The X900H TV Capabilities and Their Relation to the PS5

The X900H TV offers 4K resolution at 120Hz, but currently, there's some blur involved with this setting. Sony has told me directly that they're going to issue an update which should help eliminate the blur. Unfortunately, this means that we won't be able to showcase the clear 120Hz 4K gaming until sometime in the new year. However, when that does happen, we'll be sure to do it.

Another aspect of the X900H TV is its lack of support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM). The PlayStation 5 also doesn't support VRR yet, but Sony says that VRR will come in a future update. It's worth noting that both the console and the TV will likely be updated around the same time.

To test the X900H TV with its 120Hz capability, I pulled up Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which is one of the few games that offers 120Hz gameplay. Before I get into the test results, it's essential to ensure that the TV has the correct Enhanced HDMI setting engaged. To do this, click on the Settings wheel, go into Watching TV, then External Inputs, and finally, HDMI Signal Format. Make sure the HDMI signal format is set to Enhanced format (not Enhanced format with Dolby Vision). The TV should get this right automatically, but it's always better to double-check.

In the PS5, you might also want to ensure that Performance Mode is turned on as the default setting. To do this, click on Settings, Saved Data, Game App, and then select Performance Mode. Now, let's open Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in the PS5 and see what happens when we enable 120Hz.

When we go into the game, it appears that there's some brightness issues with a bright light in the background, which is quite annoying. However, despite this minor issue, the motion in the game is buttery smooth, even at 120Hz. The main subjects are perfectly crisp, and the blur effect is minimal.

Now, let's go back into Resolution Mode on the PS5, restart the console, verify that 120Hz is disabled in the settings, and then return to the game. What I notice now is that the lighting is better, with clearer HDR highlights. The motion isn't as smooth as before, but it's still quite good.

However, there's a clear trade-off between higher frame rates and image quality. In Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, we saw that choosing higher frame rate comes at the cost of image quality. Similarly, in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, we had to choose between higher frame rates or better image quality. This suggests that VRR might be a challenge for both the console and TV.

The takeaway is that on the short term, this is already a huge step up in gaming experience from what we got with the PlayStation 4 and its games. The user interface, color, detail, highlights, and gameplay are all excellent. In the near future, it will get even better, and there's so much unlocked potential here that I think TVs will be ready to handle it as well.

Future Updates and Their Potential Impact

Sony has told me directly that they're going to issue an update which should help eliminate the blur involved with 120Hz gameplay. This update is expected to come by December 31st, but unfortunately, this means that we won't be able to showcase clear 120Hz 4K gaming until sometime in the new year.

The X900H TV and PlayStation 5: A Killer Combination

When the future updates are released, it's likely that both the console and TV will be improved around the same time. The combination of the PS5 and the X900H TV is already a huge step up in gaming experience from what we got with the PlayStation 4 and its games.

Conclusion

The X900H TV offers excellent performance, color, and detail, making it an excellent choice for gamers. While there are some limitations, such as lack of VRR support, Sony has assured me that these will be addressed in future updates. With the PS5, we're already seeing a huge improvement in gaming experience, and I think that when game developers start tapping into the potential of this combination, TVs will be ready to handle it.

Additional Notes

Here are two other videos you might like:

