Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR7 – 240 Hz refresh rate is here to stay!

The 52-inch Sony KDL-52XBR7 is the first to offer a 240Hz refresh rate. Till now HDTVs came with a refresh rate of 60 Hz, then the high end LCD TVs came out with 120 Hz refreshing rate. Having 120 Hz instead of 60 Hz made the video processing smoother and reduced blurring in motion. And now the time has come for 240 Hz. The 52-inch XBR7 has a glossy black frame with same thickness on all four sides and the set is somewhat sleeker for a HDTV. Below the screen there are horizontal speakers in the form of a bar that extends along the width of the TV.
Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR7 weighs only 42 kg (or 94 pounds) and has dimensions of 49.5 in × 34.5 in × 13.6 in. The remote control provided with the 52 inch XBR7 isn’t very impressive. Even after being so bulky, the buttons on the remote are far crowded. It’s only plus point being its blue backlighting.
The menu system of Sony XBR7 is somewhat like the PS3. It has a load of options but the most of them would be unusable for a basic TV viewer – like the photo and music option that are to be used with the USB port, the Bravia Internet Video Link, and the networked media server for photos. A new way to access various inputs has been added in the form of a favorites screen. One can manually add favorite channels to be shown there and it also shows last viewed channels. XBR7 features very comprehensive picture controls including four picture presets. The presets can be adjusted independently per input. Noise reduction setting and three color temperature presets are also available in all presets. The picture can be further tuned with the white balance control, gamma settings, etc.
Sony has earlier claimed that the XBR7 has better video processing than the XBR6, but what can be generally seen is that the XBR7 lacks Sony's DRC settings that are found on XBR8 models. Various video processing options that are available in XBR7 include MotionFlow, CineMotion, Game Mode, photo/video optimizer. As always CineMotion affects the TV’s 2:3 pulldown performance and Game Mode disables the video processing altogether so that there is no delay between the game controller and the onscreen action.
As with their other HDTVs, Sony has included four aspect ratio modes in XBR7. The most recommended setting is the "Full Pixel" in the Display Area section of the Wide Menu. This eliminates any sort of scaling or overscan. There is a cool graphical display in the menu to show the differences between the various aspect ratio settings. A lot of connectivity options are available with the KDL-52XBR7 as with most higher-end HDTVs. It has three HDMI inputs on the back and one on the side. The back panel includes two component-video jacks, a VGA-style PC input, 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 is present on the side panel. A USB port is also present on the side that can handle photos and music. XBR7 also comes with an RS-232 port for use in custom installations.
There are few items that are missing from the Sony KDL-52XBR7. We would like to see them in the next installment of Sony’s 240Hz HDTV. The XBR7 has a very basic networking functionality. The Ethernet port provided on the back of the set allows it to work with media server software that is DLNA-compatible (for example Windows Media Player 11). It can be used to grab photos from a networked PC and display them on the TV's screen. A host of similar functionalities has been earlier seen in devices like PlayStation 3 and certain Samsung and Pioneer TVs. However, the XBR7 can't stream video or music via the network. If you want to stream video to XBR7, then you will need to purchase a Bravia Internet Video Link (BIVL).
The final verdict is that the KDL-52XBR7 is one of the better performing flat-panel LCDs. Sony’s LCDs have to cover a lot of distance to come at par with the best plasma TVs. The best feature of Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR7 is the enhanced frame rate of 240Hz.