Sony unveils impressive new Bravia TVs

Sony held a media event in New York City on Thursday to showcase its new products, technologies and content partnerships — and Sync was there. In this blog post we look at its impressive Bravia XBR8 demonstration.

In a swank multimillion dollar artist’s residence in Manhattan, Sony introduced seven new Bravia XBR flat-panel LCD high-definition televisions, bringing its total Bravia offering to 30 models.

Most impressive were its XBR8 1080p models — specifically, the 55-inch KDL-55XBR8 and 46-inch KDL-46XBR8 models — which incorporate Sony’s "Triluminos" three-color LED backlighting technology for a greater colour range (by aligning individual clusters of red, blue and green LEDs opposed to traditional white LED backlights).

But it was the contrast of these LCD televisions, aided by Advanced Contrast Enhancer PRO (ACE PRO) local dimming technology, that had crowds gushing over its exceptionally black scenes. In fact, Sony had its KDL-55XBR8 LCD television beside a comparable-sized unnamed plasma television (actually, we peeked and it was a Pioneer) and the Sony set looked significantly blacker in dark scenes, which is no easy feat for LCD, yet retaining detail and colour around visible objects.

(Note: Pioneer held a similar demo a few weeks back, showing how much better its Kuro plasma TVs are against current-generation Sony Bravia LCD TVs).

The next-generation XBR8 Bravia televisions will be available by the fall, but Sony hasn’t confirmed pricing details just yet.