Sony Bravia KDL-55XBR8

Editors' note: The rating on this review has been lowered because of changes in the competitive marketplace.

Among LCD heavyweights, Sony and Samsung have been trading blows for the last couple of years at the top of the standings. This bout involves cutting-edge, top-of-the-line LED-backlit models most of us can't afford, but it's entertaining nonetheless. In this corner is the Sony KDL-55XBR8, the most-expensive flat-panel HDTV we've ever tested at CNET and possibly the worst deal per square inch since Sony's own XEL-1. In that corner is the Samsung LN46A950. In case you don't have time to read the complete blow-by-blow, we'll cut to the chase: the Sony XBR8 won. It delivered deeper black levels than the Samsung, along with less blooming and off-angle fade, two issues you'll have to read about below. But as good as the Sony is, it still couldn't knock out the champion of the superheavyweight plasma division, Pioneer's Elite Kuro, which still reigns supreme as the best HDTV overall and it costs less, even at 60 inches, than the 55-inch KDL-55XBR8. That said, if you have a room full of light, a penchant for video processing modes, and a bank account bursting with cash, you'll find the flagship Sony mighty appealing.

Design
Ever since the "Dumbo Ears" of Sony's KDS-60XBR2, the company has given its highest-end HDTVs a wider cabinet design than the rest of its lineup. The trend continues with the XBR8 series which also includes a 46-inch version. Compared with the less-expensive KDS-52XBR6, which mounts its speakers along the bottom, the XBR8 has side-mounted speakers that add a solid 3 inches to each side of the panel.

The speakers to either side of the Sony KDL-55XBR6's frame are seemingly suspended in midair by transparent panes of glass.

If you don't mind the protruding speakers, there's a lot to love about the rest of the XBR8's design. The black, vertical speakers appear suspended in space to either side of the TV by virtue of transparent panels, the right one bearing a few indicator lights. In case you don't like black speakers, Sony sells alternate-color grilles--silver, red, brown, or gold--at $129 per pair. A glossy black frame surrounds the big screen and a low-profile stand adds to the wide look. The only item interrupting the black frame is an illuminated Sony logo--and yes, you can turn off the blue light.

Including that nonswiveling stand, the Sony KDL-55XBR8 measures 58.6 inches wide by 33.8 inches high by 14.1 inches deep and weighs 120 pounds. Stripped of the stand, it measures 58.6 inches wide by 31.6 inches wide by 5.9 inches deep and weighs 105 pounds.

The remote control and menu system of the XBR8 are identical to that of step-down models like the XBR6. The remote was less-impressive than we expected. On the plus side, the remote is backlit with blue lighting, but most of the controls are for other gear. The extra controls that actually pertain to the TV are crowded into the top and difficult to tell apart. Too many buttons ring the main cursor control, and the remote's larger size requires a stretch to reach the volume and channel controls. It's still not a bad remote; it's just not up to Sony's usual standards.

Although still tedious to navigate, at least the PS3-esque XMB menu system finally groups all of the picture controls under the appropriate heading.

Here's how we mention that we find the PS3-like "Cross Media Bar" (XMB) arrangement a bit cumbersome to use on a TV. Unlike some less-expensive 2008 Sony TVs, which only have three horizontal selections among myriad vertical ones, the XBR8's menu adds two more selections, "photo" and "music," for use with the USB port, an optional Bravia Internet Video Link (which adds a "videos" choice) or a networked media server for photos. Of course, the majority of users probably won't access those functions, so we question the value of giving them so prominent a location in the menu.

One improvement is that most of the picture-affecting items are now grouped under the picture menu, and another is that the secondary "options" menu calls up a few more selections, reducing the need to visit the main menu much. Sony has also added a third way to access different inputs (in addition to the rightmost of three horizontal XMB items and a dedicated "input" menu), which consists of a new "favorites" screen that includes last-used inputs, favorite channels you manually add as well as a weird screensaver that can be programmed with images grabbed from a composite or TV input only. All told, this is one of the most varied and option-riddled menu systems we've seen. However, despite the Sony's sophistication, we prefer a more straightforward arrangement like that found on the Samsung LN52A650.

Features
The big story here, naturally, is LED backlighting. The XBR8 series represents Sony's first mass-market attempt at using LEDs, as opposed to standard fluorescents, to provide the illumination that powers the picture. Samsung got there first with last year's LN-T81F series and provides Sony's principal LED-backlit competition this year with the LNA950 series. Both companies' LED models offer "local dimming," which really improves the TVs' capability to produce a deep shade of black, but there's also a major difference between Sony and Samsung's LED technology.

