Sony planned a special 2024 TV launch event and held it on the grounds of Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles. At this event, attendees including myself saw demos of Foley effects and soundtrack mixing, as well as other impressive examples of the behind-the-scenes movie magic that happens in the studio. Sony's message is that the technology used in film and television production through its studio, professional camera and display divisions is trickling down into consumer products, and the event made that clear. It was announced.
The Sony Bravia 9 is the flagship model of the new Bravia series TVs, taking over the crown from the Sony A95L OLED TV and continuing the lineup in 2024. Interestingly, the Bravia 9 is a mini LED TV. This marks a change in direction for the Sony brand, which has regularly positioned OLED as the most premium technology in its TV lineup.
Sony's repositioning of Mini-LED to the top of the TV food chain is the result of two technological developments at the company. The first is the development of his BVM-HX3110, a professional mastering monitor with 4,000 nits of peak brightness. The BVM-HX3110 will be introduced in late 2023, replacing his BVM-HX310, the standard model for film post-production with peak brightness up to 1,000 nits.
The second development is the XR backlit master drive with high peak brightness. This is a new TV backlight technology used only on the Sony Bravia 9 mini LED TV. According to Sony, the company's next-generation backlight technology gives the Bravia 9 a 50% increase in brightness compared to the company's previous flagship mini-LED model, the Sony X95L, and a 325% increase in local dimming zone. Did. This has been achieved. Via a new, highly miniaturized 22-bit LED driver.
In addition to increasing the number of LED modules that can be placed in the backlight, the new driver's higher resolution (according to Sony, other TV manufacturers use 10-bit or 12-bit drivers) and advanced dimming By combining control algorithms, images can be displayed. It has a level of sophistication that is better than the best TVs to date. That's where Sony's new Bravia 9 TV demo, which I attended, comes into play.
sophisticated brightness
Sony's demonstration of the Bravia 9's XR backlight master drive with high peak brightness technology had two elements. The first was a comparison between the new Sony BVM-HX3110 monitor and his old BVM-HX310 with a movie scene mastered at 4,000 nits of peak brightness. Most movies are mastered at a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, but Sony says this is primarily a technical limitation, and the BVM-HX3110 eliminates that limitation. On both monitors he displayed 4,000 nits footage side-by-side, and his new BVM-HX3110 had a noticeable increase in highlight detail, making the image look noticeably more dynamic.
The second component was a stacked pair of Sony Bravia 9 TVs installed side-by-side with a stacked pair of Samsung QN90C TVs, the company's 2023 flagship mini-LED model in the US. The top-lined TV's LCD panel had been removed to reveal the “raw” mini-LED backlight (see photo above). Looking at a series of video clips, the “resolution” of Sony's backlight is noticeably higher, thanks to the more granular local dimming performance of the XR Backlight Master Drive. There was also a punchy level of brightness, which can also be seen in the image shown below on the regular, non-dismantled versions of both TVs. This brightness makes highlights pop more dramatically and colors appear brighter and richer.
Equally impressive in the demo was that the Bravia 9 had virtually no backlight blooming effects in the transition between bright and dark parts of the image. Backlight blooming is a common visual artifact on LED-based TVs (even those using mini-LED technology). And that's the main reason why OLED TVs, which have panels with self-emitting pixels that generate their own light, have a picture quality advantage over LED TVs.
Mini LED Mastered
In another image quality comparison conducted by Sony at the event, the Bravia 9 is placed alongside the company's 2023 flagship QD-OLED models, the Sony X95L and Samsung S95C. In the comparison, we also used Sony's BVM-HX3110, which displays the same image, as a reference point. Of the three TVs, the Bravia 9 most accurately tracked the image on a professional mastering monitor.
Sony hasn't revealed peak brightness specs for the Bravia 9 TV, but its ability to accurately reproduce highlight and shadow details in movies mastered at 4,000 nits makes this TV a statement piece for HDR. As Sony's new mastering monitors are introduced into more production facilities and filmmakers and cinematographers begin to push the limits of what's possible with this format, TVs that can handle it will have an advantage.
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Sony's move to mini-LED for its flagship TVs shows the company's confidence in the technology and its ability to compete effectively with OLED, with developments such as the XR Backlight Master Drive. His 2024 OLED TV turned out to be the brightest yet, with the new Samsung S95D's peak brightness coming in at just under 1,800 nits. But the new Samsung QN90D mini LED model is even brighter, reaching up to around 2,000 nits.
There's only so much OLED manufacturers can do to boost brightness beyond current levels, and the display technology may have reached its peak with the latest generation of TVs. We haven't measured the Bravia 9 yet, but Mini-LED is capable of higher brightness than his OLED technology, and that's clearly what Sony had in mind when planning its new flagship. In the future, we expect to see movies with even wider dynamic ranges, and mini-LEDs with their high peak brightness capabilities will be well-positioned to accommodate that.
