What Hi-Fi? Review confusion ?

Shimmyhill

Shimmyhill

Shimmyhill

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Well i am no fan of the mag but needed to kill 30 mins in the car (not driving) so picked it up. They reviewed the Sony Bravia X and gave it a good sponsored review as usual. However, didnt they rate the W series as the best screen in the world ever ever ever with blacks blacker than the pits of doom ?

In the review of the X (the better screen) they say Plasma still has better blacks and that it smears on Freeview.

Am i going mad or has the sponsorship momey just ran out ?
 
FrankJH said:
completely pointless thread or what?

Yeah What Hi-Fi isnt great by any means, but why litter the forum
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Many people are buying TV's on the basis of reviews, What Hi-Fi being the most 'respected' Also notice the amount of fawning over the Sony tv's - this is all generated by the mag reviews.

Remember the threads when 'Plasma Beater' eddition was out ?

Was merelu pointing out that not only are the reviews paid for and a discrace that they also can not even be bothered to be consistent in their advice.

But what do i care, go forth and buy the Sony, it will suit the owners well - big numbers and mag awards must make it great.

Delete the thread, nobody cares etc.
 
I don't see a problem. They review TVs against each other by size, so 40"-42" Plasmas and LCDs face off against each other. The X series was a 46" screen, so was not comparable to the W or the plasmas it was pitted against. ANd we all know different panels produce different results.

The W series was better than similarly sized Plasmas, not all Plasmas obviously, as it is the better technology, just a lot more expensive for similar spec-age.

The 46X was a little worse off than similarly sized Plasmas for Black level, but they approved it due to the spec and pricing for a large TV. I don't see the fuss TBH. You need to take everything in the context it was meant to be used. What Hi-Fi just seem to be poor at explaining themselves.

I like the magazine. I don't take everything it says in anyway, as they leaves large holes in places, and don't go into enough detail, especially in group tests. Like they advise you should see the product before you buy it.
 
dillingerdan said:
I don't see a problem. They review TVs against each other by size, so 40"-42" Plasmas and LCDs face off against each other. The X series was a 46" screen, so was not comparable to the W or the plasmas it was pitted against. ANd we all know different panels produce different results.

The W series was better than similarly sized Plasmas, not all Plasmas obviously, as it is the better technology, just a lot more expensive for similar spec-age.

The 46X was a little worse off than similarly sized Plasmas for Black level, but they approved it due to the spec and pricing for a large TV. I don't see the fuss TBH. You need to take everything in the context it was meant to be used. What Hi-Fi just seem to be poor at explaining themselves.

I like the magazine. I don't take everything it says in anyway, as they leaves large holes in places, and don't go into enough detail, especially in group tests. Like they advise you should see the product before you buy it.
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The point is the W blacks are not as good as Plasma regardless of size, people are saying if anything the X has better blacks than the W due to a better backlight.

The 'better blacks than a plasma' was a lie and the whole review a farsce. Having reviewed the better screen suddenly its not as good as plasma and smears. The W smears much more and that has been mentioend by owners.
 
Shimmyhill said:
The point is the W blacks are not as good as Plasma regardless of size, people are saying if anything the X has better blacks than the W due to a better backlight.

The 'better blacks than a plasma' was a lie and the whole review a farsce. Having reviewed the better screen suddenly its not as good as plasma and smears. The W smears much more and that has been mentioend by owners.
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trouble is you cant rule out the possibility that sony cherry picked one to send them

not all users have reported backlight problems and smearing

as has already been posted in the thread about the Sony 40W, people only post about the purchases when they have something to complain about generally. and there arent nearly as many complaints as purchases if the interest in the W in any way equates to the sales.
 
My point was there was a thread about this recently - or at least the WHiFI article has been mentioned in a thread regarding this Sony model.

The majority of people on here dont just buy off the say-so of one mag - they actually go and look at it along side others - which should make more of a difference, if they really like it enough to pay that kind of money while seeing others (even if they are all set up badly which a lot of department stores unfortunately do, its still a side by side test) then an article wont make much diff imho

The other unfortunate thing is that usually mag's dont always represent whats available on the street - ie some manufacturers give advanced models for reviews to a few mags and not others , and all of the reviews are written some way in advance, not always completely helpful to the punter
 
FrankJH said:
My point was there was a thread about this recently - or at least the WHiFI article has been mentioned in a thread regarding this Sony model.

The majority of people on here dont just buy off the say-so of one mag - they actually go and look at it along side others - which should make more of a difference, if they really like it enough to pay that kind of money while seeing others (even if they are all set up badly which a lot of department stores unfortunately do, its still a side by side test) then an article wont make much diff imho

The other unfortunate thing is that usually mag's dont always represent whats available on the street - ie some manufacturers give advanced models for reviews to a few mags and not others , and all of the reviews are written some way in advance, not always completely helpful to the punter
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I'd agree. But then viewing in shops is somewhat complicated aswell. I actually spent a whole day driving around stores to view TVs with a friend. We spent the most part of the day looking at 40-42" Plasmas and LCDs. And by far the Plasmas were probably better (but also a little more expensive anyway), but then the majority of stores I went to (Sevenoaks and the like in B'Ham) you could only see certain brands, as they didn't stock certain brands (most places seem to avoid Sony like the plague). So you end up in Currys doing a side by side comparison anyway, which is pointless. I looked at the Samsung F71, and nearly bought it from Sevenoaks, if it wasn't for the posts regarding overscan on AVForums, I'd have completed the purchase.

