Sony Bravia XBR-52HX909

Motion Performance

Motion Smoothness (8.38)

The Sony XBR-52HX909 was rather good at producing smooth motion, but there are some caveats. In order to get the smoothest performance, we engaged a processing feature called Motionflow. It does an impressive job of eliminating flickering details and general choppiness. However, it has a side effect of making certain types of video, mostly things shot of film, to look unnaturally sharp. We recommend that you experiment with the feature, and familiarize yourself with how to turn Motionflow on and off.

Motion Artifacting (7.25)

As we mentioned above, engaging the Motionflow processing feature goes a long way in eliminating motion artifacts. However, like most processing features, it can introduce new artifacts. More on how we test motion performance.

3:2 Pulldown & 24fps (8.50)

The Sony XBR-52HX909 is perfectly capable of playing back native 24fps content, which means you can watch Blu-Ray movies without undue stuttering or flickering. In order to get the best performance, you’ll want to play around with the CineMotion feature. It has three settings specifically designed to get you the best 3:2 pulldown performance. More on how we test 3:2 pulldown and 24fps.

Resolution Scaling (7.35)

The Sony XBR-52HX909 has a native resolution of 1080p (1920 × 1080), but a lot of the video you’ll watch is of a lower resolution. It’s up to the TV’s internal processing to upscale that picture and display it correctly on the screen. Overall, the 52HX909 is good, but not great, at this task. More on how we test resolution scaling.

480p

When upscaling 480p content, the Sony XBR-52HX909 loses a whole 3% of the top, bottom, and sides due to overscan. However, fine detail looks fairly good.

720p

With 720p content, the Sony XBR-52HX909 lost 2% on all sides to overscan, but fine detail looked good.

1080i

The 1080i content was the most problematic. Again, we saw a 2% overscan loss, but fine detail display was a problem. High frequency patterns, like tight stripes, created a discoloration and Moire patterns. Smallish text also had some display problems. Problems with 1080i performance is unfortunate, because most HD cable is in 1080i, though we’d expect resolution loss from MPEG compression to actually minimize some of these issues.

Other Models in the XBR-xxHX909 Series
For more information on other models in this series, check our Series Comparison Page.
Sony Bravia XBR-46HX909 46 in.