What exactly is the difference between the Sony Trinitron XBR line, and the Wega line? I mean, how good can a CRT get?
My father has a 36" XBR, and this TV is a downright work of art. I haven’t looked this closely at any other TVs, but I have never seen a TV with a better picture. How is the Wega line diffrerent? More features? Better picture?
Damn I wish our DVD player hadn’t been stolen. Cable doesn’t do this TV justice.
askol
The XBR series has a 1-D flat screen. The Wega is 2D flat. This means that you can put a ruler an XBR screen vertically, and move it left/right and not find any deviation in flatness. On a Wega, you can put the ruler vertically or horizontally, it is flat in both dimensions. It’s amazing, the effect is almost eerie in how it looks. You’d be surprised at how much difference the 1D flat screen makes over conventional tubes, and the 2D flat is just that much better.
I have a 32in XBR^2 and a 30in XBR, and these TVs are widely acknowledged as the finest damn TVs ever made. And then the Wega came out and blew them out of the water. I figure my XBRs will last until HDTV gets stabilized and then I’ll either get a Wega or whatever flat-screen (plasma? LCD? Laser projection?) becomes the dominant standard.
Some XBR’s must have been flatscreen (2D, that is), because the one I raved about in th OP is. the XBR’s at one of the Epcot exhibits were 2D flat as well.
So difference is just that the picture of a Wega is better?
I remember admiring a really nice Pioneer HDTV…the picture wasn’t any better than the XBR, just bigger. Maybe I’m just blessed with eyes that don’t need a 100G TV.
Don’t get me started on that Phillips plasma HDTV. The thing looks really bad if your too close to it.
askol
(I appologize in advance if I end up double-posting this)
Look really close at the XBRs, they are really really close to flat but still have a tiny curvature. The XBR^2 sets are even flatter. But the Wega sets are perfectly flat, they even look concave at first because the effect isn’t what you’re used to seeing on curved screens.
The picture isn’t really improved, the only improvement is a flatter tube. The image enhancement circuits in the XBR and XBR^2 are about as good as it gets, and AFAIK they use the same circuitry in the Wegas. The noise reduction circuits make an incredible difference in picture quality, even the lower end Sony units don’t come close.
I thought you were saying that the XBRs were barrel shaped when you defined 1D flat. 
I get what you mean then. I suppose that the Wegas are just one step closer to a convex IMAX screen.
askol
What kind of a barrel? A wooden barrel is curved 2D, it bulges in the middle, it has curved staves. If you flattened them out, it would be a perfect cylinder, which is curved only in 1D.
Basically an XBR screen is like a piece of glass cut from a really huge cylinder, it’s perfectly flat in the vertical dimension. Judging by eye it would probably be a cylinder about 30 or 40 feet in diameter, so it’s pretty flat. My XBR^2 is much flatter, it’s like a piece of a cylinder maybe around 60 or 80 feet diameter.
But the Wegas are just a flat plane of glass. 2D flat. Can’t get flatter.