Sony KDL-52XBR9 LCD HDTV Page 2

Unavailable menu items are grayed out, but the cursor stops at each one instead of skipping them. Also, when you reach one end of a list, you can’t continue in the same direction and go around the horn to the other end. Many times, I wished I could jump from the beginning to the end of a long list without having to scroll all the way through it.

Every time you enter the XMB, External Inputs is selected, rather than the place from which you last exited the menu. At least it returns to the submenu you left when you scroll back to the Settings menu, which is better than returning to the same item every time. However, I would much prefer it if Sony returned you directly to that item when you re-enter the menu system.

Because of this design, it takes at least seven button pushes to access the basic picture controls through the main menu. You can get to these controls quicker if you press the Options button. This brings up a menu of commonly used submenus, including the picture controls. Unlike the previous incarnation, the frame-interpolation controls are available here as well, which is a welcome improvement.

Setup and Testing
The KDL-52XBR9 displays above white and below black, which makes it easy to set the contrast and brightness controls. Calibrating the gray scale was easy as well, thanks to a full set of high- and low-level red, green, and blue controls in the user menu.

As I was measuring the peak contrast ratio, I noticed that the KDL-52XBR9 behaved like other Sony LCDs in my recent experience. After a few seconds of displaying a full-screen black field, the black level gradually dropped and then suddenly dropped some more—and this was with all of the dynamic functions disabled. Real-world program material rarely displays a full black field long enough for this to happen under normal circumstances, but I did see it in the long black fields at the beginning of Cars.

When I displayed gray ramps (smooth transitions from white to black) and moved off axis, the midrange looked distinctly yellow, with a band of pink at the lower end of the midrange. This was not evident at less than about 30 degrees off axis. Interestingly, the apparent black level rose more than the KDL-40V5100 in last month’s flat-panel Face Off, and bright scenes washed out somewhat less. Overall, however, the KDL-52XBR9’s off-axis performance was better than most LCDs I’ve seen.

When I looked at the Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark test Blu-ray Disc at 1080i, there was very little rolloff of the luma (black and white) or chroma (color) resolutions at the highest frequency. The TV never locked on to the 2:2 source-adaptive deinterlacing test, and while it did lock on to 3:2, it lost the lock before the end of the test loop. These tests were captured as progressive and then stored on the disc as interlaced, simulating the process by which 24-fps film and 30-fps progressive video are converted to interlaced for broadcast.

By contrast, the edge-adaptive tests were captured as interlaced information. The jaggies test looked fine, as did the sailing ship, which exhibited just a hint of jaggies in the gently curved yellow trim and rigging.

My final test of deinterlacing is the beginning of chapter 8 of Mission: Impossible III at 1080i. On the KDL-52XBR9, there was moderate moiré in the staircase during the opening pan. Shadow detail in the catacombs was quite good, and color was also excellent.

To check the performance of the KDL-52XBR9’s 240-Hz frame interpolation, I looked at some of the tests on FPD Benchmark, a Blu-ray Disc that’s not available to the general public. Overall, the set performed very well, significantly sharpening moving objects. It exhibited some smudging artifacts in one test pattern, but this was not evident in photographic footage.

A couple of weeks after my main evaluation, I had the opportunity to compare the KDL-52XBR9’s 240-Hz operation with that of the Toshiba 42ZV650 from last month’s flat-panel Face Off, which is pseudo 240 Hz (that is, 120 Hz with backlight scanning). The Sony was clearly sharper on motion tests—in fact, the Toshiba was no sharper than the conventional 120-Hz sets from the Face Off.

When I wheeled the KDL-52XBR9 into the main room of our testing studio and turned it on for this comparison, I immediately noticed that the picture looked distinctly green. My original calibration had looked fine, so what was going on here? Had the calibration drifted? Was it because I had calibrated it when it had been on for over an hour, whereas now it was not yet warmed up?

I talked with Sony about it and found out they’d sent me a preproduction unit that hadn’t been aged for at least 72 hours as production units are. As a result, the calibration was indeed susceptible to drifting. After I learned this, I left the set on for 72 hours and then recalibrated it.

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