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmy mom honey hi everyone i'm caleb dennison and welcome to the first in a series of videos that will pair the playstation 5 with a variety of tvs to see just what kind of gaming experience is possible with this next-gen console today we start with the playstation 5 mated to the sony x900h and folks there's a lot to talk about so let's just dive right in now ultimately we're going to dig into some of the settings on the ps5 and the tv take a look at the graphics and talk about the tv's picture performance but let's start with the elephant in the room which is that the playstation 5 is an elephant-like console in this room it's big yes but also very powerful i kind of like it standing vertically as we have it here but i can also see that novelty wearing off in time and ultimately putting it down into its horizontal orientation and trying to squeeze it into my entertainment center for now though i like to see its presence as a reminder of how bad acid is i'm also enjoying the controller quite a bit it feels good in my hands and the haptic feedback is next level when you are miles morales on a train during the spider-man games opening sequence you can feel yourself going over the tracks you can feel the cell phone buzzing your notifications in your hand it's a lot of fun now let's talk about setup the first thing you need to know is that the ps5 ships with an ultra high speed hdmi cable use it if you don't use an hdmi certified ultra high speed cable labeled to handle 4k 120 or 8k 60 then you probably will run into some problems if you're connecting to a modern tv that supports those and other features now i highly recommend connecting directly to your tv but if you do connect through an av receiver first make sure that receiver is also rated to handle 4k 120 or 8k 60 and you'll need another ultra high speed hdmi cable to patch from the receiver to the tv i would not connect to a soundbar at this point because that is bound to introduce some latency and it probably can't handle the bandwidth that the ps5 demands once you are connected and the ps5 is powered up pair your controller by plugging into one of the machines usb ports get online install some updates and follow the on-screen prompts i've already done all that but i do want to take a dive into some of the console's video settings let's take a quick trip into the ps5 video settings go down to screen and video under the settings tab you'll notice video output information at resolution transfer rate hdr and such all set to automatic and that's actually done automatically when you set up the ps5 the tv sends information to the console and tells it what it can do so automatic is a fine setting for the x900h or the z8h gonna be a little bit different with other consoles just as a note adjust hdr let's go ahead and click that this is something that happens while you're setting up the console it'll run you through this i just wanted to show you what you want to do and this will be hard for you to see on your screen but you want to take this little symbol and basically get it to where it's just barely visible you get three slides that you work with here what this does is it adjusts the peak brightness as well as the shadow detail that you're gonna get out of your hdr modes and you can always come back and adjust this later if you don't like what you're seeing out of your games one other setting that you'll take care of during the setup process is display area this is to make sure that you're seeing all the objects on the screen and no extra border basically that it is scaled correctly i've got it done just right here but you may need to make a change depending on your television so we've knocked out the ps5 video settings let's go into the tv's picture settings and by the way if you grab your sony tv remote and start clicking around you'll notice that you're controlling the playstation 5 so to get into the settings just click the little cog and then into settings we'll go down to display and sound and you'll notice that we are in game mode and that's because the tv sends to playstation 5 and automatically switch so we talk about auto low latency mode maybe the tv doesn't have that but it automatically goes into the game mode you'll see that we're at hdr already and that's because even the playstation's user interface is hdr and if we go down a little bit here i want to show you under the color that we're in expert one color temperature which i think is fantastic expert two is a little bit warmer but for me the vibrancy uh and color temperature that i get from expert one seems to be more in line with what i think the game developers were going for and plus the fact that that's the default and sony made it that way gives me some sort of indication that maybe we should just leave it that way at any rate the point is that the hdr game mode looks fantastic right out of the box on the x900h now the fact that the ps5 seems to be in hdr all the time had me a little bit concerned so i loaded up an hd non-hdr title on netflix i'm going to click on the settings go back into display and sound and what we're going to find is that we are still in game hdr which is not optimal i would prefer to use a cinema setting and we can certainly switch to that but again we're still in hdr because that hdr tag is constant this is where i think that an auto low latency mode paired with some other sony software could allow us to have non-hdr netflix in non-hdr it's that simple uh right now we're gonna have to do a little bit of playing around with the settings and hopefully when we come back with the z8h maybe there's a fix for that or a workaround but for now know that that's the case if your hd content doesn't look right that's because it's being presented in each hdr even though it isn't now you may have heard that the ps5 does not support dolby vision and i've verified this is the truth i've got a spears and muscle 4k blu-ray here telling me it doesn't support dolby vision or hdr 10 plus just basic hdr and you'll find the same in netflix dolby vision not an option now let's take a look at