Sony Kdl 52xbr4 Turns on Then Off Again

A couple of years ago Sony abandoned plasma and bet the farm on LCD, and since then the company has consistently produced the best-performing flat-console LCDs bachelor, at least according to our tests. Of class, we've always seen ameliorate flick quality in plasma sets, and this yr is no exception, as the Pioneer PDP-5080HD, with its jaw-dropping black-level performance, earned our Editors' Choice award. Sony's 2007 loftier-end LCDs, the KDL-XBR4 series--represented past the 46-inch KDL-46XBR4 reviewed here--come mighty close, but once again fall short of the best plasma. This HDTV delivers the deepest, nigh realistic blackness levels we've measured on whatsoever LCD (with the exception of Samsung'due south LN-T4681F), and its color accuracy is also excellent, merely its real claim to fame is 120Hz processing. We found the furnishings of Sony's 120Hz mode difficult to discern at reducing movement mistiness, but remarkable at smoothing out judder--that telltale stutter largely responsible for making movie look more filmlike. If you actually want that kind of smoothness, which we found foreign for film but welcome for some other content, then plasma merely isn't an selection right now, and the expensive Sony KDL-46XBR4 makes an first-class choice.

Design
While we liked the looks of the KDL-46XBR4, nosotros're not ranking it among the near attractive LCDs nosotros've seen this year, an honor that currently belongs to the graceful Sharp LC-52D64U. Unlike the Sharp and many other apartment-panel sets, Sony's XBR4 series has a lot of front end-console real manor that's not devoted to the screen. Specifically, the rectangular viewing expanse is ringed past a thick bezel of black, wider on the sides than above and below. That bezel is surrounded by well-nigh an inch of drinking glass that's in turn ringed by a strip of argent. Remarkable touches include an illuminated Sony logo (information technology can be turned off) and indicator lights suspended inside the glass. Including the matching black stand, the KDL-46XBR4 measures 49.8 inches by 31.iv inches by 12.8 inches, while without the stand attached information technology measures 49.8 inches by 29 inches by 4.9 inches.

Sony's XBR models once again comprise the trademark edge of drinking glass effectually the edge of the frame.

As could final year's XBR2 serial, to which it bears an uncanny resemblance, the XBR4 serial tin can change color. For $300, Sony will sell you a kit consisting of a new bezel and a new matching embrace for the stand, changing the predominant color of the fix from matte black to velvet blackness, crimson cerise, Arctic white, sienna brown, Pacific bluish, or adjective-free silver. You can likewise guild a wall-mount kit--the official model is the $300 SU-WL500--if you'd similar to hang the panel on a wall.

The longish remote stands out as a model of ergonomics, and new for 2007 Sony added blue backlighting behind nearly every key. The clicker can operate three other devices, such as DVD players, satellite or cablevision boxes, and VCRs, and the company backside Blu-ray took care to equip its clicker with device controls for "BD" gear. The big, central cursor control falls naturally nether the thumb, and just plenty shortcut keys are available to quickly cycle through picture, audio, and wide (aka attribute ratio) settings. A convenient Options primal calls up a couple oft-used submenus, including picture and sound modes, picture-in-picture, and video processing.

We institute the many options of the principal "Xross Media Bar" menu unwieldy to utilize.

The Options menu is fifty-fifty more welcome because, like the KDL-46S3000 we reviewed earlier this year, the KDL-46XBR4 is saddled with the company's XMB (for Xross Media Bar) menus. Another attempt to provide people who shelled out that actress few hundred for a Sony with some sense of render on investment, the menu design is common to the visitor's AV receivers and game consoles, but on TVs it's not implemented nearly besides. We like the make clean await of the menus, their speed moving between selections and the text explanations that appear when you motility over a selection (cryptic though many may be), but we had plenty of complaints too. First off, we didn't appreciate having to scroll seemingly forever on the Settings menu to notice the items we wanted. 2d, when we landed on the correct selection, we would frequently mistakenly try to access it by hit the right cursor primal--a natural tendency given the card's orientation--instead of the key cursor primal. Tertiary, nosotros didn't similar having to access a submenu to explore the items within; on many Idiot box menus, but landing on the name of a submenu also displays the items therein. This pattern flaw becomes particularly bothersome because--as you lot'll find out if you actually have the patience to slog through the Features section in its entirety--the KDL-46XBR4 has more than adjustments than merely virtually any HDTV we've tested, and many are spread out illogically beyond many unlike submenus. Finally, we were annoyed that striking the Home central, which calls up the XMB in the first place, always defaults to the input option menu; we'd adopt it to return to the final particular we'd adjusted.

