STACK #199 May 2021

LIFE TECH FEATURE

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Sony Bravia XR – Ultimate Picture Quality

SONY BRAVIA XR Ultimate Picture Quality

Words Anthony Horan

A nyone who’s been keeping an eye on television tech for the past few decades will know the word BRAVIA very, very well. Sony’s in-house brand name for their boundary-pushing range of TVs since 2005, it’s long represented a level of quality that aims to go above and beyond the usual – and, Sony being Sony, that’s exactly what they’re managed to do with their 2021 range. One of the key benefits of Sony’s TVs has long been their industry-leading picture processing, which continues to set Sony BRAVIA TVs apart from other brands even when the playing field is otherwise level. The video sources we watch these days – whether it’s streaming, Blu-ray disc, games or broadcast TV – all run at different frame rates, and the way a TV deals with them is an essential part of overall picture quality. Nobody enjoys watching a movie that looks like it’s stuttering between frames, but the solution for that applied by some TVs can make a feature film look like a TV soap opera if it’s not done right.

into cinemas and homes – has given them plenty of experience at getting images onto your screen at home without compromise,

Sony’s long history with film and video production – the actual making of the films and shows, the cameras used to shoot them, and the tech used to bring the final product

and the BRAVIA XR series TVs deliver the next generation of smart image processing – because no matter how advanced the screen is, it’s only as good as the quality of the picture that’s sent to it. The 2021 line-up features two very different display technologies – the full-array LED-lit LCD screen on the X90J, and cutting-edge OLED on the A80J. There are advantages to each type of display – we’ll get to that in a moment – but both of them benefit from the same BRAVIA XR processing, which introduces what Sony calls their Cognitive Processor XR. Sony says that this new chip is smart enough to analyse the picture and sound in real time, programmed with an understanding of how humans see and hear, with the aim

Why is Picture Processing Important? All modern TVs use some amount of processing in order to get the images onto your screen while making the most of what it can do, as well as to display movies and shows with cinema-like smoothness. How good a TV’s processing smarts are makes a huge difference to overall quality.

24 MAY 2021

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