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Sony Bravia KDL-46VE5

Television Review

Previous: Page 3

Color Accuracy

Next: Page 5

Viewing Effects
Sony Bravia KDL-46VE5
Page 4

Motion Summary



Editorial Note: This is a review of the Sony KDL-46VE5. Test results are for this model, but should indicate the general performance of other sizes in the VE5 series. The VE5 series includes the following models: KDL-40VE5, KDL-46VE5, and KDL-52VE5.  Read here for more details on series differences.

• The TV's biggest problems were here, in the motion testing
• Significant artifacting and jaggies during playback in all frame rates and resolutions
• Testing done using DisplayMate Software

Motion Smoothness (6.25)

The KDL-46VE5, like most Sony recent HDTVs, has a 'motion enhancing' feature called Motionflow. It uses processing to smooth motion artifacts like jagged lines. While the Motionflow feature can help with some issues, it creates others. For instance, when highly contrasted edges move from side to side (like red football jerseys against a snowy field), Motionflow actually creates extra trailing. Sure, the jaggies are gone, but it's quite the trade-off.

These settings are defaulted to be on, in the 'medium' setting, when you take it out of the box. If you never fiddle with the settings after this, you're still in a good position. Some TVs produce truly horrific images when they over-process. Sonys, on the other hand, are fairly conservative even at their heaviest processing. Do yourself a favor, though, and just turn all these garbage special features off.

Motion Artifacting (3.88)

Artifacts are things you seen on your screen that shouldn't be there, things that aren't in the original signal. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of artifacting on the Sony KDL-46VE5. It didn't seem to matter if the Motionflow processing was on or not. Sometimes we saw false colors produced and sometimes we saw heavy trailing.

3:2 Pulldown & 24fps (2.5)

The Sony KDL-46VE5 had a very hard time with 3:2 pulldown, which is when a TV (that displays at 29.97 fps) has to play back a Blu-Ray movie or other source with a 24 fps frame rate. There was a lot of juddery movement, and none of the processing options that the Sony TV offered could mitigate the problems. This was just flat-out bad.

Other Models in the VE5 Series
This is a review of the Sony KDL-46VE5. The other sizes of HDTVs in this series should be similar in terms of performance and usability. For details about any differences, click on the image to jump to the Series Comparison page.
Sony KDL-40VE5
40 inches
Sony KDL-46VE
46 inches
Sony KDL-52VE
52 inches

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Sony Bravia KDL-46VE5
Television Review

Previous: Page 3

Color Accuracy

Previous: Page 5

Viewing Effects