By Philip Wong, CNET Asia
16/01/2009
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/home_av/tvs/0,39037585,44091649p,00.htm

Now into its third run, the 2008 Sony Bravia X4-series is available in two flavors: The regular X450 and the HD digital broadcast-enabled X4500. The latter is the subject of this review as we pit this ultra-high-contrast, LED-backlit LCD against our reference Pioneer Kuro plasma TV. Will this S$10,999 flagship Bravia deliver deep blacks that can rival the king of plasma? We've the answer.

Design

The latest Bravia X4 has received a facelift that is quite unlike its predecessors. Gone is the metal bezel which is now substituted by a plastic piece in a sparkling midnight blue finish. Sony has further tweaked the original "floating glass" design. The new chassis sports see-through, albeit flimsy, acrylic sides that give its streamlined speakers and operating status LEDs a unique "in-the-air" effect. As if these are not enough, there's also a lighted Sony logo to liven up the clutter-free front. Furthermore, you can opt for an optional gold, black, brown or red shade on top of the stock silver speaker grilles to customize its appearance.

Another notable addition are its convenient front-facing, touch-sensitive controls. These glow white and can be programmed to fade automatically, seamlessly blending into the 50mm-wide frame. As for the auxiliary A/V inputs, Sony has HDMI, USB, earphone and other legacy jacks lined up on the left behind the speaker. This arrangement is fine for tabletop installation that makes use of its matching swivel stand, but is a potential hassle for wall mount considering the distance from the ports to the speakers. Removing the stand also comes with a caveat: This sacrifices its integrated cable tie which provides basic management for the snaking cords.

The remote has been upgraded with radio frequency technology without line-of-sight restrictions, but this comes at the expense of backlit buttons, standard in the old model. It doesn't help that the surrounding function keys are a little close to the directional pad. That said, these shortcuts are extremely handy for impromptu adjustments. For example, Option brings up a submenu of key A/V configs onscreen. What this ergonomic controller truly excels in is video switching. It is able to automatically filter inactive signal inputs to facilitate toggling, with a dedicated key each for selecting analog and digital TV channels.

Those familiar with Sony's PSP and PS3 products should readily recognize the Bravia's new XrossMediaBar user interface. This next-gen icon-based menu offers a more fluid navigation and tighter multimedia playback integration. This is achieved by a drilled-down, left-to-right display of data and well-structured settings. Additionally, plenty of tweaking options are available. These range from basic to advanced configurations covering everything from sharpness to SpyderTV-friendly white balance and 100Hz MotionFlow Pro processing. The only imperfection is a grayed-out Hue option even when the right signal is supplied.

Features

The 46- and 55-inch X450 and X4500 stand out from all the remaining 2008 Bravia LCD TVs with their RGB Dynamic LED backlighting system. This feature uses red, green and blue LEDs which enhance dynamic contrast to 1,000,000:1 to deliver deeper blacks and richer colors. Another key differentiator is the PRO iteration of its Motionflow function that offers both 100Hz motion enhancement and backlight blinking for sharper and more stable visuals. The last major upgrade is the high-end Bravia Engine 2 PRO video processor implemented across the new X-series.

For couch potatoes who love free-to-air channels, the KDL-46X4500's built-in analog and digital DVB-T tuners cover most TV broadcasts relevant in Asia. An added MPEG-4 video decoder further extends its program selection to encompass free-to-air HD content. Matching this flexibility is an electronic program guide and Dolby Digital surround sound support. The former outputs live TV program schedules onscreen, while the latter dishes out 5.1-channel soundtracks--either decoded externally by a home theater via digital optical audio output or reproduced through its powerful 44W dual woofer-loaded audio subsystem.

An Ethernet socket and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) compatibility complement the set's USB 2.0 port. Together, they allow direct MP3 and JPEG playback from a variety of USB devices as well as DLNA-certified media servers in your home network. As an alternative, you can consider the proprietary Digital Media Port addons including the S$159 TDM-BT1 dongle for wireless multimedia streaming from Bluetooth-enabled gadgets. Compared to the high-end Samsung, there're two notable omissions here: Provisions for DivX and Wi-Fi. The latter is implemented on the Korean panels via a USB adapter.

Faring better is the Bravia's full-featured and comprehensive connectivity options. These range from four HDMI 1.3 (one side) terminals to 1080p-ready dual component-video and analog PC inputs. The HDMIs also support 24-frames-per-second film-centric signals and the Bravia Sync function to interoperate Sony A/V products using the panel's bundled remote. Our only gripe is that Sony has built-in a common input for receiving both regular and digital broadcasts. This means having to manually switch TV antennas if you plan to catch programs in one or the other format.

Performance

In many ways, the new Bravia X4 has lived up to its reputation for broadcast TV quality. First off, the analog reception after some tweaking via its DRC and edge enhancement was superb. This was characterized by clinically clean, smooth and sharp pictures. Going digital pushes the performance envelope further with a rock solid stable presentation. Pixel blocking and halts were almost negligible for most Singapore MediaCorp channels. TV Mobile, in particular, was surprisingly near-DVD and was equally impressive in clarity with the 1080i-encoded HD5 broadcasting native HD Hollywood flicks.

Turning our attention to the synthetic Avia test patterns, the panel demonstrated its potential with nothing less than perfect color decoding and grayscale tracking. Having said that, there was mild image clipping observed under the wide aspect ratio. We fired up our Blade 2 DVD next and were greeted with deep blacks and revealing shadow details comparable with our reference Pioneer LX508G plasma. This lost out only in terms of viewing angle with a notable shift in color vibrancy watching programs from the sides. This strong showing continued in HQV benchmarks, especially for its upscaling sharpness, jaggies and noise suppression.

This Sony was also a beast when fed with 1080p24 Blu-rays. Besides an instant boost in fidelity, there was a pleasant film-like feel matched by warm hues in Iron Man. Switching to CG-based KungFu Panda yielded a strong depth of field and cunningly realistic skin and fabric textures. Touching a bit on motion, the pictures were generally smooth with some occasional judder on and off. Activating Cinema Drive Auto 1 mode will eliminate this problem, but not without introducing mild artifacts and "edgy" movements. For HD-HQV, it was a walk in the park for most cases, except for the Film Resolution Loss test.

To evaluate the Bravia's Game Mode, we played a few laps of Ridge Racer 7 and Need for Speed: ProStreet on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, respectively. This mode sharpened the graphics a little. But other than that, there were few differences considering its already crystal-clear and fluid 1080p performance even for component-video. For those planning to hook up the KDL-46X4500 to a computer, this panel delivered one of the best PC text output we've seen in months. Not only was the auto formatting spot on, small fonts were legible from a distance, while color gradation was extremely smooth without the slightest hint of banding.

This TV was equally brilliant for multimedia playback. It clocked 5 second to load our 8-megapixel JPEGs via USB and 7 sec through Ethernet, rendered in original aspect print quality. As for MP3s, they were equally articulated, presented in fine soundstage and tonally balanced sonics. Armed with subwoofers, sound piped out from the speakers offered plenty of tight solid bass perfect for action movies. This was well-balanced with crisp trebles and convincing stereo imaging, plus generous headroom since we were able to crank up to reference level at a mere 40 percent of the maximum volume.

Make no mistake, the latest Bravia KDL-46X4500 is a top-notch HDTV that puts out excellent pictures and soulful sound. The only reason we're not awarding it an Editors' Choice this round is due to its daunting S$10,999 pricing. This is S$3,000 more than the S$7,999 Web-enabled Samsung Series 9 that covers some of the Sony's omissions such as DivX and Wi-Fi support.