Features
Like most other high-cease HDTVs on the market, the KDL-46XBR4 has a 1080p native resolution, which translates to 1920x1080 pixels and enables information technology to resolve every detail of 1080i and 1080p sources--the highest available today. All other sources, whether HDTV, DVD, standard-def Boob tube, or calculator, are scaled to fit the pixels.

Much like the Toshiba 52LX177 nosotros reviewed earlier, the Sony KDL-46XBR4 incorporates a 120Hz refresh rate, meaning information technology updates the motion picture twice equally fast as standard 60Hz LCDs, which is said to eliminate movement mistiness (run across Performance for more). The set also offers a 10-fleck panel, which supposedly helps cut down on imitation contouring and enables the set to take advantage of Deep Color content, should any become bachelor. In addition to Deep Color, the set up is compatible with another HDMI one.iii feature, xvYCC (Sony calls it xvColor), which provides a wider range of colors than the standard HDTV colour gamut, providing you use xvYCC content. No xvYCC films are currently available, and nosotros expect the first such xvYCC-enabled content to come up in the form of video games.

The Options menu provides like shooting fish in a barrel access to picture controls and other major adjustments.

Motion picture adjustments: Sony's 2007 XBR models have the cake for sheer number of picture adjustments, spreading them inconveniently over numerous submenus. In the chief picture carte, settings for the standard brightness, contrast, and other controls can be saved individually to each of the four adjustable presets, labeled Standard, Brilliant, Custom, and Movie theatre. In addition, each of these presets is independent per input, so your contrast setting in Custom for Input 7, for example, can be different from Contrast in Custom for Input six. (In instance y'all're wondering, Sony likes to use the term "picture" to denote dissimilarity.) This provides a huge corporeality of flexibility in adjusting the film for different sources, lighting conditions, and user preferences.

There are iv colour temperature presets. The default setting for Custom and Cinema, chosen Warm 2, comes closest to the standard of D6500, but only the two least authentic are available in Bright. Nosotros appreciated the ability to adapt the color temperature via the user-menu RGB proceeds and cut controls in the White Residuum carte. Other basic movie adjustments include a 10-step backlight control, which adjusts the intensity of the light backside the screen (dissimilar the backlight settings of many TVs, Sony's are also independent per picture mode and input); 3 noise reduction settings; two DRC modes (only ane is available with non-HDMI sources); and a DRC palette command (which is disabled in certain circumstances). DRC stands for Digital Reality Creation, and we encompass its effects in the Performance section of this review.

Among numerous superfluous picture options, we appreciated the few useful ones such as full white balance (aka color temperature) controls.

There'southward an additional carte department labeled "advanced settings" that'south available in all modes except, once again, Vivid. In general, your all-time bet is to leave nearly of these off. The options include a four-step Black Corrector, which is best left to Off to preserve shadow detail; a four-pace Advanced Contrast Enhancer, which changed the overall brightness and seemed to dim areas nigh black as the image got brighter (and that's again best left off to preserve shadow item); a four-step gamma control, which should be set up to Off in dim environments for the nigh-linear ascension from black to white; a 3-step Clear White control that belongs in Off since the other settings just make whites look bluer; a four-footstep Live Colour setting that seemed to brand red and magenta more intense, although Off provided the best colour balance; and a 2-option Colour Infinite setting nosotros left in Standard for the almost-accurate principal colour reproduction. The four-stride Particular Enhancer should be left to Off with already-sharp sources similar HDTV and even DVD since it introduces unnatural edge enhancement, and at that place's another four-step control entitled Border Enhancer, which had no effect we could discern.

