Sony BRAVIA XBR Series KDL-52XBR9
I bought a LN52A750 for 1260, enjoyed the TV for two weeks and loved it. Two weeks later I found KDL52XBR9 was on sale for 1600; couldn’t refuse the deal and got it PMed in local BB.
Put them side by side and watched Land of Lost Blu-ray for the night. I found myself liked Sony better for the shadow details in my dark home theater setup. Here is my 2 cents:
1. Samsung has better black which leads to more 3-D pop looking. This means it has to sacrifice some shadow details to gain it, at least for the A750 model.
2. The default for both of these TVs is meant to be brought up in a brighter room (like in the retail store, and yes Samsung would look stunning). The out of box default make Samsung un-watchable in my HT setup since it was to bright to begin with. Sony does the same but just a touch better. You’ll have to adjust the TV’ settings to fit your room’s viewing condition.
I used the settings people posted online for exact set for each TV as a starting point, and found myself like Sony much better for the eye constrain (Samsung is still too high of contrast and hard to get it adjust to show shadow detail w/o losing the 3-D pop). Don’t get this wrong, I loved my 2 weeks old Samsung but had to let it go for Sony (just my personal preference).
One thing I do notice is the Sony’s `Theater’ mode does exhibit very poor motion (mottle /blotchy) when it in dark scene, just simply too much enhancement. This match to what the negative commends I found online in regards to this TV. However, I don’t use the Theater mode. Instead I tweak and stay with the Custom mode and didn’t see the motion problem since.
Here are the settings I used for this Sony TV (credit to hometheatermag dot com:
Picture Adjust menu
Picture Mode Custom
Backlight 1
Picture 93
Brightness 51
Color 47
Hue 0
Color Temperature Warm 2
Sharpness Min
Noise Reduction Off
MPEG Noise Reduction Off
Motionflow Standard
CineMotion Auto 1
Advanced Settings
Black Corrector Off
Adv. Contrast Enhancer Off
Gamma 0
Auto Light Limiter Off
Clear White Off
Wide Color Standard
Live Color Off
White Balance
R-Gain -1
G-Gain -5
B-Gain -4
R-Bias -3
G-Bias -1
B-Bias -3
Hope this helps.
Reviewed by : Cheng S. Chan, Nov 5, 2009
