[Zarch]

Well after the John Lewis price match fiasco (that turned out very well) I have now took delivery of my Sony KV32 LS60. Priced £839 from John Lewis Sheffield, price matched against JL Welwyn. (see John Lewis price matched thread for that story).

So here's my thoughts after a couple of days viewing.

Firstly, what a big and heavy bloody thing it is.

The delivery men couldn't get the box through any door to get it into my house.
They had to remove the set from the box in the back garden then bring the set in on its own with
the cardboard box sent off straight to the garage. (lucklily no rain on Friday!!)

Cabinet that came was the clear door version of the cab (i think the LS35 has the smoked doors).

Took about 3/4 hour to build and is very sturdy.... got the TV on top, thanks to help from our lass.
God knows how those of you who lifted it up on your own did it?? Have you thought of going on this years britains strongest man?? :-)

My main input devices are a 4 year old grundig GDS200 SKY digibox and a Toshiba 210 DVD player.

Hooked these up using my new Ixos 138 scarts (£29.99 from Empire Direct) and set up both devices to send out RGB and widescreen. So i can't tell you how much diffrerence the scarts have made. Should I have used old scarts first to try and see a difference??

Also plugged in the aerial from the roof.

Switched on the set. CLUNK!! what a noise it makes when you switch it on....

Buzzing?? Well just a bit... noticable at low volumes, but one of those noises you will hopefully just forget about as time goes by. phew, thats one worry out of the way then!!

Auto tuner came straight on and took 2 minutes to get all terrestial channels tuned in.. nice and easy.

Now onto SKY....
First thing I put on was SKY sports news for Gillette soccer saturday. Wasn't particularly impressed with the clarity of the text on screen. (ie all the results and scores). Didn't really notice any problems with scrolling text, but thought the text wasn't as clear as i would have hoped for.

So switched over to BBC1, wow, what a difference. The rugby was on and the text boxes etc displayed on there were absolutley spot on. and then noticed the picture was "wide". Watched the game for a few minutes, noticed no real problems with "blurring" or "smearing" that have been mentioned
previously.

Switched back to SS1 and the display went "smart", so played with the display button. 4:3, zoom etc.
Put sports saturday into 4:3 mode and the text looked much better, so the poor display of text must be down to the smart mode streching the 4:3 image to fit. phew, glad to find that out.

Put a bit of cricket on and did notice some blurring when really fast camera movement across the field. But I made a point of lookng for this sort of thing on my old 4:3 Sony last week
and you get a "blurred" picture on any TV when the camera pans that fast.

Watched the next footy match on SKY, sunday afternoon, purposely looking for problems (bad attitude to take really!!). Noticed slight blurring etc but as mentioned above, that is to be expected and is not noticable unless you are looking for it.

BTW, you may notice I watch a lot of sport!! LOL!

Onto Sunday night and the Wolves v Rochdale match on BBC2. UUUURGH, what a bad picture.
Much more grainy and blocky that the previous stuff i've watched over the weekend.
This comfirms the information discussed on the "Satelite" group that certain channels use more bandwith than others on SKY. So BBC1 more than BBC2 and Sky sports 1 more than Bravo/UK Gold etc.

Its disappointing, but thankfully there any many matches BBC2!! :-)

I wonder If newer SKY digiboxes have fixed some of these compression problems??

For TV system settings i used Squirrel Gods settings and have found them ok. I haven't had time yet to modify them, but have had no reason to either.

Onto DVD playback. I couldnt find any fault with DVD playback. The colours etc on Austin Powers were great, the sound was good too and the overall picture was spot on.

The sound coming out of my Tosh DVD was quiter than normal TV channels but my Tosh has always been queiter.... maybe a question for the DVD fourm??

I then put Monsters Inc on...... WOW! I know your not supposed to put animation on when showing off a TV cos it always looks good (well thats what the guy at the Sony centre told me!). But the display was quality.... if anything makes you happy that you've spent £840 on a TV its this!! :-)

A snag with the TV remote though is that even after entering the tosh code, hardly any of the buttons worked to control my DVD. Anyone got the Sony remote to work with the Tosh 210 DVD?

So after a few days I am VERY happy with the set. My initial fears over loud buzzing fromn the set and blurry pictures when watching sport have been dispelled. Much to my relief. Even our lass seems to like the set.... and that is one hell of a good point! (although she says its a bit BIG!) hahah!