The LED Dynamic Control menu option on the KDL-55XBR8 affects how local dimming is implemented.

Sony uses three colors of LEDs--two green, one each red and blue--for each of the 128 LED modules behind the screen of the 55-inch XBR8. Samsung, on the other hand, uses white LEDs and would not disclose how many modules it uses. Check out this blog post for more details on the different technologies, and the Performance section of this review for information on how the two compare.

Aside from those LEDs, the XBR8's list of features is very similar to that of the less-expensive XBR6 series. The KDL-55XBR8 has a 120Hz refresh rate, which helps clean up blurring in motion and works hand-in-hand with the company's dejudder video processing, dubbed "Motion Enhancer" in the menu and MotionFlow in Sony's literature. Unlike the XBR6 series, the XBR8 has three Motion Enhancer settings instead of two; we'll go into their effects below. Naturally this flagship set also has a native resolution of 1080p, the highest available today.

On the XBR8 series, Sony's Motion Enhancer dejudder video processing is available in three varieties.

Sony offers four picture presets, each of which can be adjusted independently per input, in addition to a Theater preset that can't be adjusted at all. Among the basic settings, available on all presets, is a pair of noise reduction settings and three color temperature presets. More advanced settings, which can't be adjusted while in the Vivid preset but can on the other three, include a white balance control to further tune color temperature, a gamma setting, and a few other adjustments that we generally left turned off for best picture quality.

We always appreciate having a full set of detailed color temperature controls.

The wave of funky proprietary video processing names continues. Sony touts the Bravia Engine Pro processor on the XBR8 series as an improvement over lesser models, such as the XBR6 that gets only Bravia Engine 2 instead. In the TV's menu, the Engine consists of a choice between two different DRC--Digital Reality Creation--modes, along with an adjustable Reality versus Clarity matrix, BE Pro's most apparent and confusing step-up over BE2. A Sony engineer told us that, in simple terms, increasing the Reality indicator creates more apparent resolution, while increasing the Clarity indicator increases noise reduction. Choosing the "Off" position for DRC bypasses the processing completely, preserving as much of the source's original quality as possible.

Sony's DRC video processing on the XBR8 adds a Reality versus Clarity matrix.

Other video processing options include CineMotion that, among other things, affects the TV's 2:3 pull-down performance, a Game Mode that removes video processing entirely to eliminate any delay between a game controller and the onscreen action, and a photo/video optimizer designed to do exactly that.

Sony includes four aspect ratio modes for HD sources, and a "Full Pixel" setting Display Area section of the Wide menu lets you make one of those modes display 1080-resolution content without any scaling or overscan. We recommend using this setting unless you notice interference along the extreme edges of the screen, which is the fault of the channel or service, not the TV. The menu has a cool graphical display that illustrates the differences between the various aspect ratio settings.

Like other higher-end Sony sets, the XBR8 ships with a rudimentary networking feature. The Ethernet port on the rear of the set allows it to work with DLNA-compatible media server software, such as Windows Media Player 11, to grab photos from a networked PC to display on the TV's screen. Similar functionality is available on numerous devices, including the company's own PlayStation 3, and from certain TVs, including Samsung's LN46A750 and Pioneer's PDP-5020FD. Unlike those products, however, the XBR8 can't stream music or video via the network, just photos and music, so it's much less-useful; to stream video you'll need to purchase a BIVL. Check out this blog post for hands-on testing of Sony's photo streaming, which we performed on a Z-series model.

Conveniences continue with an option we haven't seen on many HDTVs recently: the TV Guide onscreen electronic programming guide . TVG lets the Sony display a grid of information for antenna and cable channels, but people who tune primarily with an external cable or satellite box will probably use their box's EPG instead. In other words, TV Guide won't be useful for most KDL-55XBR8 owners, and we didn't test it for this review. The TV's picture-in-picture mode unfortunately restricts content in the secondary window to only the TV/antenna input.

The XBR8 is one of the first Sony HDTVs to offer the Home/Store option as part of its Energy Star 3.0 compliance. We were also pleased to see a two-step power-saving option that limited peak brightness and really cut down on energy consumption. As expected from an LED-backlit display, the KDL-55XBR8 is quite efficient, delivering one of the best watts per square inch results after calibration (0.11) that we've ever tested. Check out the Juice Box for details.

The back panel's numerous inputs include the standard HDMI and PC ports, plus a LAN port for networking and two Sony proprietary connections labeled DMex and DMPort.

