sony 70-inch kdl-70xbr3: the $33,000 lcd tv
January 7th, 2007 comments (2) stumble it! digg it! by: technabob
I’ve been a big fan of Sony’s BRAVIA LCD flat panel sets for quite some time. Now, so long as your bank account can take it, you can have the cream of the crop with their new 70-inch Bravia television, the KDL-70XBR3.
So what makes this television so special, and why would you want to spend as much as a new car on it? The new set features a number of improvements to image quality over standard LCD panels. For starters, there’s xvYCC color capability (Sony calls this “x.v.Color technology,”) which is supposed to the gamut of colors by 1.8x over the today’s color standards. The XBR3 also features 120 Hz refresh rate (aka “Motionflow”) with motion compensation, which should significantly reduce or eliminate motion blur and other unpleasant artifacts. The display panel is 10-bit 1080p native, and illuminated by LED backlighting.
The set also features a 178-degree viewing angle and Sony’s Digital Reality Creation v2.5 circuitry. Contrast ratio is rated at 7000 to 1, which is very good for an LCD (although Samsung is working on an LCD with a 50,000 to 1 contrast ratio, so there!) Now one thing that kills me is that while the Sony includes a reasonable number of HDMI inputs (3), the recently announced 60-inch Vizio Plasma comes with 4 HDMI inputs at 1/10th the price. With more and more devices sporting HDMI outputs these days, you’d think that a $33k set could throw in a few additional inputs.
So if you’ve just gotta have the biggest, baddest, most expensive toys, the new 70-inch Bravia LCD set might just be right for you.
filed under: video
January 7th, 2007 comments (2): stumble it! digg it! by: technabob
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technabob, I enjoy your review, but you really should comment that the retail price SONY lists for this TV is ABSURD to say the least, even with all the features you mentioned $30K for a 70in is RIDICULOUS even if you have very DEEP pockets, lets put it this way, RICH people dont get rich by buying things like this SONY TV, you should criticize SONY for attempting to sell it at this price rather than justifying what your getting for this price. Thats pretty poor on your part, at least say what would be reasonable for this model, if you can get a 65inch Bravia for say $10K then this model should be around maybe $12 – 15K that would make it a worthy consideration.
According to Sony, this model does list for $33k:
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&productId=11040914&storeId=10151
That said, I wrote this article back in January 2007, and street prices for the kdl-70xbr3 have since dropped to around $24k. Still, that’s a whole lot to pay for a TV in my opinion.
Pretty much all of the 70-inch LCD flat panels models out there retail for over $20k these days, regardless of the manufacturer. I too hope that the prices for these massive screens drop from their stratospheric levels, but for now you’ll have to settle for a 60 or 65-inch model if you want to hold on to your money.