Here it is, the review you've been waiting for. Are all those Hz worth all those dollars? If you believe
CNET, the answer is "sadly, no." The 52-inch
KDL-52XBR7 was all the rage upon
its arrival, promising slick visuals and a dejudder processor that would wow, stun and awe. Unfortunately, it seems the set hasn't exactly lived up to expectations, as the deep black levels, accurate color temperature and color decoding, comprehensive complement of inputs and beautiful body weren't enough to overcome the breathtaking $4,200 price tag. Furthermore, the 240Hz refresh rate was found to offer "only minor improvements to picture quality," proving our fears of it being
more about marketing than performance absolutely correct. Bottom line? Take your dollars elsewhere -- chances are, you won't miss the Hz.
posted Dec 10th 2008 6:46PM
Yeah, the 240Hz is actually about 10 times more than a normal human eye can distinguish. For the dough, not necessary.
60Hz for half as much, that'd be a totally different story.
The human eye only detects 24hz? Citation needed.
It's actually a bit less for a film:
"The fact is that the human eye perceives the typical cinema film motion as being fluid at about 18fps, because of its blurring. "
However, for a sequence of images with larger differences from one to another without motion blur, a human eye requires at least 24Hz to perceive it fluid, but actually the more the better, hence the computer games run at higher frequencies.
That's why I suggested the 60Hz TV for playing, for example, hardcore FPS games like Quake III (a 60Hz game) or UT3 (also a 60Hz game).
Except you can't display 24fps content on a 60hz display without a 3:2 pulldown.
@Dave
How come?
I really don't get the low/high ranking logic around here... :/
so, im gonna put this comment up here at the top so people see it.
my question to you guys is this: if this sony bravia is a no-go for the price, what say you all to the new samsung ln-55a950? im seriously considering buying it.
if you guys could compare it to not only this guy, but maybe the pioneer elite kuro, that'd be great! thanks in advance!
240Hz is designed to IMPROVE motion resolution, actually 60hz vs 120hz, improve this perception of more resolution with movement.
If you recall some guy reviewed like 120 Hdtvs, and measured the motion resolution, most 1080p panels have very low motion resolution as low as 330 lines! vs static 1080p resolution.
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/09/29/hd-guru-evaluates125-hdtvs-in-the-resolution-loss-test/
240hz is not mean to improve response time or less jitter, or some sh!t, or the bigger the better marketing.. is desinged to improve the resolution lines in movement or have less resolution loss.
So like it or not, next year we will see more 240hz panels. eat it !!
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/09/29/hd-guru-evaluates125-hdtvs-in-the-resolution-loss-test/
now TFSU! :)
@loocas
Does 60/24 give you a whole number? hz/fps gives you the number of refreshes used for one frame. 60/24 tells us that it takes 2.5 refreshes for one frame in a 24fps film... which is bad.
120/24 on the other hand gives us 5 refreshes per frame, and because 5 is a whole number (whereas 2.5 is not), you won't have any weird flame blending like a 3:2 pulldown would do in order to accomplish the 24fps playback, thus meaning a much more fluid viewing experience.
120 is a very nice number. It's divisible evenly by 60, 30, and 24, which covers all three major frame rates in American and Japanese television.
Thanks for the clarification, Bryant. At first I didn't get what the "3:2 pulldown" meant.
Thanks, I appretiate it.
Sounds like a "Bag of Hz" to me.
@Tankyu
I'll give you a bag of Hz... (I love how everyone is still setting themselves up for that one!)
Isn't it that humans can only see 80hz? 120hz would be the limit... 240hz is overkill...
Hell no!
I have a CRT here, good old high end professional CRT.
Native resolution is 1280x768 @ 85Hz.
I can put is to 150Hz if I put it at 800x600.
At 150Hz, it's almost like seeing a peace of paper in real life, not quiet there... maybe anther 100Hz more would be same.
Between 85Hz and 150Hz there is a HUGE difference. And between 75Hz and 85Hz, well at 75 you have headaches. Let's leave it at that.
A good trick is to put 1 eye on the screen, and the other at the wall.... let the flickering begin (even at 150Hz)!
@Good_Bytes: "I have a CRT here"
There's your problem, and here's why:
CRTs have phosphors which quickly go dark after being stimulated. Essentially, this makes a CRT the same as a strobe light.
The eye's "refresh rate" (if it can be called that) isn't static. It varies, which means you're not always getting the fully bright image off the CRT every time. Thus, with a CRT, the refresh rate needs to be obscenely high to compensate for the strobe effect created by the phosphors. Want to test this? Wave your hand in front of your CRT.
On the other hand, LCDs don't have to worry about going dark after each refresh. So long as an electric current is going through an LCD pixel, it will hold whatever color it's currently displaying. Want to test this? Wave your hand in front of your LCD.
In other words, an LCD can operate at lower refresh rates without the human eye complaining about it, whereas a CRT must operate at very high refresh rates to deal with the strobe effect.
from someone who worked in the tv industry on the engineering side, i hated the 120/240hz stuff. totally ruins image quality. any way you look at it, it's predictive, so the camera changes direction and the software doesn't. they just don't have the bandwidth and memory available to make it flawless.
