comparing it to much more expensive options. I've got the TV on hold from a deal on Friday, but need to decide today if I go for it. I'm thinking I will, but it would be good to get someone's first hand experience of having at home. Are you still really liking it? any regrets? Thanks.

I've found it to be great picture quality, even when watching SD source. I've downloaded some demo 4K videos to a USB drive and they look absolutely stunning. The only issue I have is connecting to the wifi in my home - sometimes, it connects fine, others it seems to be out of range of my router while laptops/tablets/phones connect in the same room (even right in front of the tv) with no issues. I'll have to do some playing around to investigate this.

I initially bought a Philips 4K model, but was disappointed with it's picture, especially from SD source. Seemed to have to adjust the picture settings every time I changed the source. Also turns out the Freeviewplus was compatible with Australia but not NZ, so took the tv back and they recommended the Sony model.

Let us know what you think. By the way, keep an eye on the retail price over the next month after you purchase. Noel Leeming honoured their price match policy and refunded $270 when they lowered their price over Labour weekend, a week after I bought it. Didn't see any lower price after that, but maybe Christmas/Boxing Day sales?

dafman

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#1681986 4-Dec-2016 11:27

cb1:

I bought the Sony KD-55X8500D last Sunday and so far have found it to be excellent. Noel Leemings have it for $2165 and Harvey Norman $2168 until Oct 25th. That's less than what I paid so I'll be trying for a Price Promise refund!

I purchased the 8500D for $1,985 - black friday pricing. Have yet to take delivery (next week), but here are my thoughts on all brands having done extensive stalking of showroom floors, including taking in bluray and SD dvd to test:

LG. OLED has the best picture when fed 4k, but the LG was the worst in upscaling material, esp SD which looked horrific. Their hardware looks great, but is let down by poor software processing. Not to mention the OLED pricing - I was looking at $7,400 for the 65". My next TV after this one will be OLED, but I will wait for Sony or Panasonic to get into the game. I didn't look at any LG LEDs given the poor upscaling of the OLED.

The Samsungs looked great. Colours looked vivid, maybe a little over-saturated when compared with the Panasonic and Sony which looked a little more subdued or filmatic. I would have happily bought a Samsung, but the comparable set I liked was $800+ more than the Sony, so it missed out.

The Panasonic and Sony sets were both very good. In the end I went for Sony as I preferred the physical look of the 8500D compared to the Panasonic and the Sony was a little less expensive with black friday pricing. And it has Android TV which is a real bonus for me as an android fanboy.

Finally, reading online, everyone praises Sony's upscaling which is very important to me. That said, the Panasonic in shop did a very good job of this as well with the disks I took in.

That said, none of the sets I saw could match my Panasonic neo-plasma for picture quality which the earthquake killed.

Jaxson

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#1681990 4-Dec-2016 11:49

Total side deviation here, but has anyone actually used the Warehouse Veon 4k 55" TV?

Am talking purely from an image quality pov. I'm using a PS3/Xbox One S soon for media smarts, TIVO for freeview and receiver wall speakers for audio, so all I'm after is a display monitor for the visuals.

Alternative would be dumb panel from one of the major brands, but it's becoming a lot harder to source a tv panel alone, without having to pay for the smarts that come with it.

tangerz

625 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1682495 5-Dec-2016 13:43

Jaxson:

Total side deviation here, but has anyone actually used the Warehouse Veon 4k 55" TV?

Am talking purely from an image quality pov. I'm using a PS3/Xbox One S soon for media smarts, TIVO for freeview and receiver wall speakers for audio, so all I'm after is a display monitor for the visuals.

Alternative would be dumb panel from one of the major brands, but it's becoming a lot harder to source a tv panel alone, without having to pay for the smarts that come with it.

Yeah unfortunately it's now a situation where the best PQ (picture quality) panels only come as "top of the line" with all the smarts etc, and only in large (55"+) sizes...

