Sony introduces high-end ZD9 TV series with HDR

[DJR662]

As of yesterday I am seriously considering buying the 65Z9D.

I can buy this for €4000 ($4236) now which to me is a good price for this fine piece of tech. That and the fact that it gets much praise in reviews and it will probably be Sony's last 3D TV for a while makes me want to get it.

Will need a UHD player to go with it and despite my heavy criticism and disappointment of the X800's lack of digital display, that will be my choice of player right now unless the X1000 will come out in the not too distant future (read "before the summer").

[gkolb]

Originally Posted by DJR662

As of yesterday I am seriously considering buying the 65Z9D.

I can buy this for €4000 ($4236) now which to me is a good price for this fine piece of tech. That and the fact that it gets much praise in reviews and it will probably be Sony's last 3D TV for a while makes me want to get it.

Will need a UHD player to go with it and despite my heavy criticism and disappointment of the X800's lack of digital display, that will be my choice of player right now unless the X1000 will come out in the not too distant future (read "before the summer").

My 65Z9D was $4999 on sale back in January, so if you can get one for €4000 that sounds fantastic! This is a very bright display, and the colors look great AND natural at the same time. Just very realistic.

For a player, I suggest the Oppo BDP-203, so you will have true Dolby Vision on both components. Sony seems to not be committed to DV on their players at this time, so why spend more on an X1000, than the Oppo 203 would cost? Just my recommendation.

Good Luck !

[mutelight]

Originally Posted by DJR662

As of yesterday I am seriously considering buying the 65Z9D.

I can buy this for €4000 ($4236) now which to me is a good price for this fine piece of tech. That and the fact that it gets much praise in reviews and it will probably be Sony's last 3D TV for a while makes me want to get it.

Will need a UHD player to go with it and despite my heavy criticism and disappointment of the X800's lack of digital display, that will be my choice of player right now unless the X1000 will come out in the not too distant future (read "before the summer").

I own both the 75Z9D and the 65" LG E6 and for the 3D performance, there is no comparison, the LG blows the Sony out of the water. On the Sony I get a lot of cross talk and flickering.

Outside of 3D, I find the Sony to easily be the superior display in every other regard, you really cannot go wrong. (OK well outside of off angle viewing and display thickness.)

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by mutelight

I own both the 75Z9D and the 65" LG E6 and for the 3D performance, there is no comparison, the LG blows the Sony out of the water. On the Sony I get a lot of cross talk and flickering.

Outside of 3D, I find the Sony to easily be the superior display in every other regard, you really cannot go wrong. (OK well outside of off angle viewing and display thickness.)

Which 3D movies did you try? Reason I ask is because on Dredd it was bad for me with lots of crosstalk. When I tried Passengers, it was amazing. People on avsforum are raving about the 3d performance.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by gkolb

My 65Z9D was $4999 on sale back in January, so if you can get one for €4000 that sounds fantastic! This is a very bright display, and the colors look great AND natural at the same time. Just very realistic.

For a player, I suggest the Oppo BDP-203, so you will have true Dolby Vision on both components. Sony seems to not be committed to DV on their players at this time, so why spend more on an X1000, than the Oppo 203 would cost? Just my recommendation.

Good Luck !

I know it might sound silly but I'm a Sony fanboy to be honest, I also like having as much as possible of the same brand. It will probably be the X800 for now and eventually the X1000 when it comes out, which I'm expecting to be DV compatible...

Originally Posted by mutelight

I own both the 75Z9D and the 65" LG E6 and for the 3D performance, there is no comparison, the LG blows the Sony out of the water. On the Sony I get a lot of cross talk and flickering.

Outside of 3D, I find the Sony to easily be the superior display in every other regard, you really cannot go wrong. (OK well outside of off angle viewing and display thickness.)

Yeah, I've heard about the outstanding 3D quality of LG OLED TVs. I already have the Sony 75X9405D and I'm quite satisfied with its 3D performance. I had to adjust the settings though as the flickering was also a problem at first as well as a rather soft picture.

Off angle viewing is and will never be a problem for me, I always sit right in front of the TV.

[mutelight]

Originally Posted by pbz06

Which 3D movies did you try? Reason I ask is because on Dredd it was bad for me with lots of crosstalk. When I tried Passengers, it was amazing. People on avsforum are raving about the 3d performance.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

I have only tried Jurassic World and MIB III but compared both of those movies between the two TVs and there is honestly no comparison as far as 3D performance but I truly like the Z much more overall.

Originally Posted by DJR662

Yeah, I've heard about the outstanding 3D quality of LG OLED TVs. I already have the Sony 75X9405D and I'm quite satisfied with its 3D performance. I had to adjust the settings though as the flickering was also a problem at first as well as a rather soft picture.

Off angle viewing is and will never be a problem for me, I always sit right in front of the TV.