It's certainly not predictive.
it's very much predictive. the processor looks ahead to the next frame and creates a synthetic interpolation of what it THINKS is going to happen between the two frames.
If you look ahead at the next frame (future) and you generate the frame in-between (squeezed between the present and the future) then you can say you are estimating the motion.
Predicting involves generating the next frame with no prior knowledge of the future, as per your example of not detecting a camera changing direction. I can guarantee you that these processors estimate and interpolate, they don't "predict". And image quality suffers because of poor/inconsistent motion estimation in-between 2 or more frames - there's a subtle but important difference between estimation and prediction. It doesn't predict.
What did you work on specifically?
Every kind of technology is slowly climbing towards that brick wall, where the consumer won't need so much power or so many features and things just keep getting cheaper (especially with PC tech). As this happens, every major brand is going to try and dig up some sort of new "MUST HAVE" feature that jacks up the price so they can keep raking in the bucks off of the most minor upgrade.
Welcome to 240hz.
Yes, and computers only need 640 KB.
As long as there is testosterone, there will be crafty scientists developing new gadgets to exploit weak-minded nerds.
Come 2010 you'll probably see the 1440p sets arriving.
The real question on that will it be... LED, OLED, SED, or FED?
Oh I get it. Engadget = Hates everything Sony
And why wouldn't they now?
Observe, for your viewing pleasure, the Engadgetard:
Engadget gives a negative review to a single Sony product: "ZOMG ENGADGET HATES SONY"
Engadget says something good about an Apple product: "ZOMG FANBOOOYYYY"
@ AlexZander
"Engadget gives a negative review to a [single] Sony product"
Apart from you having the weirdest spelling for you name 'Alexander' your comment sucks and obviously you do not frequent this site. I would have thought for a group of people who claim themselves 'tech nerds' (engadget editors) they should actually be worshipping a company like Sony for it's work and ingenuity in the past but they don't, why?
@AlekZander Engadgetard
make sure you know what you're are talking about before you say it next time buddy
Um CNET did the review not Engadget...
CNet gave it 4 out of 5 stars, they even summarized it with "Overall, the KDL-52XBR7 is one of the better performing flat-panel LCDs we've tested".
"Engadget am bias" is justified in this case, the Engadget post here does not reflect the overall tone presented in the article it cites.
In fact, there seems to be an intentional effort by Engadget to fudge the review into reflecting their own personal agenda.
30 X 4 = 120
24 X 5 = 120
Do we really need more?
No joking!
This was my understanding as well. 120Hz matches up with 24, 30, and 60, the 3 rates we use. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see what 240Hz has to gain. We'd be better off trying to get all our content to 1080p, or hell, even HD period, before we start going to excessive refresh rates.
Does anyone have an explanation of what 240 gives over 120?
im confused. what is 120hz and 4ms response time??
is there a correlation? isnt response time more important? what does 120 or 240hz have to do with picture?
To be honest? Nothing except it refreshes faster which means it rids of "ghosting" etc... But then the response time doesn't make much sense. They should be in sync (refresh and response)... no?
Have you seen the review of Sony OLED TV (yeah, the 11-inch one) at TomsHardware?
You should. Latency near 0. Simply AWESOME. But expensive, small and with horrible colors and not a very long life. I hope coming OLED screens (32inches and higher) will be better in color reproduction and at the same price as current LCDs and that will be the greatest news to me.
@ Dark star:
Response time refers to the LCD pixel's ability to change states (colors) quickly. The faster the response, the less likely to be perceptible to the human eye... I think something like 8-10 ms or more is definitely noticable to most. An improvement from 5ms to 4? Not as much, but maybe. Refresh is how many times per second (Hz) you are receiving an entirely new picture. 4 ms == 250 Hz, 8 ms == 125 Hz, so it sort of correlates, but if one is slow, it can slow down fantastic performance on the other. Need both to work well independently.
@ everyone else
120 Hz I can understand, at a fps data rate into the TV, you are interpolating, or "guessing" at one frame between two received frames. I haven't seen it for myself, but I can understand how it could make for crisper movement. 240 on the other hand, as was stated above, is definitely overkill since a) the eye can't detect much benefit from 3x the interpolated frames anyway, and 2) you are guessing at THREE frames for every frame you actually receive, so it's easy to see how this could cause problems.
This should be fairly accurate, but anyone can feel free to correct me on things I may have missed. I'd expect even minor things will get me blasted in the typical Engadget commenter fashion...
Keep in mind the only advantage of 120hz over 60hz is the playback of films. Wii, PS3, 360, satellite and cable all use 30/60fps. Don't bother with 120hz or 240, they're just trying to make a big deal out of nothing. I actually find 120hz to look worse than 60hz, maybe it's just because I'm used to 60.