As if that weren't plenty, Sony has added some other carte du jour for the 2007 models that'south called Video Options, and contains notwithstanding more settings by and large related to video processing. The nearly important, ostensibly, is Movement Enhancer, which affects the set'due south 120Hz refresh rate; the CineMotion setting affects video processing of film-based content; a Game/Text fashion is said to optimize the picture for areas with fine lines (this fashion, which we did non test, also disables video processing to eliminate whatsoever delays between a gamer's fingers and the onscreen activeness); a Photograph/Video mode said to optimize the paradigm for still or moving images; an xv color infinite mode that engages xvYCC color (choosing the xvColor selection doesn't have any effect on standard, non-xvColor material); a photo colour infinite that allows you to choose between sYCC, sRGB, and Adobe RGB for digital photo brandish (over again, we measured no effect on standard HDTV colors in whatever of these modes, and didn't test them with photos); a Colour Matrix setting to cull between standard and high-def color spaces for the standard-def inputs; and finally an RGB dynamic range setting said to change the "luminance tone reproduction of the HDMI input color signals." We left most of these settings in their default modes, and nosotros'll cover the furnishings of the first two in the Performance department.

Perchance in apprehension of defoliation regarding all of these picture settings, Sony installed a "Theater" style that'due south accessible from one button on the remote. Information technology's designed to conjure the best video settings, according to the manual, and in practise pressing the push but changes the picture show mode to Cinema. Also, when the Television is connected to a uniform Sony audio gear like the STR-DA5300ES receiver, they can communicate via HDMI to turn on the receiver, switch off the Tv set's speakers and turn on the receiver'southward, and adapt book using the TV's remote.

Other adjustments & conveniences: The Screen menu offers a solid choice of four attribute ratio controls for both standard-def and high-def sources. Many of the aspect ratio choices, especially the Zooms, permit you to adjust the horizontal and vertical position, besides as the vertical size, of the onscreen prototype. We appreciated the unique selection to specify how the set deals with 4:3 programs, as well as the option to automatically detect broad-screen shows and properly size the movie. A Display Surface area command adjusts overscan; we appreciated its Full Pixel option because it showed the extreme edges of the paradigm, and didn't subject 1,080-resolution sources to scaling. Nosotros recommend choosing this setting unless yous see interference forth the edges.

In the General bill of fare, in that location'southward a room lighting sensor that changes the flick's brightness according to how much ambience light information technology detects. For this reason, nosotros left information technology off for critical viewing. In addition to the obvious effect of saving money on power consumption, the Sony's three-position Power Saver setting has a pregnant effect on movie quality. For optimal epitome quality nosotros liked the most power-miserly "High" position because it was all the same vivid enough for viewing in a darkened room, and information technology resulted in deeper black levels than the "Off" or "Depression" positions. Run into the Juice Box below for our power consumption measurements.

Conveniences abound on the KDL-46XBR4, starting with a picture-in-picture (PIP) way that has a side-past-side option Sony calls "P&P." Both are rather limited in that you can never scout two HDMI sources simultaneously, and in PIP mode the secondary smaller window can just display sources from the antenna/cable input. The company also includes freeze function as well as all-encompassing tuner extras like a favorite aqueduct list. At that place'south a congenital-in ATSC tuner but no CableCard--not a huge omission in our book, only still notable given the XBR4's high price.

Sony's back-panel jack pack offers two HDMI inputs among other connections.

Connectivity: The KDL-46XBR2 has plenty of connections although we were somewhat surprised to find "only" three HDMI inputs--ii around back and i on the side--as opposed to the 2007 number du jour, four. Sony also includes a pair of component video inputs; one AV input with blended and Due south-Video; another with only composite; and a VGA-manner PC input that tin handle resolutions up to i,920x1,080 pixels. The side console as well includes some other AV input with composite, along with a headphone output. Other audio outputs include one stereo analog and 1 optical digital audio, the latter for passing surround soundtracks from the over-the-air digital/HD tuner to an sound system. Finally, this set includes a connection for Sony'due south Bravia Internet Link module.