Jaxson

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#1682578 5-Dec-2016 14:57

tangerz:

Yeah unfortunately it's now a situation where the best PQ (picture quality) panels only come as "top of the line" with all the smarts etc, and only in large (55"+) sizes...

Yeah I don't need the inbuilt smarts for my 'workflow' so it's kinda frustrating to see all the smart features pushing the prices up.

Has anyone seen/used/owned the Veon 4k 55" in the wild?

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georgea

49 posts

Geek

#1686236 11-Dec-2016 21:41

For anyone that is interested I have done a quick write up of my initial thoughts of the Sony 55X8500D, dafman has too.

skewt

750 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1686268 11-Dec-2016 23:06

Jaxson:
Total side deviation here, but has anyone actually used the Warehouse Veon 4k 55" TV?

Am talking purely from an image quality pov. I'm using a PS3/Xbox One S soon for media smarts, TIVO for freeview and receiver wall speakers for audio, so all I'm after is a display monitor for the visuals.

Alternative would be dumb panel from one of the major brands, but it's becoming a lot harder to source a tv panel alone, without having to pay for the smarts that come with it.

I'm interested in this as well, a good review would be nice

richms

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#1686279 11-Dec-2016 23:54

Jaxson:

Total side deviation here, but has anyone actually used the Warehouse Veon 4k 55" TV?

Am talking purely from an image quality pov. I'm using a PS3/Xbox One S soon for media smarts, TIVO for freeview and receiver wall speakers for audio, so all I'm after is a display monitor for the visuals.

Alternative would be dumb panel from one of the major brands, but it's becoming a lot harder to source a tv panel alone, without having to pay for the smarts that come with it.

It clearly has some motion interpolation since it doesnt look like a juddery mess like the others on display do. That really increases the latency on them, you can actually see it lagging behind all the other tvs except the sony on the display.

And the no help at all sales staff couldnt be bothered to find a remote so I have no idea if you can turn it off or not.

They couldn't tell me if the HDMI ports were 2.0 and if it had HDCP 2.2 on it.

It's too large really to buy one and return it if it doesnt have those, and unless it actually lowers the latency with fiddling with the picture options that I cant see without the remote, then it would be useless for gaming on. All up terrible sales information and staff have meant that I have not bought one to put up in the garage in place of the small tv that I have at the moment.

Richard rich.ms

Loftus

140 posts

Master Geek

#1686891 13-Dec-2016 10:03

dafman:

LG. OLED has the best picture when fed 4k, but the LG was the worst in upscaling material, esp SD which looked horrific. Their hardware looks great, but is let down by poor software processing. Not to mention the OLED pricing - I was looking at $7,400 for the 65". My next TV after this one will be OLED, but I will wait for Sony or Panasonic to get into the game. I didn't look at any LG LEDs given the poor upscaling of the OLED.

I have to disagree with you on the LG scaling performance. I bought the 55B6 to replace my Panny PHD commercial plasma (6th gen, pretty old) at a recent JB sale, and I will admit that most of the LG default picture modes have (IMO) excessive sharpening, which only serves to accentuate any faults with input material - especially SD. After playing with picture settings for a few days I have the SD picture quality to a point where it's better than on the Panny plasma, aside from the constant yearning for a UHD picture, but maybe that's just me.

I also had a HTPC feeding the screen with my DVD library, but the graphics card is an older (low spec) AMD HTPC-type card, and the scaling performance is not as good as feeding the OLED screen content directly (via DLNA, or PLEX). I'm sure other brands mayhave better up-scaling technology (I've heard great things about the new Sony systems), but for my purposes the LG OLED does scaling really well. And the picture with a Netflix UHD + Dolby Vision title is.... jaw-dropping.

richms

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#1686895 13-Dec-2016 10:07

My LG LED has absurd sharpening on content too. Worst is when its 720p stuff that is scaled to 1080 by the media player, that the tv then scales up to 4k. Any grey on grey text etc has a giant halo of white or black around it because of the sharpness being applied. Dont see it on white text because you cant go whiter than white.

Richard rich.ms