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Sony's BIG TV Review by LEO SIMPSON Most people are amazed at how big this new Sony TV set is. And how bright. They immediately want to sit down and start watching. Hours later, they are visibly reluctant to leave. When a TV has that effect on people, you know it must be impressive. 56  Silicon Chip “...a screen area three times larger than a 68cm set. That mightn’t sound like a big increase: in truth, it’s not. It’s a HUGE increase!” W e’ve said this before and it’s worth saying again: “If you want a really satisfying home theatre experience, you must have a big screen”. After all, what is the point of spending lots of money on a surround sound system but still sticking with a standard 68cm TV set? If you are going to simulate a cinema experience, you need a screen with the same impact as at the movies There are several ways to obtain a big screen and they all have their pros and cons. Plasma screens are big and bright and take up very little space but few people can afford to spend the best part of $20,000; that’s more than the price of many small cars. Full projection systems certainly give a huge picture but they need to be viewed in very subdued lighting and are hardly practical if you just watch the evening news bulletin. And they, too, are very expensive. That leaves rear projection TVs. They give a big picture and can be viewed in normal room lighting (more about this aspect later) and they are not outrageously expensive – although they would be too costly for many readers. Read on though, because many of the features found on this big set will tend to become standard on smaller sets in the years to come. It doesn’t take up much more floor space than a standard 68cm TV set – but the picture is dramatically larger. Don’t let the height worry you – it’s just about spot on when you are sitting down. And sit down you must, otherwise you’ll miss the full impact of the huge picture. In this extra-close-up shot of the screen, you can start to see the horizontal lines in the DRC100 mode. The vertical fresnel lens lines seen by the camera are not obvious to the eye. Actually, this 121cm Sony set, the KP-ES48SN1 (just how do they come up with these numbers?), is not the biggest in the range; it is the second smallest. The biggest is a 154cm model. Having previewed the four models in the range, we decided that the 121cm model probably represented the best value for the money and would fit most easily into most homes with a reasonably large viewing room. That might seem like a fairly obvious statement but it is not until the set arrives in its carton that you realise how big it is. In fact, in many homes and apartments, it would not be possible to unpack the set indoors or even carry the carton up internal stairs. Let’s back up a bit and describe the basic features of this set. The 121cm (48-inch) dimension refers to the diagonal measurement of the screen. This gives it a screen area three times larger than a 68cm set. That mightn’t sound like a big increase: in truth, it’s not. It’s a HUGE increase! Overall dimensions are 1091mm wide, 1336mm high and 580mm deep. But it doesn’t take up significantly more floor space than the average 68cm set. At 68kg, it is not unduly heavy either and it is fitted with castors so it can be moved around quite The same shot in DRC 1250 mode. The horizontal lines have all but disappeared but the image does not seem to be quite so sharp or bright. It’s all a matter or preference and program. FEBRUARY 2001  57 You don't have to fossick around the back to connect a camera or TV game: these sockets are (nicely hidden) on the front. On the opposite side are the switches used for convergence and channel setup. patches of colour (green, red and blue, in succession) at the top, bottom and in the middle of the sides, coinciding with the abovementioned sensors. Once it has gone through the procedure, lasting about a minute, it produces a white cross-hatch in the middle of the screen and the job is done. You can then watch a great picture which is bright and sharp all over the screen. Viewing angle We couldn’t resist a peek inside the Sony: there’s a lot packed into the quite thin “base”. The circular image on the screen is the fresnel lens, not seen from the front. easily. However, it comes in a carton which measures 1190mm wide, 1430mm high and 650mm deep; dimensions which would make it difficult to unpack in many homes. Instead of being finished all over in drab black or charcoal, the plastic cabinet has a brushed silver frame around the screen and a “metal look” control panel below the screen, both of which lighten up the styling. In reality though, once a program is on the screen, you cease to look at the set and see only the big picture. As with most modern sets, you can have quite a few video sources although most people will just connect a DVD player, a VCR and the antenna lead. You can use normal (composite) video inputs or so called “component video” inputs and you can connect a video game or camcorder to RCA 58  Silicon Chip sockets at the front of the set. Interestingly, in addition to the normal stereo speakers inside the set, there is another speaker which can be used as the centre speaker in a Dolby surround sound system; maximum input is 30W. Provided you largely ignore the instruction manual, basic setting up of the Sony set is reasonably easy. It can be arranged to automatically tune in all the local stations and it has automatic (static) convergence, an important feature in any large TV set. The auto convergence relies on optical sensors in the middle of each side of the screen and at the top and bottom. To put the set into auto-convergence mode, you push a button on the popout panel underneath the screen. It then produces a small cross-hatch in the centre of the screen and square The overwhelming feature (and that Fig. 1: the principle behind projection TV