A third HDMI input can be found on the side of the television.

Performance
Considering the many aspects of moving picture quality, the Sony KDL-46XBR4 is the best-performing flat-panel LCD we've tested, outperforming the one-time king of the hill, Samsung's LN-T4665F, past a few thick hairs. We awarded that set an "8" in performance and the Sony gets the same score since it still falls short of the "9" we awarded to the Pioneer PDP-5080HD. Contributing to the KDL-46XBR's impressive picture quality are deep black levels, accurate color and solid video processing, although its standard-def performance could use some comeback.

Setup: Prior to evaluation we ready up the Sony for optimum viewing in our darkened theater, and bated from reducing maximum lite output a fleck (from nigh 60 to forty ftl), we didn't have to do much to conform the most-accurate Cinema preset. That's because our review sample's moving picture in both Custom and Cinema modes came uncannily shut to the D6500 standard for color temperature. We speculated during the Panasonic TH-58PZ700U review that perhaps the sample nosotros'd received wasn't quite representative of samples in the field, and in the case of the KDL-46XBR4 we received from Sony, we once more suspect that judicious engineers may have something to practise with our sample's accuracy. Regardless, the out-of-the-box color temperature on this Sony is amidst the best nosotros've measured, and after a just few tweaks to the white residue controls and other settings, namely gamma, power saving and standard picture controls, it was ready for evaluation. For our complete user-menu adjustments, click hither or cheque out the Tips & Tricks department above.

For our formal evaluation of the Sony KDL-46XBR4 we set it up next to a few competing HDTVs, including the aforementioned Toshiba 52LX177 and Sharp LC-52D64U--both 52-inch LCDs--likewise as a pair of 50-inch Pioneer plasmas, the PDP-5080HD and the PRO-FHD1, our current references for blackness-level and color respectively. We hooked up the Toshiba Hd-XA2 via HDMI and watched Flags of our Fathers on Hard disk drive DVD at 1080i resolution.

Blackness levels and color: Beginning up was a look at the Sony'due south black-level operation, and information technology didn't disappoint. According to our measurements the KDL-46XBR4 produces a deeper shade of black than any LCD we've tested so far, edging out the former LCD gnaw, Sharp's LC-52D92U, by a hair, although blacks were still lighter than the overall champ, Pioneer's PDP-5080HD plasma. In Flags the Sony's blackness-level superiority over the other three sets was readily apparent in nighttime areas, such as the letterbox bars, Ryan Phillippe's black sailor suit, and the shadows of the apartment when he takes the drunk Adam Beach indoors. Details in shadows were as good as nosotros've seen on any LCD, although over again nosotros felt the 5080HD had a slight advantage in showing the outline of Phillippe's confront in the dark, for instance.

As always the deep blacks lent dial to colors, and the Sony exhibited very adept color accuracy overall, from its nearly spot-on grayscale to its chief and secondary colors. Skin tones, such as the massed faces of the reporters mobbing the military men, looked accurate and realistic, although nosotros felt the FHD1 had a slight edge. The KDL-46XBR4 tended to go slightly bluish in the midtones, which washed out some of the reporters' faces a bit, for example, as well equally very dark areas, but the Sony was again meliorate overall than the other three sets (including the 5080HD).The greens of the shrubs inside the Drake hotel looked natural and lush, as did the bushes outside the flat edifice.

Video processing: We spent a good bargain of fourth dimension looking at diverse scenes and how they were affected by the Sony's 120Hz processing, and in full general the set did a improve job smoothing things out and still keeping them looking natural than the Toshiba, and both 120Hz LCDs severely outclassed the Pioneer'due south Smooth manner. (Update x/nineteen/07) We originally wrote that the Sony did not offer a 120Hz mode without smoothing, simply that's non the instance. Turning off its smoothen mode still keeps 120Hz engaged. Unlike the Toshiba, which tin can disengage 120Hz manner, the Sony cannot.