But there is no word on this TV in What Hi-Fi, or the Sharp 1080p screens either, so you either have to do side by side comparisons at Currys and the like, or go to 4 different shops to compare different TVs, and you just cannot say its controlled enough to make a perfect judgement. If only the politics of the TV business weren't so stupid. Currys needs to install a viewing/listening Room in every store TBH.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
I don't see the problem, add perforation to the pages and it makes perfect bog roll.
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:D quality :D

I must admit to having really gone off this mag, i used to really like it a few years ago but it really is selling out these days.

The sony thing is just a step to far, its so blatent its untrue, I havent listened to the so called all conquering £400 av amp but I did check out the 32 bravia sony tv and was decididly unimpressed, and I also made the huge mistake of buying off the strength of a review (stupid i know) when i picked up the supposed 'product of the year' the sony DVD HDD recorder, my word that sucked. it was sent straight back.

The only thing I still read it for is to let me know whats out there, if i take a fancy to anything, I go out and have a good look at the product myself and form my own decision.
 
kidloco said:
........ and I also made the huge mistake of buying off the strength of a review (stupid i know) when i picked up the supposed 'product of the year' the sony DVD HDD recorder, my word that sucked. it was sent straight back.
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Mind telling me the model you bought as I have been majorly impressed with my Sony 710 DVD / hdd recorder - I bought it when it was still the only freeview unit available over a year ago and its faultess , yeah ok its a little slow to change from dvd to hdd with disc in the drive but picture quality is great , recording options are wide ranging, DD output and componant and a reasonable size of hdd (160GB)

What did you think was wrong?
 
I bought the Sony RDR-HXD860S

first impressions were OK, looks like a nice piece of kit, not as sturdy as what hi-fi made it out but not to shabby at all.

Very easy to set up and use as well, the thing that let it down for me was in 3 areas.

DVD Playback - I was expecting it to match or better my 4 year old Pioneer 565a dvd player, it cost me £250 when I got it and it was very highly regarded at the time.

I used a Mark Grant HDMI cable to connect the sony player, and tried all 3 resolution settings, 1080i was by far the best of the 3 but you still had visable jaggies on things (i used CARS DVD to test) I even tried using the same scart cable as is being used for the Pioneer and that didnt help.

Freeview -

again really easy to use, same interface as with all sony freeview stuff, i used to have the little stand up sony freeview box and loved it. This however gave a really poor picture, very blocky and pixelated, no where near the quality of my internal freeview unit on my TV. I found it quite unwatchable, basically the normally excellent channels like bbc1 etc looked like the really carp ones,


Recording -

yet again, fantastic to use, but results not that great, HQ mode was clearly lower quality then the source, HQ+ did come very close of the original, and would be watchable if the source was better. does use allot more hard drive space though.




So all in all I wasnt very impressed, wasnt just me either, the missus was sat watching while i was doing all these comparrison tests and she could notice the differance in quality to. To be honest im just not impressed with any of these freeview recorders, I went out and picked up the highly rated one from rthe BIG food store, just a freeview tuner and 1 160gig HDD, no dvd etc, and again the freeview picture on that was rubbish.


In the end I am just going to go back to using my PC upstairs with a TV card (better quality then the sony DVD HDD) and using media centre I can record what I want, its not ideal as i have to make sure the pc upstairs is on and turn on the 360 but at least it gives me the results im after.
 
Did you by any chance consider that you just got a duff unit?

Not sure what size tv you are using (ie freeview will always look terrible on large tv's due to the low bandwidth used / high number of channels) but I can state with certainty that even standard quality recordings onto the internal hdd of my Sony recorder is easily a match for the live transmission and thats on standard bbc/itv as well as more 4 etc (displayed on a samsung hidef 32" tv) and just for reference I dont have hdmi on my recorder so Im using a reasonable quality componant cable

The other possibility is that for some reason the tv or dvd recorder arent in sync somehow and the hdmi is losing quality somehow

Sorry to hear you had bad luck either way, but I have seen decent results from this recorder (yours) so Im pretty surprised
 
DRZ said:
Couldnt agree more.
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Ditto. Makes expensive bog roll however.

I stumbled across a 1996 vintage What Hi-Fi the other week when clearing out the attic and the difference is all too apparent. Gone are the in-depth reviews, now you get two columns of flowery imprecise tabloid tripe. The obvious advertising bias is terrible, I've always taken the reviews with a small pinch of sale but the recent Denon and Sony fanboy antics I've seen beggar belief.
 
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