Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR9 LCD HDTV Review - Formats & Media

Formats & Media Summary
• Can handle all types of HD signal • Photos, music and video can be played back from USB or from a network server • Can play YouTube and other video sources • Some of the included video sources are just clips
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Formats (10.5)

The KDL-52XBR9 can handle pretty much any sort of video signal you throw at it, from analog standard definition video up to a full 1080p signal. It can also handle signals in Sony's own wider x.v.Color space, which has a wider color gamut than the HDTV standard. However, this will only provide a real benefit with a DVD or Blu-ray player that supports it, which most do not.

Photo Playback (4.0)

The KDL-52XBR9 can display photos from a USB device, from a DLNA server on the network or from a Flickr account using the Yahoo! widget. We found that this was easy to use: you use the main menu to select the photos to view and them move between them using the directional keys. It's a no-frills approach, though; you can scroll through the files, but you can't sort them by date or create slideshows. 

You can see thumbnails for photos on the USB drive in the Xcross menu interface.

Music & Video Playback (3.0)

A similar approach is used for playing back music and videos, and the KDL-52XBR9 can handle MP3 audio and MPEG-4 video either from a USB device or from a DLNA server running on your home network (such as a PC running DLNA server software). It cannot, however, handle other audio formats (such as AAC or Ogg Vorbis) or other video formats; it choked on videos saved in H.264 format (as used in Apple's Quicktime format).

The KDL-52XBR9 offers a wide variety of video playback options.

Streaming Playback (10.4)

The KDL-52XBR9 supports streaming video from a wide number of services, including YouTube, Amazon Video On Demand, Blip.tv and CBS. A number of other smaller video providers are also included, such as Wired, Epicurous, Sports Illustrated and Dailymotion. However, some of these sources are somewhat misleading; the CBS section, for instance, doesn't have full epsiodes of shows, just a series of clips.

It is also possible to add you own sources through an RSS feed. Sources such as Netflix and others can also be added if they offer a Yahoo! Widget that supports them, and these are becoming available now.