Sony unveils two 52-inch Bravia LCDs

Monday, September 18, 2006

At the end of the last week Sony announced two new members of the Bravia LCD family. They have a 52-inch screen size, natively support 1080p and have three HDMI inputs with 1080p capabilities. Besides they both have Sony’s floating glass design that surrounds the display with a strip of glass on every side.

The models names are KDL-52XBR2 and KDL-52XBR3 with the main difference being their exterior appearance. The first has a high-gloss piano black bezel finish while the latter comes with a silver bezel.

This entails also a difference in their respective cost: the KDL-52XBR2 is priced $6,800 against the $6,500 required for the KDL-52XBR3. They will be on sale on November.

Speaking of tech innovations the LCDs employ the Sony exclusive Advanced Contrast Enhancer. This technology optimizes dynamically the contrast ratio (up to 7,000:1) and is a further enhancement on the on-screen contrast ratio (range of black and white visible contemporaneously on the screen) of 1,300:1.

This technology and its effect on the blacks (usually one of the weaknesses of this kind of displays) is one of the reasons behind the ascent in terms of sales for the Sony LCDs.

In addition to ACE these two new models also use the Sony’s BRAVIA Engine Pro processing system. The latter not only delivers great images when up-scaling from standard definition to high definition but according to the manufacturer also gives a clearer image when working with HD signals.

Lastly they have a built-in ATSC tuner, have three HDMI inputs compatible with 1080p (two on the rear and one on the front), a PC input, two HD component, one S-video and three composite inputs.

Exteriorly they come with the WCG-CCFL backlighting system that together with the Sony’s chroma signal processor should provide a better range of colors.

The company also added two new 1366 x 768 resolution models, KDL-40S2400 and KDL-32S2400, to the BRAVIA S2400 Series. They also use the ACE technology and the Sony BRAVIA engine to provide images as clear as possible. These two models will be priced $2,600 and $1,700 respectively and will be available starting from next month.

All the newly introduced BRAVIA models will be available on the Sony Style website and obviously at Sony Style retail stores and authorized dealers.