Sony Bravia KDL37503U

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Discussion

CatherineJ

Original Poster:

9,586 posts

244 months

Monday 3rd January 2011
quotequote all
Has anyone got one of the 503's perhaps in a different screen size?

Reason I ask is we bought one yesterday to replace an LG32LB1D, which we bought about 5 years ago. In principle the Sony should be an improvement 1080P, Freeview HD, 100Hz.

Anyway it is unpacked and the LG has gone upstairs ready to be mounted on our bedroom wall.

At the moment we are both wondering if we have made a mistake. Yes it looks good on the Freeview HD Channels, but apart from that we don't feel the picture or sound is as good.


OldSkoolRS

6,758 posts

180 months

Monday 3rd January 2011
quotequote all
I had the smaller 32" in a second room (It got replaced with a 703 due to a faulty LAN port): Try copying the 'Theatre' settings into the general mode (Warm2, brightness and contrast settings, etc) just increase the backlight to suit the ambient light. Another useful trick is when viewing an SD channel you need to change the screen setting for size to +1 which corrects an overscan error for SD content, making it sharper (the TV will apply different size settings for HD content, which is correct). Don't overegg the sharpness control as this just adds noise to the picture rather than real extra detail.

These settings I've suggested will get you closer to an acccurate picture (though proper calibration would still be necessary to get it spot on): I'm not familiar with your other TV so it could just be that you're accustomed to an image that is further from calibrated (like a 'vivid' or 'dynamic' mode) so you may find my suggestions seem duller than your old TV, though they may be closer to 'correct'...it depends what you're used to.

I calibrated my '703 when I rented a sensor mainly to calibrate my projector setup and found that I was able to get it pretty close to spot on. However we're still at the mercy of low bite rate broadcasts on SD (and HD for that matter!), so different TVs may look better on these sources (like Plasma will generally tend to look better on SD than LCD).

Not much you can do about the sound though...I always use a separate soind system with all my TVs apart from the one in the kitchen which is just for the news...

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Monday 3rd January 10:11

CatherineJ

Original Poster:

9,586 posts

244 months

Monday 3rd January 2011
quotequote all
Thanks for your help. I've had a good fiddle with the settings and it is much much better. We popped a DVD in and the picture qulaity is superb.