Connectivity on the KDL-55XBR8 matches that of most higher-end HDTVs available today. Around back, we counted three HDMI inputs and on the side, the company stashed number four. Two component-video jacks, a VGA-style PC input (1,920x1,080-pixel maximum resolution), an AV input with S-Video and composite video, another with only composite video, an RF-style antenna/cable input, an analog audio output, and an optical digital audio output complete the back panel jack pack, while another AV input with composite video joins the HDMI port on the side panel. There's also a USB port that slows the TV to handle photos and music stored on USB thumbdrives.

Right-side inputs include one AV with composite video, a fourth HDMI, and a USB port for photos and music.

Sony also includes a port labeled DMex for BIVL and a few other proprietary accessories including a DVD player, a module with four extra HDMI inputs, and a wireless HDMI transmitter/receiver. If one proprietary jack isn't enough for you, the DMPort allows connection to even more add-ons, including a Bluetooth wireless audio adapter or an iPod dock.

Performance
The short story is that the Sony KDL-55XBR8 is the best-performing flat-panel LCD we've ever tested, earning the category's first-ever "9" we've awarded for performance. It delivers picture quality that's nearly as good as the Pioneer PDP-111FD, the best flat-panel performer period. Black level and color accuracy were superb, there's a cornucopia of video processing choices including the best dejudder mode we've tested, and bright-room picture quality was best-in-class. Our only gripe, and it's enough to cost the Sony the title, was its tendency to fade when seen from off angle.

Our standard calibration didn't end up too far from Sony's default Cinema picture settings. We reduced light output a hair, selected the Off position for Gamma, tweaked the white balance controls to bring the grayscale from its somewhat blue cast in Warm 2 to something much closer to the D65 standard. Afterward, the Sony tracked closer to D65 than any HDTV we've ever tested--as evinced partly by the miniscule 24K average variation from 6,500K--aside from the Pioneer PRO-111FD. We didn't miss having a color management system since the Sony's color points, providing we selected Standard instead of Wide color space, again came extremely close to the HD standard. For the gory details check out the Geek Box below, and for our full picture settings you can refer to the bottom of this blog post.

This review's image quality tests involved lined up a few other high-end HDTVs for our side-by-side comparison. To either side of the Sony KDL-55XBR8 were the Pioneer PRO-111FD and the Samsung LN46A950--the highest-rated plasma and LCD sets this year, respectively--and we also included the Sony KDL-52XBR6, the Panasonic TH-50PZ800U and the Samsung LN52A650 in the lineup. The Blu-ray Disc of choice this time around was Iron Man, delivered by our trusty PlayStation 3.

Black level: It quickly became apparent that the Sony was a serious challenger to the Pioneer as black-level champion. In dark areas of dimly lit scenes, such as the cave sequence in Chapter 3, it was almost impossible to tell which one came closer to the ideal of absolute black. The Sony displayed an inky depth in dark areas that lent superb punch and realism to the image, and easily outclassed the rest of the non-Pioneer sets in this regard, including the updated Samsung LN46A950.

Compared with the Pioneer, in very dark scenes the letterbox bars--those black areas above and below the image on 2.35:1 films like Iron Man--of the Sony appeared a hair darker, but in lighter scenes the Pioneer's bars were darker. That's because bright areas adjacent to the Sony's bars, such as day lit skies, bright desert ground or the white walls of Stark's house, caused the bars themselves to lighten a bit.

That's one reason we still give the overall black-level performance nod to the Pioneer. As a result of the Sony's dimming LEDs, which are also responsible for its superb black levels, dark areas right next to bright ones appeared brighter than on the Pioneer, an effect that has a very subtle negative impact on the overall "pop" of the image. We call the spillover of light into dark areas "blooming" in this case, and in Sony's favor, it wasn't nearly as obvious or as objectionable as we saw on the Samsung, but it was still apparent when comparing to the Pioneer. At the 28:44 mark, for example, a bright light in the upper left of the image made the letterbox bars appear a bit lighter near the light than on the other side of the screen. More obviously, the bright Iron Man icon during the disc's load screens also betrayed a bit of blooming in adjacent dark areas, as did the areas around onscreen cons like the small "play" indicator of our PlayStation 3. Again, the blooming is quite subtle, even vanishingly so, in the vast majority of scenes, and we never found ourselves distracted by it.