The old 24/30/60 myth is just that - myth, often based on flawed testing, and also not taking into account that there will be different results for different people. I've heard of tests with fighter pilots getting over 200, but I'd be willing to bet they're far outside the norm.
I can easily tell the difference between 24 and 30, so the 24 answer is completely ridiculous (some even claim as low as14-16!). I get *really* annoyed by the jitteryness of 24fps, even in a slow pan it's incredibly apparent to me.
As the poster above mentioned, 120 is the perfect number. Very few people will ever be able to tell anything beyond that, and it divides evenly into 24 and 30 (as close to 29.97 as makes no discernable difference).
Once you get the display to 120Hz, spend the rest of the money on intelligent LED backlighting, and you'll be getting some real value for your money.
Your Brain & Eyes can run significantly faster if you go into Fight or Flight mode.
It's funny that even after all this time, the flat TV manufacturers are still trying to redefine what makes a good image.
Ian may have a point about the whole weakest-link-in-the-processing-chain thing.
++ They used to say the same thing about Fluorescent Light Ballasts, that 60Hz was sufficient, but many people can detect the rapid on/off switching of those, so much to the point they get headaches.
The source material is only 24 or 30 FPS, so if you're unhappy with motion blur in it, the fake 120 FPS is not going to help. If you look at a moving object on a single frame of film, it's often blurred. Quickly showing it five times in succession is not going to magically remove the blur.
This 120+ Hz fad is just another fake gimmick. Your best bet is to inform yourself and others about it so it can die a quick death and companies can spend time working on legitimate advancements.
Jon - if you prefer the 60 to 120, that means that you can tell some kind of difference. :)
Sony lost their way the moment their founder passed away. While they have and continue to excel at miniaturization and build quality of their mid to high end gear, they have become less honest in the way they introduce and market their products.
A good example is the way they are promoting Blue Ray in the Sony showrooms, here in the UK. They present a side by side comparison of DVD vs Blue Ray using a split screen. The DVD image is of appalling image quality - - not even as good as a VHS image of 15 years ago. It has obviously been degraded.
And customers are supposed to believe this? It's not even necessary, Blue Ray is not massively better than DVD, but it is better, so why not let people compare to a genuine DVD signal?
The launch of the PS2 and PS3 were massively over hyped. I am no MS fan boy, but having seen the XBOX 360 and PS3 side by side on countless occasions, the resolution / lack of jaggies on the 360 blows the PS3 away. If in the UK, just pop into a PC World and compare racing games on each platform.
I thought the comparisons were over exaggerated as well, then I bought a PS3 and played the same DVD in the PS3 and then in the regular DVD player. IT LOOKS LIKE CRAP after seeing it in the PS3. Now I believe the comparison.
Your opinion would be worth more if it were on things you buy rather than marketing stands you observe as you walk past.
Or just buy a plasma for your main theater room watching like the rest of us smart people out here.
Okay, i'll chime in here.
It is a shame there isn't a 46XBR7.
The 40 is simply the best 40inch on the market.
The XBR6 have 50k:1 contrast.
The XBR7 has 80K:1.
The Guy who wants the 950, i can understand it since they deflated the price when the Uber XBR8s came out.
Still, in the Best Buy theater rooms, you can typically find the 55 950 VS the 40xbr7 and well, the XBR7 wins for some reason. Probably SONY's superior processing.
Walk in objectively and compare them. Its suprising as heck.
I havent' seen the 240 yet, but, if sony could drip that price to $3699 then we'd be talking a better review i'm sure.
All the SONYs seem to be on sale anyway.
Comparing the sets in a showroom = bad idea.
All of them are in Shop mode.
A true comparison would be with both sets being calibrated NOT comparing Dynamic (sammy) vs Vivid (sony)
My problem with 120Hz and those types of sets is this: I've yet to find one you can actually drive at 120Hz using an HTPC, or an outboard video processor. In every case (so far) you've been limited to whatever cheese-ball processor the display employs. This, IMOH, limits the appeal.
Has anyone seen a 120Hz or higher set? They look awful. "Film quality" looks like video-tape. The sets force an image that just isn't natural. I don't want HD content to look "better than" it looked in the theater. And that's what anything above a 60Hz set does. Film needs the 3:2 pulldown for proper imaging. It's the equivalent of 1080p30 since movies are shot at 24FPS. Which means that even on a 1080p60Hz set, you're getting the mathematic closest equivalent of 30Hz (or 1080i), and unless you're watching from 6 feet or less on a set that's 60" or more -- you can't tell a difference.
30 FPS, but film is not that! 29.97xxxxx whatever comes next.
From a mathematical standpoint, Bryant's lesson doesn't add up, because an even number divided by an odd number is not even...
So if the idea is that an odd number is ugly, then so would 240Hz / 29.97.
Besides, never buy Sony ;)
'"Besides, never buy Sony ;)"'
go die in a fire you flaming homosexual.
Since this set is essentially an XBR6 with 240 Hz then I hope Sony will offer a fix for the flickering backlight for the XBR6 - or really all Sony sets. It's clearly a software thing and should be easily remedied.