Just when impatient, fickle techies (well, the Tone TV review team, if you must know) were starting to become bored with the lack of serious new goodies in the flat panel market, Sony has introduced something genuinely different: a 40-inch LCD that’s thinner than many of our bank balances, and which has most of its works in a wireless box.

You can put this box anywhere you like – even in another part of the house, if that’s your fancy.

Expect to see other manufacturers offering super-thin panels with or without wireless works fairly soon, but for now the spotlight’s in Sony’s corner. And as if to underscore its position as an early leader the company has introduced a second wireless range, the Picture Frame, that looks just like… you guessed it, a picture frame. It has a brushed chrome outer frame and a white ‘matte board’ fascia and can indeed be used as a giant digital picture frame when not needed to view television.

New Zealand is an early-adopter country for these full-HD items, which went on sale in Europe and the US around Christmas, and Sony’s seeing them as important high-end niche products; so much so that they will be rolled out at selected dealers only.

But as other manufacturers bring on wireless products and consumer interest grows, they’ll almost certainly become mainstream.

The panel of the 40-inch KDL-40ZX1 itself is a fraction under 10mm but total depth is 28mm. The Picture Frame is deeper at 58mm. Helping with the slim-down is the adoption of side-mounted LED technology rather than the more common backlighting to illuminate the screen.

A separate box containing the ‘works’ is the second reason for the slender profile. These are the first Sony panels to use 1080 wireless technology. Although a primary reason for going the separate box and panel route is to achieve the thin profile and simple lines, the arrangement also eliminates visual clutter in the vicinity of the panel. If you can move the box somewhere else the DVD player and home theatre receiver can be tucked away with it, along with all that damned cable clutter.

The Media Box, as Sony calls it, takes a 1080p signal from, say, the Blu-ray player, then downconverts it to 1080i for high-frequency 60GHz transmission to the panel, which can be up to about 15 metres away in typical surroundings. Electronics behind the panel then rebuild it as a full 1080p signal.

Some critics have pounced on this conversion process, saying that the picture will ultimately be degraded. Others, Sony included, counter that that’s not the case and that the picture is indistinguishable from one that has not been down- and up-sampled.

Meanwhile, Sony’s latest Bravia Engine 2 image 
processing is at work improving image quality frame by frame, boosting contrast and colours and reducing noise. Among the list of features, the 40ZX1 has 100Hz MotionFlow with image blur reduction to tame most image judder and motion blur. Anyone who has seen a 100Hz set next to a 50Hz model will know its advantages but, as an aside, Sony will be making a feature of its 200Hz panels during the year. (It’s harder to see the difference the extra 100Hz makes, 
but if you bury your head in the detail during action scenes, it’s there.)

The box is about the size of a typical Blu-ray player; in fact the Sony BDPS550 we used looks like it was designed to blend right in. The Picture Frame’s box is somewhat smaller, white, and designed to be a room ornament if you want – it can even be flipped on its side, monolith style.

There is a single HDMI input directly on the Sony KDL-40ZX1 and an additional three on the Media Box along with (among other things) a USB port for viewing photos.

The words “high end” and “nice” earlier in the article may have provided a hint that pricing isn’t as thin as the panels’ profiles. The 40-inch ZX1 lists at $9999 (other sizes are in the pipeline), while the Picture Frames are $7499 for the 40, $8999 for the 46 and $9999 for the fabulous 52-incher.

Tone was shown a preview sample at Sony’s Auckland HQ and had no opportunity to check the worries about signal degradation with side-by-side tests. However, we did have our Blu-ray reference DVD, Casino Royale, a film whose every nuance is now etched on the brain, and noticed no difference from ‘untampered’ 1080p.

Some have also criticised side LED lighting for a lack of contrast and less than excellent blacks, but these weren’t apparent in Casino Royale, which can be a real test of both.

PHIL HANSON

TECH SPECS

KDL40ZX1
LCD TV
$9999

KDL40ZX1
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Dynamic Contrast: 20,000:1
Frame Rate: 100Hz
Connections: HDMI x 4, PC x 1, USB x 1, Component x 1, S-Video x 1, composite x 1, headphone x 1
Dimensions: TV – 986 x 599 x 28mm (W/H/D without stand); media receiver – 280 x 72 x 286mm (W/H/D)
Weight: TV – 12.2kg (without stand); media receiver – 2.4kg

Contact

www.sony.co.nz

This Review is from Tone Issue #76.

What do you think?