Yeah, I honestly need to take the time to tweak the picture on the Z for 3D so this is purely out of the box performance. Previously my Panasonic VT30 and 60 were the best 3D performance I had ever seen and the LG even surpasses that.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by mutelight

Yeah, I honestly need to take the time to tweak the picture on the Z for 3D so this is purely out of the box performance. Previously my Panasonic VT30 and 60 were the best 3D performance I had ever seen and the LG even surpasses that.

I loved the (nearly) crosstalk fee images of the VT series but I found the picture to be too dark for my taste. Played around with the settings once but couldn't really get it to my satisfaction.

Is the Motionflow setting on your Z9D activated while viewing 3D? I had lots of flickering with the out of the box settings on my X9405D. Turns out Motionflow was activated (I prefer not to use it anyway, can't stand motion interpolation) which was causing the flickering, by turning it off the picture became flicker free. Coincidentally it is the other way around on my other Sony TV (65HX929 from 2011). Unbearable flickering in 3D with Motionflow setting off but flicker free when it's in use. Luckily the SOE is hardly, if at all, noticable.

Also I'm curious if the picture in 3D looks as sharp as in 1080p 2D on the Z9D? As I mentioned before the out of the box settings on my X9405D provided a rather soft picture in 3D while 1080p 2D was razor sharp. I had to activate Reality Creation and set it to "15" to get a decent 3D picture.

One final question: how is the OS and overal performance on the Z9D? My X9405D has excellent PQ (except for the local dimming error in HDR modus) but it's plagued by bugs such as menus that freeze while changing settings, no picture when selecting a different HDMI port, apps that suddenly stop working and ofcourse random crashes and reboots. Truly horrible especially for a TV in this kind of price range! Still waiting on Sony to fix this... I'm hoping the Z9D does not suffer from the same things?

[pbz06]

Originally Posted by DJR662

I loved the (nearly) crosstalk fee images of the VT series but I found the picture to be too dark for my taste. Played around with the settings once but couldn't really get it to my satisfaction.

Is the Motionflow setting on your Z9D activated while viewing 3D? I had lots of flickering with the out of the box settings on my X9405D. Turns out Motionflow was activated (I prefer not to use it anyway, can't stand motion interpolation) which was causing the flickering, by turning it off the picture became flicker free. Coincidentally it is the other way around on my other Sony TV (65HX929 from 2011). Unbearable flickering in 3D with Motionflow setting off but flicker free when it's in use. Luckily the SOE is hardly, if at all, noticable.

Also I'm curious if the picture in 3D looks as sharp as in 1080p 2D on the Z9D? As I mentioned before the out of the box settings on my X9405D provided a rather soft picture in 3D while 1080p 2D was razor sharp. I had to activate Reality Creation and set it to "15" to get a decent 3D picture.

One final question: how is the OS and overal performance on the Z9D? My X9405D has excellent PQ (except for the local dimming error in HDR modus) but it's plagued by bugs such as menus that freeze while changing settings, no picture when selecting a different HDMI port, apps that suddenly stop working and ofcourse random crashes and reboots. Truly horrible especially for a TV in this kind of price range! Still waiting on Sony to fix this... I'm hoping the Z9D does not suffer from the same things?

The Android OS can get sluggish (needs reboot every week or so) and navigating app menus can also just always be a little slow regardless. No freezes or display not showing though.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by pbz06

The Android OS can get sluggish (needs reboot every week or so) and navigating app menus can also just always be a little slow regardless. No freezes or display not showing though.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Okay, thanks.

If it were up to me though, the whole "Smart TV" thing would be a thing of the past. TVs should just focus on the one thing they were meant to do: deliver outstanding PQ, everything else should be optional.

[Geoff D]

Yep, couldn't agree more. Keep all that other 'app' shit in a player or STB or something.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yep, couldn't agree more. Keep all that other 'app' shit in a player or STB or something.

If it didn't interfere with the TV functioning properly, I wouldn't mind but all those apps and what not running in the background are exactly the reason why the X9495D is so messed up.

There a a couple of small "tricks" to disable some stuff but it's not nearly enough and by deactivating too many apps, the TV also suffers from not working properly.

[gkolb]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yep, couldn't agree more. Keep all that other 'app' shit in a player or STB or something.

I'm not really much for these TV apps, but my wife likes her Apple TV box and Netflix.

Anyway, we watched Stranger Things S.1 in HDR on our Z9D, had no dropouts or fumbles. Just a 3-5 second wait to start an episode from scratch. Then we watched Jessica Jones S.1 HDR, just great again. (Both on Netflix here in the states.)

Great picture on both, although I hadn't tried to dial in any settings back then. I saw Vincent T. walk thru his settings on a Z9D where he moved the blue back to -5, I also did this and the flesh tones seem more natural now to me. No other calibration tried to date.

I really think with the quad-core MeidaTek SOC in this TV it just chews thru any potential delays. The X1-extreme is 40% more powerful than the prev X1 Sony TV's. (I'm sure Geoff already knows this part, threw it in for everybody else looking in here).

