Digital Trends

Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR6 December 31st, 2008 | by David Elrich

Performance and Use

We love HDMI connections. One plug handling the chores of five makes for easy living. We connected a Verizon FiOS high-def HD cable box, and a Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray Disc player then walked through the set-up before watching some programming.

As with any major electronic device, the remote is your key interface. The supplied backlit control is decent, but just as we complained about the Pioneer’s Kuro, you really should get a better one with a $2,000-plus television. After all, this is Sony. Not Vizio, Westinghouse Digital or—Heaven forefend—a Polaroid. We at least expect a nice LCD readout, but that’s not the case here. It’s an elongated black candy bar shape with a fairly intuitive button layout, and access to up three additional devices (DVD, amp, set-top box). There’s also instant access to some key functions such as theater, sound, wide and picture (we’ll get into these shortly).

The KDL-52XBR6 has TV Guide On Screen, a free programming guide, but this has little use for most viewers since you’ll use the programming guide that comes with your cable or satellite box. You just skip it during the initial set-up and before you know it, you’re ready to watch television.

Just like the Kuro, this Bravia has video adjustments galore, although not high-end Imaging Science Foundation options. Sure, you can have an outside expert come in and calibrate your display, but you’re much better off financially using a do-it-yourself disk, and/or your eyes to make the changes. Like many HDTVs, the Sony comes set in the vivid mode as a default. This is a real no-no for movies, but you can use it for plain old TV shows—don’t worry we won’t tell. Actually, it was enjoyable watching Jimmy Kimmel’s face beaming from the screen in vivid, as it was for college hoops, or women’s volleyball on ESPN HD. But back to the tweaking…

The KDL-53XBR6 uses the XrossMediaBar (XMB) menu system that made its bones on the PS3, and is now found on most Sony video gear. It’s very easy to use, and gives access to five main menus: settings, viewing photos, listening to music, watching TV and accessing external inputs. Under settings is picture, where you choose the color palette of your choice. Under custom you can really go to town by adjusting backlight, contrast, color, hue, color temperature, sharpness noise reduction, MPEG NR, gamma, advanced color enhancer, and so on. If you find this too daunting, just choose between vivid, standard and cinema. There’s even a game mode.

There’s a similar litany of sound options, including S-Force Front Surround, for a so-so surround experience. Nothing beats a true 5.1-speaker system, but it’ll do until you hook yours up.

Using the Monster DIY disk, we made some adjustments from the Standard setting and—to our eyes—there was very little difference between the two, which is a good thing. We found this option to be quite good for HDTV and Blu-ray discs in a room with a lot of ambient light. Cinema was fine for BD movies in a dark room, and we switched between it and a Custom setting that tweaked every option available. If you’re here and making these adjustments, there’s really not much you’ll miss by having a pro calibration—sorry ISF diehards.

As noted, we watched some high-def TV using vivid for chuckles, then toned it down in other options as well as using cinema and custom for Blu-ray Discs.

The buzz regarding 120Hz refresh rates for LCD displays is valid. Smearing and comet tails are noticeable on older LCD HDTVs, but by boosting the frame rate on newer sets, this is virtually eliminated. During a replay of the Steelers-Titans game, the ball was a darting spiral—the way it should be. Uniform colors in the standard mode were right on the money. Watching the Dave Matthews Band on Palladia was another good experience. Close-ups of guitar strings were clear and distinct. And black levels, one of the most critical features of any HDTV, were very, very good, among the best we’ve seen for a tradition CCFL backlit LCD display. Plasma is still king here, but newer (albeit expensive) LED backlit LCD HDTVs are getting very close.

While watching TV, we also quickly moved through some handy keys on the remote. Hit picture and you get the main options (vivid, standard and so on) rather than going through the XMB. You can also adjust the amount of zoom (ours was kept at full). Theater will turn on a HDMI-equipped Sony A/V system and kick the picture into cinema mode. These were nice additions to an otherwise plain vanilla remote.