For what it's worth, we measured the black levels on a completely dark screen after calibration and found the Sony a hair darker: 0.001 cd/m² versus the Pioneer's 0.002. Nobody watches a black screen, however. With regular program content, the two TVs came as close as we've seen to reproducing the ideal black.

The Sony's shadow detail was also superb, nearly as good as the Pioneer was and better than the rest of the displays in the room. Between the two, we felt that some shadowy areas on the Sony were just a tad brighter than we'd like to see, a feeling backed up by the Sony's slightly brighter gamma (2.07 after calibration vs. the ideal of 2.2). You'd be hard-pressed to notice any difference outside of a side-by-side comparison though.

Much like the Samsung A950, the Sony's black level performance and color saturation fell off noticeably when we moved off angle by just one seat cushion on our test couch, while the plasmas stayed consistent. Check out Uniformity for the full scoop.

Color accuracy: Color on the Sony KDL-55XBR8 is nothing short of superb. As we mentioned above, its grayscale variation and primary and secondary color points hewed as close to the standards as any display we've tested, including the Pioneer. Good examples of its color accuracy from the film include the healthy yet delicate tone of Pepper Potts' face as she greets Stark after his ordeal in Chapter 6, the lush green of the bushes outside headquarters, the vibrant red and yellow of the final Iron Man exoskeleton, and the dead-on blue and cyan of the skies as Stark flies into action. It was easy to want to over-saturate the image, and the XBR8 with its deep blacks is more-capable of that than many HDTVs, but after proper adjustment, colors were excellently balanced and still as saturated as on the Pioneer. Overall, between the two, color was pretty much a tie.

The greenish cast we noted on the XBR6 was not in evidence, and color accuracy in near-black areas on the XBR8 was also excellent. It did tend a bit toward blue according to our measurements, but it was actually more-accurate than the Pioneer, which tended a bit toward red (Sony was 6,886K versus Pioneer 6,068K at 5 percent above black, if you're counting).

Video processing: The XBR8 offers myriad options in this department, so we'll start with our favorite: turning everything off, especially the Motion Enhancer dejudder video processing, and setting our Blu-ray player to 1080p/24 output. In that setting, as we'd expect from a display with a 120Hz refresh rate, the XBR8 preserved the natural cadence of film without any smoothing or the slightly jerky quality imparted by the 2:3 pull-down necessary for 60Hz displays. Comparing the XBR8 against the Pioneer (set to its 24p-friendly Advance mode) and the Samsung A950 (again with dejudder video processing off) it was impossible for us to discern any difference between the three during tell-tale scenes, such as the pan over Stark's workbench at the 27:43 mark.

Next we checked out the XBR8's dejudder processing. As we mentioned above, the set adds a "Clear" choice to the Standard and Smooth (formerly called High) dejudder options found on other Sonys. Of the three we prefer Clear, which keeps the most film-like look and adds sequential backlight firing to improve motion resolution, according to test patterns (see below). We do wish Sony had separated out the sequential backlight option, as Samsung does with its LED Motion Plus setting, to allow a user to engage sequential backlighting without dejudder.

As it stands, we preferred Off to Clear because, while Clear's smoothing effect is definitely the least blatant and video-like of any such mode we've tested, it still introduced objectionable smoothness compared with Off. That said, we can see how many viewers might prefer the smooth, less-juddery look of Clear, especially during camera movement such as the pan over the tool bench or the pan down from the fighter jet at the beginning of Chapter 6. Standard and Smooth, for their parts, introduced even more smoothing, and the latter evinced the same sort of artifacts we complained about in the XBR6 review. In fact, according to Sony, those modes are identical on the XBR8 and the XBR6, so for details on those settings, check out the video processing section of that review.

Sony makes a big deal about its Bravia Engine/DRC video processing working with 1080p sources, but since we're interested in preserving the look of the original source as much as possible, we recommend simply turning DRC Off for high-quality sources like Blu-ray. For lower-quality high-definition sources (not an oxymoron, unfortunately) you may want to play around with the DRC's Reality/Clarity matrix, which in our experience worked as Sony described. The Clarity adjustment was most useful in toning down some noisier HD sources. We tended to avoid using Reality because it seemed to introduce a bit too much artificial detail, although for particularly soft shots it lent a slightly sharpening effect that was less-egregious than typical edge enhancement. As always, we appreciate having the option to use these extras, even if we end up mostly leaving them off.

The DRC2 mode is designed for use with HD channels that show upconverted standard-definition material, but we didn't test this function.