Have not had to reboot the TV, have had it around 10 weeks now. Love it & and the Oppo 203, just waiting for DV updates, and DM 1 & 2 (pretty please).

[PaulGo]

I don't have the ZD9 but on my Sony Android TV I found two things that have gotten my three 850C TVs to work without any problems. The first thing to try is clearing the cache on all the apps which is available in the system reset menu, and the second thing which cured reboots and other annoyances was a system reset. On the 930C I have read Sony has instructed owners to do the system reset three times in a row to cure some problems.

[DJR662]

^^^ I know of clearing the cache, did that several times. Also did the "developer options" thing that can be done on Android phones too. Haven't heard of the three times in a row system reset, won't hurt to try it out I guess.

[DJR662]

Sometime next week I will happily join the 65Z9D club, got a X800 along with it.

[mutelight]

Originally Posted by gkolb

I really think with the quad-core MeidaTek SOC in this TV it just chews thru any potential delays. The X1-extreme is 40% more powerful than the prev X1 Sony TV's. (I'm sure Geoff already knows this part, threw it in for everybody else looking in here).

Have not had to reboot the TV, have had it around 10 weeks now. Love it & and the Oppo 203, just waiting for DV updates, and DM 1 & 2 (pretty please).

You are very lucky. I use an Nvidia Shield since my 75Z9D gets so slow with the Shield running circles around the Z. The only thing I use as far as built in apps is the RVU for DirecTV. (I would avoid it but I literally do not have room in my AV rack for a receiver.)

Unless I reboot the TV every couple of weeks, even trying to get into the picture menu can take ages.

[PRO-630HD]

There is still talk of light bleed into the letterbox bars with HDR content. How bad is this in person.

Batman vs Superman Ultra HD HDR Sony ZD9 - YouTube

It seems pretty bad from watching the video. Even with 600+ dimming zones.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by DJR662

Sometime next week I will happily join the 65Z9D club, got a X800 along with it.

Nice! I'm thinking about taking the plunge myself on a 65". As for all the apps and whatnot, I won't have the TV connected to the net at all (aside from doing a firmware update) so hopefully that will cut down on the processing becoming too distracted. I know that the Android platform itself will still be there so I can't escape any inherent bugs in that respect, but not using any apps might help. Now, if only I could find one for three grand...

Oh, and re: letterbox bleed this is a phenom I am familiar with on my own dynamic edge-lit Sony TV, so it's not an issue for me.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Nice! I'm thinking about taking the plunge myself on a 65". As for all the apps and whatnot, I won't have the TV connected to the net at all (aside from doing a firmware update) so hopefully that will cut down on the processing becoming too distracted. I know that the Android platform itself will still be there so I can't escape any inherent bugs in that respect, but not using any apps might help. Now, if only I could find one for three grand...

Oh, and re: letterbox bleed this is a phenom I am familiar with on my own dynamic edge-lit Sony TV, so it's not an issue for me.

I'm almost done going through the complete "Z9D owner's thread" on AVS (something I usually do, besides reading almost every review online, before taking the plunge on something expensive ) and from what I understand, this TV is not as badly affected by Android and apps as other Sony TVs (like my current 75XD9405). PQ, especially regarding HDR and the way local dimming works, should be really amazing from what I have read.

Disconnecting it from the internet is not an option for me, as the missus watches Netflix on the regular and will probably want to make use of other applcications also.

I managed to get a sweet price and got the TV along with the X800 for 4300 Euros (4546 USD/3650 GBP) including delivery costs and an ISF calibration to boot. This TV is for the bedroom and while I wasn't exactly planning on upgrading the bedroom HT to 4K this soon, I just couldn't pass on this deal.

I originally was planning on exchanging my 75XD9405 and trade it with the 75ZD9 (and keeping the bedroom HT 1080p) but the amount of money I had to pay along with the exchange was waaay too much so that wasn't gonna happen. I'm still a bit mad at the way things went last year regarding the release time between the 75XD9405 and the ZD9. If I had known the true flagship would be released a couple of months after the 75XD9405, I would have hold off and waited to buy the 75ZD9. Oh well, guess I can't really complain anymore when the 65ZD9 arrives.

[ray0414]

Originally Posted by jaaguir

Considering you already get and enjoy so much out of the format thanks to the synergy of your set-up and your skill in setting it up, I wonder how much more you expect to get with proper HDR? I mean, you're either going berserk with joy or it's going to be a disappointment for not being much better than what you get now, because of how you've stated your objective measurements of color and gamma seem to trail fine those of BT2020 and ST2084 (I'm probably messing up or misunderstanding some of the tech jargon).

Alot more. It won't even be close. I remember when Bruce had his sdr tv and we skeptical how much better hdr would be over sdr but he was sold he finally tried it.

The z9d blows away lower and mid level hdr tvs, so a 4 year old sdr tv will look ancient.