I've not had time yet to play with the virtual dolby or noise reductions etc, etc. I'm sure all that will come in time.

I'd like thank each and everyone of you that have answered my questions about the set, scart leads, John Lewis price matching etc over the last few weeks as i've closed in on this set.

Looks initially like i've bought a cracker of a set.

Thank you all.

Cheers

Mick

Another satisfied LS60 owner Glad you like it Mick

[paulMK]

Thanks Mick

Mine is being delivered this Saturday.

general points if anyone can help.

Plenty of packaging sounds great, but I hope the actual TV goes through my front door (fair enough if it must come out of the box first.) I don't think the driver(s) are going to be best pleased if they have to bring it around the back It's a bloody long walk.

I have been reading on other threads about a DVD player deal? I heard nothing about that when I paid for the TV Can anyone tell me please about it? Mick did you get offered a cheap DVD player?

I am really hoping to be blown away by the RGB with my imported GameCube and DVD player. My 12 year old Sony 21" is still top-notch, but surely things have moved on a lot with RGB in that time?

Oh dear I have already assigned stuff to the 4 inputs. Come on Sony we need 6 Scarts!!! (oh and the cabinet is way too small.)

I will have something plugged into the side input all the time. Can you see the flap open when you look straight at the TV? What I mean is having the side flap open, does it distract you away from the picture - if you know what I mean?

Oh well, some buzzing I can accept (always had Sony) but any picture problems and it going straight back

I have a rather expensive stereo system (quite old though) that has 4 speakers, it is good enough for me - and I can't really justify a new sound set-up for DVD etc when I listen to CD's way more than I use the TV. But anyway what is the easiest way to send whatever I have on the TV to the Stereo? I assume there is some kind of sound-out on the back of the Sony??? Can I just run a set of phono's to AUX in on my stereo??? I hope so, as that would be bliss...

Regards

PaulMK

Originally posted by paulMK
I am really hoping to be blown away by the RGB with my imported GameCube and DVD player. My 12 year old Sony 21" is still top-notch, but surely things have moved on a lot with RGB in that time?

Get yourself some top quality scart cables and reserve judgement until you've fully tweaked the settings (the defaults are awful) and I'm sure you'll be chuffed

Originally posted by paulMK
I will have something plugged into the side input all the time. Can you see the flap open when you look straight at the TV? What I mean is having the side flap open, does it distract you away from the picture - if you know what I mean?

The side panel is pretty cool. You press it in and then wait as it slowly reveals itself

You can see it when you look straight on at the TV, but if your TV is placed a little to the right (e.g. mine is in a corner on the right of my sofa), then you won't see it.

Either way, it's pretty discrete and won't distract you away from the picture as it's located towards the back of the side panel

Originally posted by paulMK
what is the easiest way to send whatever I have on the TV to the Stereo? I assume there is some kind of sound-out on the back of the Sony??? Can I just run a set of phono's to AUX in on my stereo??? I hope so, as that would be bliss...

Yes, that's what you need to do, or you can take the phono outs from your digibox (if it has them, mine doesn't ).

One thing you should be aware of with the LS60 is that it doesn't retain your SPEAKERS OFF setting. You need to turn the speakers off so that it will output the L+R audio out of the phonos at the back and then you have to adjust the level required using the volume control on the TV. However, when you turn the TV off (or put in standby) and then turn it on again, the speakers will be active so you will have to turn them off again if you want to output on the phonos.

This is a tad annoying to say the least, but with everything else being so right with this set, it's a small price to pay. Of course, if you take the phonos out from your digibox/VCR, then it won't matter anyway! (You just turn the volume right the way down on the set and leave it like that so that the sound doesn't come out from the TV speakers - it will remember this setting between on/off sessions).

Hi we got my Sons KV32LS60 today from John Lewis Bristol (£839 with 5 yr warranty). Collected it from the shop as they don't do free delivery to Wales. Very impressed with the service, from entering the shop to putting the TV in the car 15 mins (only just fitted in the car). Got it home and also had to take it out of the box to get it through the door (same problem with my 32" Phillips w/s 8 yrs ago. Hard work getting it upto his bedroom but slightly lighter than the DX100 we took up there last week (it had to go back to Currys as the screen was knackered). Put it on my existing Hi-Fi/TV stand and plugged it in, very happy with the picture as standard. I will mess about with a few settings over the next few days but he watched Lord of the Rings and was impressed with the picture even the sound is quite good for TV sound (but only for a short while) had to fire up his Denon as it's no contest when it comes to TV sound verses D/D. All in all a happy purchase.

