IFA 2008 - Sony's New Bravia Flat-Screen TVs

Floating Design, Motionflow, Digital Reality Creation, Deep Colour – you have to hand it to Sony, they’re hard to beat when it comes to creating highly marketable technology buzzwords. At this year’s IFA, Sony is introducing two new Bravia LCD TVs that are meant to secure the Japanese company’s reputation as a manufacturer of high-quality TVs.

The X4500 series will offer both 46 and 55 inch models. According to Sony, the RGB dynamic LED backlighting with local dimming is one of the highlights. It allows the processor to control individual LED fields, and either dimming them or shutting them off completely as needed. By using red, green and blue LEDs (RGB), Sony aims to achieve a wider colour gamut than with conventional white LEDs.

The Motionflow PRO 100Hz technology doubles the refresh rate by calculating interim filler frames during fast moves or pan shots and integrating them into the signal. All X4500 models sport four HDMI connectors. Additionally, Sony claims to have improved playback of movies recorded in standard definition. Using Digital Reality Creation (DRC) version 3.0, the image is scaled up to 1920 x 1080 pixels.

The Bravia Models of the W4500 represent the upper mid-range of Sony’s TV spectrum and will be available in 40", 46", and 55" variants. Although their feature list is a shorter than that of the X4500 series, their price tags will be a lot lower as well. While the top model of the X-series, the Bravia KDL-55X4500, will cost a full €6300, the KDL-40W4500 will be priced at a much more affordable €1700. Of course that’s still a good deal more expensive than certain second-tier-brand models you can find at your local electronics store, so we’ll have to wait and see whether the premium will translate into better quality when the new models hit the shelves around the end of October.

Sony has set up its IFA stands in expo hall 4.2.