In our resolution tests, the Sony performed relatively well. It displayed every detail of 1080i and 1080p still sources, and although it de-interlaced 1080i video-based sources properly, it failed the test for film-based sources regardless of which picture mode we tried. In motion resolution tests we got the best results in the Motion Enhancer's Clear mode, which measured just more than 1,000 lines--the best we've seen from any LCD aside from the Samsung A950, which matched the Sony's performance. In the Smooth and Standard modes the Sony delivered between 600 and 700 lines, while turning off the Motion Enhancer dropped the score down to between 300 and 400 lines. As usual, it was extremely difficult for us to discern any differences in resolution--motion, film-based or otherwise--between the various displays when watching standard program material as opposed to test patterns.

One final video processing note: we noticed significant delay with the Sony XBR8 compared with other displays (including the XBR6) when connected to the same source. We recommend that gamers take advantage of the Game mode, which bypasses all processing and eliminated the delay in our tests, to avoid frustrating lag between the controller and the onscreen action.

Uniformity: Like the Samsung A950, the Sony XBR8 displayed superb uniformity across the screen surface, with equal apparent brightness in all areas of the screen and without the brighter sides or corners visible on so many other LCDs.

The Sony KDL-55XBR8 doesn't deliver the same reference-quality picture described above when seen from seats outside the sweet spot directly in front of the screen. Off-angle positions as common as one seat to either side of the sweet spot resulted in blacks that are more washed-out and more-visible blooming, along with discoloration that turned black areas greenish. Uniformity also became worse from off-angle; the far side of the screen washed out and became discolored while the near side stayed relatively true. From seats further than one away from the sweet spot, the discoloration and washout became progressively worse.

The Sony's fall-off wasn't as drastic as we saw on the Samsung A950, which washed out even more rapidly as we moved off-center, but that set also didn't discolor toward green as noticeably as did the Sony. As always, the plasma displays in our comparison delivered basically the same quality regardless of viewing angle, while the florescent-based LCDs didn't wash out as quickly as did the XBR8 and the A950.

Bright lighting: When we opened our test facility's blackout shades to let the windows shine directly upon the screens of the TVs in our lineup--a worst-case ambient light scenario--the Sony XBR8 came out the clear winner. It preserved its depth of black and thus its color saturation better than any of the other models, especially the plasmas, which washed out significantly in comparison. The Sony also attenuated reflections from in-room light sources better than either plasmas or the shiny-screened Samsung LCDs. We always recommend placing your TV where bright ambient light doesn't hit the screen, but if you don't have a choice, the XBR8 (or another matte-screened LCD) will outperform any glass-screen plasma or glossy-screen LCD.

Standard-definition: The Sony KDL-55XBR8 is an average standard-definition performer. On our standard HQV test disc, we immediately noticed that DRC had a major impact on performance, and not always in a good way. We selected the default DRC1 and the TV showed significant artifacts and interference in the highest-resolution parts of the pattern; turning DRC Off delivered every line of resolution without those artifacts. On the flipside, DRC1 removed jaggies from the edges of moving lines and a waving American flag better than DRC Off, although still not as well as some other displays in our test, such as the Samsung LCDs. DRC1 also made details in the stone bridge and grass more apparent than did Off, especially when we cranked the Reality side of the DRC matrix--the trade-off was that edges looked artificial and somewhat harsh at high Reality settings, and in general we preferred the softer, if somewhat less-detailed, look of the default Reality setting of 20. The Sony's noise reduction was superb, squelching noisy skies and sunsets as well as any display we've seen and offering plenty of options--and if you don't want to engage DRC's Clarity matrix, which acted as a sort of noise reducer, you can always use the standard NR controls. Unlike the XBR6, the XBR8 passed our 2:3 pull-down test, correctly engaging film mode in both Auto1 and Auto2 CineMotion modes.

PC: As expected from a 1080p flat-panel TV, the Sony performed perfectly as a big-screen computer monitor, resolving every line of a 1,920x1,080-pixel source with no overscan or edge enhancement and delivering crisp, clear text. We experienced the same quality via VGA and HDMI connections.

Juice box

Sony KDL-55XBR8	Picture settings
	Default	Calibrated	Power Save
Picture on (watts)	239.83	139.88	165.85
Picture on (watts/sq. inch)	0.19	0.11	0.13
Standby (watts)	0	0	0
Cost per year	$74.23	$43.30	$51.33
Score (considering size)	Good
Score (overall)	Average

*Cost per year based on 2007 average U.S. residential electricity cost of 10.6 cents per kw/hr at 8 hours on/16 hours off per day.

How we test TVs.

See pricing