[Zarch]

2 weeks on.... so an update.

Still happy with the picture, had a slight tweak of the settings though as white on dark backgrounds looked too bright.

Although the quality of broadcasts from SKY really do vary. ITV seems to be the main culprit.

Finally noticed the "blurring" of horizontal scrolling text. Some end credits on a program last week. Looked pretty bad, but who wants to read them? It has to be zooming pretty fast to get the problem anyway, the scrolling text on SKY sports news is perfect.

Noticed a light flaw in my picture though.

When watching Sky Sports news and that scrolling text is going across. When the text gets to the far left of the screen it appears to get thinner just before it goes off the screen. (about the 1st cm of the screen) I have seen this type of problem on PC monitors, but can't remember if it can be fixed through menus.

I can't tell if the rest of the picture down that side does it, but seeing text there really shows it up.

Is this something that can be sorted out in the service menu on the LS60?

Also, the BBCi interactive logo in the top right can look blurred through SKY, even though the rest of the picture looks sharp. Anyone else noticed this?

And finally the BUZZING!! (see Sony buzzing thread too)

At first i thought i'd not notice it, but even when the volume is upto a quarter on the scale i can still hear it.

It appears to be coming from dead centre, right at the back.

I'm loathed to have to get an engineer out and god forbid they take the set away.

Any other LS60 owners had and engineer out to sort the dreaded buzzing? Did they fix it? how? etc.....

Cheers

Mick

Originally posted by mickwall
When watching Sky Sports news and that scrolling text is going across. When the text gets to the far left of the screen it appears to get thinner just before it goes off the screen. (about the 1st cm of the screen) I have seen this type of problem on PC monitors, but can't remember if it can be fixed through menus.

If you're in Smart mode, that's normal - Smart mode stretches a 4:3 picture at the edges to make it fill the screen.

[mallet]

Has *anyone* managed to get this TV into their house without taking it out of the box?

I must say I was impressed by the little "Sony" touch of the slow eject side panel. Spend £850 on a huge TV and get impressed by such a little thing!

Anyway, the buzzing.
When I first got mine I didn't notice it. Then I started hearing it. Then it went away. Now it seems to be intermittant, and never very loud.
Anyway, my Xbox drowns it out. lol.

Originally posted by mallet
Has *anyone* managed to get this TV into their house without taking it out of the box?

Yes, but mine's a 28". I doubt the 32" would've gone through my front door.

[lentini]

Originally posted by mallet
get impressed by such a little thing!

I wish that was the case for women

[astonbilla]

Guys, im on the brink of getting rid of my JVC and getting either the ls60 or the tosh strata.

However, last night in what home cinema i read at the back of the mag that the ls60 needs the picture tweaked? and they only gave picture 7 out of 10.

How good is the picture, also Squirrel - is the picture much better than your old JVC. My biggest concern is i might take a drop in picture quality - is the sony as detailed, is it sharper etc..

Thanks

Bill

The LS60 walks the floor with the JVC AV28R25 I had, there's just no comparison at all.

Forget mag reviews in Home Cinema - they slag off so much kit that everyone else rates, it's untrue. I think they just like to be different

What Video & TV (or whatever it's called now) gave the LS60 an outstanding review.

[astonbilla]

Thanks squirrel, do you know what score they gave or how they rated the pics?

Can't remember, but someone had the mag and posted the scores plus pertinent comments on another thread (may have been a JVC or Sony thread or something else) so if you do a search, I'm sure it will turn up

[astonbilla]

Thanks Mr God sir

[tom-m]

Just happen to have the mag (when it was called what video & tv) where they review the 28" version.

picture 4/5
sound 3.5/5
overall 4/5

"But most importantly its pictures are tremendous. They might not match the sizzling intensity of a Pixel Plus set, but they're extremely impressive"

Tempted.....

[astonbilla]

oh yes, more so now - but i can't decide between the sony and a tosh strata. I have a fs76 in the living room and its not bad and i know sony products well, but the tosh got great things said about its pic overall (problems withstanding).

I hate choice!