Engaging either of the Sony's ii 120Hz modes, Standard or Loftier, had a marked outcome on nigh every scene in Flags, just shots with lots of camera movement were the near obvious. When the camera pans over the beach in the middle of Affiliate 10, for example, the scene was nearly judder-free and uncannily shine in Standard, and basically completely smooth, with nigh no visible judder, in High. In both cases the photographic camera seemed similar it was on track, the handheld shots moving past the injured soldiers appeared less jerky and much steadier. Every bit with the Toshiba, we found the smoothing issue disconcerting in these scenes and in general throughout the motion picture. Looking at other moving-picture show-based sources, including the motorcycle hunt from Chapter 9 of Ghost Rider (which looked so unnatural and video-game-similar we couldn't assistance laughing) and the pan across the luncheonette at the beginning of The Departed, which again was looked too-smooth for its ain good, nosotros've come to the conclusion that for flick, judder is mostly a good matter. Subjected to the Sony'due south processing, most scenes looked like Telly instead of flick, and nosotros're so used to the latter expect that nosotros preferred to leave the Sony'southward motion enhancer set to Off when watching picture show-based material.

Nosotros also noticed a few artifacts produced past the Sony's processing, peculiarly in High style. During Affiliate seven of Flags the camera follows a airplane as it takes off quickly, and at a certain point in the pan the unabridged frame suddenly "locks in" to shine mode, and a palm tree in the foreground unnaturally becomes solid where earlier it had evinced judder. We saw that effect in both modes, but in High the plane also evinced a faint, decidedly unnatural "ghost" that followed behind it. Sony's engineers told us they'd designed the set to office primarily in Standard style, and that some artifacts might arise from the more aggressive smoothing action of Loftier. In a scene from Digital Video Essentials on HD DVD, nosotros also noticed (in both modes again) that the yellowish contend backside a pair of frolicking youths all of a sudden scrambled and broke up, and then resumed normal appearance the adjacent instant. Again, the scrambling was more credible in Loftier manner.

While Hollywood films generally suffer to our centre from Sony's smooth treatment, one expanse where we felt the processing was entirely welcome came in nature documentaries, specifically Planet World. This spectacular production includes numerous helicopter flyovers of mountains, caves, glaciers and the residual. In all of them judder was quite credible and, when seen side by side to the smoother Sony and Toshiba, quite unwelcome. The smoothed-out camera move and other motion throughout the series looked entirely more than natural in 120Hz mode. We attribute this difference to the, ahem, natural setting of the content; nosotros await nature documentaries to look as realistic as possible, whereas films should expect perhaps less so, and more than like film. Of course, equally we said with the Toshiba, you can disengage these modes at will according to preference, and only having them is a swell option.

The reduction of blur during move is supposedly another forcefulness of 120Hz processing, just as with the Toshiba we found it hard to find a existent example where the way cleaned up blurring considerably compared to the 60Hz Sharp. The virtually obvious case we saw was during ESPNHD's ticker, where the moving white-on-blackness words appeared slightly less blurry when we engaged the manner. People highly sensitive to motility blur might see more obvious examples in program material, but nosotros did not during our testing.

We didn't notice much difference, if whatever, feeding the Sony the 1080p/24 bespeak from our Toshiba while watching Flags, and the shine processing produced like results in all modes regardless of which 1,080-resolution source we chose. The Sony looked very sharp on all scenes, although not noticeably more- or less-so than any of the TVs we watched aslope--including the one,366x768 resolution PDP-5080HD, which looked every bit every bit sharp equally the 1080p Sony. Turning to exam patterns, the Sony resolved every line of the 1080i and 1080p horizontal resolution charts from the Sencore VP403. Similar nearly HDTVs we've tested, it properly de-interlaced 1080i video content and failed to do and then with 1080i moving-picture show-based content. We found information technology difficult to spot this failure in other program textile; fifty-fifty the RV grille from Chapter 9 of Ghost Rider, which ofttimes reveals improper de-interlacing, didn't beguile whatsoever artifacts. In case you're keeping track, the set failed the 1080i film de-interlacing exam regardless of whether 120Hz was engaged or not, and choosing either of the two DRC modes actually made the pattern and the pan effectually Raymond James stadium look worse, with more than artifacts, border enhancement and moire. (Update 9/28/07) When this review first published, nosotros mentioned a exam involving the HQV Blu-ray disc that criticized the advent of 1080p/24 sources. That test was incorrect, and as a result we see no reason to avoid using 1080p/24 fashion with motion picture-based sources on the Sony KDL-46XBR4.