systems. The three tubes (at bottom) project onto the mirror (top right) which in turn reflects onto the screen (at left). A closer look from the rear of the set with the mirror removed. At the top are the three powerful red, green and blue projection tubes. Notice how each is set at a specific angle. If all is OK (not the least being the convergence of the tubes), the result is a very clean, bright TV “picture”, reflected onto the screen by the large mirror behind it. word is no exaggeration) of the Sony 121cm set is the size and brightness of its picture. If you’ve only seen rear projection sets in retailers’ showrooms or clubs it is doubtful whether you have ever seen them to best advantage and the same point applies to this Sony set. All rear projection TV sets have a limited vertical viewing angle – you must sit down to watch them. Otherwise, if your head is above the top of the screen and the room is brightly lit, you will think that the screen brightness is woeful. But sit down (or lower your head to achieve the same result) and you will see a dramatic increase in brightness. So you really can enjoy a bright, full contrast picture in a brightly-lit room – but only if you sit down! The reason all rear projection sets have a more limited viewing angle is because of the large Fresnel lens used for the screen. Fig.1 shows the general arrangement of the three projection tubes (red, green and blue) used. They fire up against a large mirror at the back of the cabinet and this throws the light at the Fresnel lens screen which has been optically ground to project the image out in a horizontal beam, more or less. The Fresnel lens has fine vertical grooves and the surfaces between the grooves have a parabolic convex cross-section to spread the light out in a horizontal axis. You can see the overall lens structure in one of the photos in this article. It is this lens and the higher power from the 7-inch CRTs (cathode ray tubes) that is responsible for the overall high brightness – Sony claim that brightness is 20% improved over previous models. Actually, the Sony’s vertical viewing angle is better than some other rear projection sets at ±20° from the centre line of the screen. Its horizontal viewing angle is ±60° from the centre-line. This means that if you watch from far off to the side you will also see a dull and lifeless picture. But look at it from where you are supposed to and you’re really in the picture. You’ll be disappointed to find there is no girl selling popcorn or choc-top icecreams appearing during the ad breaks! I had this TV in my loungeroom for the Olympic Games and I have to tell you that having a near-life-size Cathy Freeman charging straight at you at a million miles an hour is a whole new experience! High definition picture Sony’s rear projection sets all have DRC (Digital Reality Creation) which is Sony’s fancy name – and their proprietary technology – for field doubling and pixel doubling. Notice that we said “field doubling” not “line dou-bling”. While most large screen sets do not have line doubling, they all need either it or a field frequency doubling technique to display 50Hz PAL pictures without troublesome flicker. Sony has two display modes: DRC 100 and DRC 1250. Briefly, DRC 100 shows fully interlaced 625-line pictures at 100Hz while DRC 1250 shows 1250-line pictures at 50Hz. DRC 100 stops picture flicker FEBRUARY 2001  59 The worst feature of the Sony is its remote control, seen here closed (left) and open (right). Can you see the labelling on the open section? Neither could we – even in a brightly lit room (and yes, I did have my glasses on!). while DRC 1250 eliminates any line structure from the picture. Line doubling vs field doubling Line doubling (commonly used in direct video projection systems) uses an interpolation system to add the extra lines. This works but can give odd trailing ghosts on moving images. Sony’s DRC system actually creates extra fields in a sequence running A, B’, A’ and B where A’ is interpolated from transmitted fields A & B and B’ is interpolated from B & A. The pixel doubling scheme feeds the video signal to an A-D converter, adds in extra data bits and then converts it back to analog again. As far as I can tell, it is the digital equivalent of “video peaking” such as is used in the HQ technique in VHS video recorders. But while video peaking can improve the sharpness of video images, it can also increase apparent noise in the picture. Both the DRC 100 and DRC 1250 modes provide pixel doubling and this begs the question: why are the two modes provided? The answer is that it all depends on the video material you are watching and how close you are to the screen. When you are watching in DRC 100 mode, the impression is that the picture is very sharp and bright but most viewers will be quite aware of the line structure in the picture. When you switch over to the DRC 1250 mode, the line structure in the picture disappears but it also appears to become not quite as sharp and as bright. This is quite a subtle effect. And if the video signal tends to be a little on the noisy side (ie, a little snowy in the darker scenes), then it is more noticeable in the 1250 mode. On the other hand, if you watching program material with a strong graphics content where there are bright horizontal elements to the picture which tend to make flicker noticeable, the DRC 100 mode is preferable. This is particularly the case if you are watching weather forecasts, pie-charts or graphs showing sporting statistics or video games. In these cases, switching over to the DRC 100 mode eliminates any flicker to give a rock steady picture. In summary, my preference for most video material was to use the DRC 1250 mode to eliminate the line structure which can otherwise be 60  Silicon Chip quite obvious and detracts from the big bright picture. We’ve taken some slides of video stills to try and demonstrate the differences between the two