gameplay graphics and overall picture quality we'll start with spider-man miles morales so when you first start this game it'll ask you what kind of graphics mode you want to be in so let's take a look at that you've got fidelity which is a 30 frames per second mode with graphical features like rate tracing enhanced lighting and additional visual effects turned on temporal techniques provide an extra high quality picture from a 4k resolution base and that's the default now you can go to performance which is going to give you 60 frames per second but it turns off the graphical features like ray tracing enhanced lighting and additional visual fx and it's providing a 4k picture from a lower resolution base so to me this seems to indicate that you can either have 30 frames per second which may not look quite as smooth and may have a little bit of screen tearing in some cases but you're going to get a full 4k picture with a lot of great lighting and texture features whereas the 60 frame per second may drop some of that so i spent a little bit of time flipping back and forth between the fidelity and the performance section the 30 fps versus the 60 fps and there's no doubt the 60 fps is much smoother there are sections here like where the spider-man mural in the background stutters a little bit in 30 fps but in 60 fps it's buttery smooth the trade-off though seems to be really in the hdr and the lighting as uh the settings description suggested seems like there's a little less sparkle i'm not sure our camera is going to catch that for you but there were a couple of areas very tiny areas where i saw some active sparkle going on that isn't present when you're in the performance setting so i think you lose a little bit of visual dazzle but you gain a bunch of smoothness so let's talk about the x900hs capabilities now and where they may go into the future and how the x900h's abilities relate to the ps5 as it comes out of the box as of now the tv does allow 4k at 120 hertz though presently there's a bit of blur involved i'm going to try to show you what that looks like in a minute the good news here is that sony has told me directly they're going to issue an update which should help eliminate the blur anytime you play a 4k 120 hertz capable game when i shot this video the best sony could tell me was that that update is coming by december 31st which unfortunately means that we won't be able to show the clear 120 hertz 4k gaming until somewhere in the new year but when that does happen we'll be sure to do it now there's also the issue of the x900h currently not supporting variable refresh rate or auto low latency mode first i'd like to point out that the playstation 5 doesn't support vrr yet either but furthermore sony says that vrr would come in a future update and i have reason to hope that both the console and the tv will be updated around the same time okay now i'm pulling up call of duty black ops cold war because it is one of a handful of games that offers 120 hertz gameplay and i wanted to look into this talk of reduced resolution or slight blurriness that you get from a sony tv when going into 120 hertz situations before i get there i need to mention that it's very important that you ensure the tv has the correct enhanced hdmi setting engaged to do that click the settings wheel go into watching tv then external inputs then hdmi signal format and make sure hdmi 3 or 4 whichever the ps5 is plugged into are set to enhanced format not enhanced format dolby vision the tv should get this right automatically but just double check next in the ps5 you might want to make sure performance mode is turned on as the default to do that click settings saved data game app setting down to game presets and then select performance mode now we're in cold war and if we open game settings we can see 120 hertz is enabled well we can sort of see because from the screen there's this annoying bright light in the background which is ridiculous anyway going into the game just the intro here the motion is buttery smooth still a tiny bit of blur but that's the tv not the game and the main subjects are perfectly crisp 120 hertz good stuff now we're gonna go through these steps to go back into resolution mode on the ps5 restart the console go back into black ops verify 120 hertz is disabled in the settings and it is we go back into the game same beginning part of the game and what i notice is that the lighting is better the hdr highlights are clearly brighter the motion isn't quite as smooth but it isn't bad at all what i'm not seeing though is a bunch of blur or reduced resolution i understand it can happen but sony says the fix is coming so i'm really not worried about that what i do see here is a clear need to make some trade-offs on the playstation 5 side of things we saw it in spider-man miles morales where the choice was higher fps or better image quality again same thing here in call of duty with higher frame rate comes a slight hit to image quality i presume this is due to varying bandwidth limitations of tvs and whatever bandwidth capabilities there are with the ps5 the safe bet is to trade off data intensive high frame rates for image quality for a cinematic game i'll probably go image quality for a first person shooter i might go with higher frame rate the takeaway for me is that on the short term this is already a huge step up in gaming experience from what we got with the playstation 4 and its games from the user interface to the color the detail the highlights and the gameplay it's already excellent in the near future it will get even better and in the long term there is so much unlocked potential here so much so that when game developers start tapping that potential i think the tvs are going to be ready to handle it as well for now this is a killer combination with little improvements right around the corner thanks as always for watching everyone what do you think about the ps5 mated to the x900h and do we need to see these updates sooner than later drop me a comment down below like subscribe hit that notification bell and while you're here here's two other videos i think you'll like\n"