Other performance considerations: One complaint leveled at last year'due south XBR2 models concerned uneven backlight uniformity, and while nosotros didn't discover untoward backlight problems on any XBR2 we reviewed, we take no reason to doubt that many samples of those sets did suffer from uneven backlights. In short, while the backlight on the KDL-46XBR4 nosotros reviewed was nigh as compatible equally whatsoever LCD we've ever tested, we tin can't guarantee all the XBR4s in the field will fare too. Our sample'due south screen remained even in all but the darkest fields, where nosotros noticed that the left and right sides of the screen appeared slightly lighter than the middle. This event wasn't noticeable on letterbox bars but only on the very darkest scenes, such as the black backside rolling credits or a scene from the Caves episode of Planet World where the screen was mostly black bated from a pocket-sized pinpoint of helmet light. With an LCD this expensive, information technology's worth mentioning that the Pioneers, and indeed all plasmas we've tested, exhibited substantially perfect uniformity.

While the Sony'southward image stayed truer from off-bending than only about any LCD nosotros've reviewed, compared to plasma it however done out when seen from the sides and above or below,and from extreme angles darker areas gained a reddish tinge. The effect was once more most noticeable during dark scenes; from our 7-pes seating altitude, for example, the blacks in the same cave scene appeared quite a fleck lighter when seen from just ane seat on our couch to either side of dead eye. Unless nosotros sat directly in the sweet spot, we didn't experience those excellent black levels we mentioned to a higher place. Unlike the Samsung LN-T4665F, the KDL-46XBR4's screen material is by and large matte and does not reflect much ambient room lighting.

Although nearly cable and satellite boxes convert standard-def sources to HD resolutions (and many, when set to output HD at all, must perform this upconversion), which can brand a Television set's standard-def processing a moot issue, we notwithstanding put the KDL-46XBR4 through our gamut of standard-def tests using the HQV disc on DVD connected via component video at 480i. Information technology did an average chore overall. In general, setting DRC to Mode 1--the only one available with 480i sources--or leaving information technology turned Off fabricated piffling divergence, although if nosotros had to choose, we'd selection the slightly softer, more forgiving (with low-quality SD sources) expect of Off. The Sony did resolve every detail of the DVD, and the shot of the stone span and grass looked as sharp as nosotros'd expect. On the other hand, the set failed to remove jagged edges from the moving diagonal lines or the stripes of the waving American flag. The KDL-46XBR4's noise reduction was superb, removing progressively more moving motes and other interference from the low-quality shots of skies and sunsets as we increased the setting from Off to High. DRC did thing during the 2:3 pulldown exam; the set up passed when we turned DRC off but failed when we engaged it, leaving those telltale curved lines of moire in the grandstands behind the racecar.

Every bit a PC monitor, the Sony KDL-46XBR4 performed like a champ. Co-ordinate to DisplayMate, it resolved every detail of one,920x1,080 sources via both analog VGA and digital HDMI inputs, text looked well-baked, and there was no overscan. The merely difference we noticed betwixt the analog and digital connections was some very faint interference in the highest-frequency areas of the horizontal resolution test pattern; we didn't notice it in whatsoever other areas or normal PC content.

TEST	RESULT	SCORE
Before color temp (20/eighty)	6434/6529	Good
After colour temp	6442/6505	Good
Before grayscale variation	+/- 111K	Skillful
After grayscale variation	+/- 127K	Average
Color of red (x/y)	0.636/0.329	Practiced
Color of light-green	0.284/0.603

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Source: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/sony-bravia-kdl-46xbr4-review/