modes but I have to say that they don’t really show the effects fully. Oh, that remote control! I must confess that several times I have felt like throwing the remote control up against the wall – it is that frustrating. And the instruction manual is not much better! Both let down an otherwise superb product. To make any sense at all of the remote control, you must be less than 12 years old and willing to press buttons willy-nilly to get a result. To any person used to “logical” controls though, I think the Sony remote control for this set is one of the most irritating, badly conceived and downright diabolical controls I have ever come across. It is also badly labelled and you can hardly see the markings, especially those under the flip-up panel; light orange markings on a grey panel are not a good combination. Where it is particularly annoying is when you are trying to use the menu button and joystick control to change the various settings. Never let it be said that the Sony KP-ES48N1 doesn’t give you exceptional input/ output options. The biggest difficulty is the labelling – it’s not particularly intuitive and you need the instruction manual to work it out. The instruction manual? Now that’s another story . . . Say you want to change the picture settings; you find that unless you press the joystick in a particular way, it will fly off into another section of the menu where you don’t want to be. Reading the manual just confuses the issue so you have to persevere until you get the result you want. It does not have to be this way. By contrast, while we were doing this review, we used a Sony DAV-S300 system which is a combination DVD player, tuner and 6-channel surround amplifier and speakers. It comes with a remote control which is the same shape as that for the Sony rear projection set and with similar buttons and yet is a delight to use – the buttons are clearly labelled too. If they can get it right for one product, why not for the Sony rear projection set? OK, that’s enough whinging. Let’s look at just some of the other goodies this otherwise very nice receiver has to offer. Other features Sets in this price range can be expected to have plenty of extra features and these Sony sets are not lacking. They have picture-in-picture and Teletext. Picture in picture requires an extra tuner, IF strip and video/audio demodulation as well as the PIP chipset but it is a very worthwhile feature on a large screen set. It allows you to watch two video programs at the same time and you can choose which sound feed you want. It is particularly satisfying when you are watching sports programs and you want to check what’s happening on another channel. When the appointed moment comes and you want to watch the program in the inset picture, you can use the joystick button to swap between the programs. Naturally, you can use the remote control to change the position of the inset picture. This is often desirable if you need to move the inset picture from one corner to another, to avoid it obscuring something on the main picture. Other related features are TWIN and Program Index. Twin allows you to watch two programs with the same-size pictures side by side on the screen. You can then use the joystick to increase the size of the main program, (ie, the one you are listening to) while the other is reduced. Again, on a large screen such as this, Twin mode works well because both pictures are still pretty large. Program index is quite good too. It shows the main program in the centre of the screen while stills from another 12 channels or sources are “tiled” around the border and are continually updated so that you can see their progress. Teletext is a feature that some people might perhaps regard as having little use but it does give access to the “closed captions” on many programs, for the hard of hearing. Apart from that, it does have the limitation that Teletext pages are rather slow to update or access if you want news or sports scores. However, if you want to check share prices, Teletext can be quite a bit faster than using your computer to log on to your internet broker. And it has the advantage that you don’t have to pay for a phone call! Teletext is also widely used to distribute horse and dog racing information. Moreover, with the mixed picture facility, you can have Teletext super- imposed over a watched program (admittedly only from the Seven network in Australia). Having talked about and used these additional features, I have to say that they are really the icing on the cake. They’re good… but as I said before, the main attraction of the Sony 121cm set is its big bright picture. An enjoyable luxury For my money, even if you don’t have or aspire to a full home cinema setup, a big rear projection set is an enjoyable luxury, provided you have a large room in which to view it. (To be frank, I don’t think the average-size Aussie loungeroom is really big enough to do it justice). And while rear projection sets are quite a lot more expensive than even the largest CRT sets, in real dollar terms they are not as expensive as the quite modestly sized sets that people bought at the advent of colour TV broadcasting about 25 years ago. Recommended retail price of the Sony is $8199. For further information, see your local video retailer or contact SC Sony on 1300 137 669. Sony’s DAVS300 DVD Combo Player The so-called “DVD DreamSystem” – this can form the heart of a home theatre system. Inside this relatively tiny (355 x 70 x 365mm) case is a 5.1 channel digital amplifier, an FM/AM tuner with 30 preset memories and of course the DVD/CD player. The DVD can be programmed to repeat the disc, the title or the chapter. The amplifier has 6 x 30W channels with inbuilt Dolby Digital, Dolby Pro Logic and dts decoders. Recommended retail price is $1699. The remote control at front is pre-programmed to cover a number of brands of add-on equipment, as well as this Sony. FEBRUARY 2001  61