Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4735 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: KDL46Z4500U
• Released on: 2008-09-22
• Display size: 46

Manufacturer's Description

BRAVIA WZ500 Series LCD TV
Available in 40”, 46” & 52” Screen Sizes

The BRAVIA Z4500 Series Full HD 1080p LCD TVs come packed with technology and features to enhance your viewing experience. Enhanced picture processing from BRAVIA Engine 2, together with Motionflow +200Hz and a Dynamic Contrast Ratio of 80,000:1 combine to deliver stunning pictures whatever you are watching, while XrossMediaBar, BRAVIA Sync, USB Viewer and DLNA ensure the easy integration of BRAVIA into your overall home entertainment system

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HD1080p (1920x1080)

HD 1080p offers you very high resolution to generate its picture. The ‘p’ stands for ‘progressive scan’, which scans all the lines at once to add stability & smoothness to fast-moving images. This makes 1080p TVs excellent for sport broadcast & games.

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Integrated Digital Tuner / Freeview

Having an integrated Digital Freeview Tuner means that your TV has a built in receiver that will give you access to many more channels without the need to have any additional hardware, such as a Freeview box. In 2007, the government began switching UK broadcasting to digital, so if your TV doesn't have an integrated digital tuner feature you won't be able to view any channel without buying the additional hardware.

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BRAVIA Engine 2

You can’t have too much of a good thing, so we designed BRAVIA ENGINE 2. By using our most innovative technologies like intelligent noise reduction and Advanced Contrast Enhancer, BRAVIA ENGINE 2 builds on the power of the acclaimed BRAVIA ENGINE and adds four new image processing stages. What's more, BRAVIA ENGINE 2 incorporates full digital signal processing, which means that it can enhance many different signals.

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Dynamic Contrast

Contrast ratio is improved and all shades between the brightest white and the darkest blacks are maintained, so the picture has more depth and detail. This is achieved as the backlight brightness adjusts according to the brightness of the scene. Sony's unique dynamic contrast system features ACE (advanced contrast enhancer) which ensures all of the subtle shades of grey are maintained. The Z4500 Series delivers a Dynamic Contrast Ratio of 80,000:1.

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24P True Cinema

Movies are usually filmed at 24 frames per second (fps), and with 24p True Cinema, Movies are output in 24-fps as they should be, in the same sequence as the original film source for the same film-like motion that you could only enjoy in theatres before.

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Motionflow +200Hz

Movies are usually filmed at 24 frames per second (fps), and with 24p True Cinema, Movies are output in 24-fps as they should be, in the same sequence as the original film source for the same film-like motion that you could only enjoy in theatres before.

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Live Colour Creation

Live Colour Creation is a backlight system which produces a wider colour gamut, seen particularly with the red and green areas of the spectrum. So your TV picture will have more lifelike and natural colours with no smudging or dulling of the image.

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X.V. Colour

X.V colour offers a colour palette of 100% of the colour spectrum giving more depth, detail and natural images and is closer to the colour spectrum seen by the human eye.

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HDMI Sockets

The Z4500 Series has 3 X HDMI Sockets – 2 at the rear of the set & one at the side.

Your HDMI socket provides a connection point on your TV that is able to deliver a high definition picture. Quite simply, the more HDMI sockets that you have on your BRAVIA LCD TV, the more components you are able to link up to for HD picture quality, for instance, a Blu-ray player, your Handycam® and your gaming console. Having the socket located in the side of the TV means that you no longer have to get into awkward positions or move the unit in order to gain access to the connection point, great if you’re viewing your photos on your TV via your digital camera.

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BRAVIA Sync

BRAVIA Sync enables the control of your TV and peripheral devices with a single BRAVIA remote through menus displayed on your BRAVIA LCD TV.

It is supported by selected Sony Home Theatre Systems, Blu-ray Disc players, Audio/Video Receivers and Handycam®. Please check the specification of your other Sony products to ensure that it includes BRAVIA Sync.

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XrossMediaBar (XMB)

XMB (XrossMediaBar) is Sony’s original graphic user interface that allows for simple operation of various media and content, as seen on the PLAYSTATION®3. Users can navigate through the different types of media by zapping across icons that are aligned horizontally. After selecting the medium, a list of its content appears as thumbnails vertically.

The main benefit of the XMB is that it alleviates the need to look at the remote control while searching and selecting content. With an increasing number of media and content, simple navigation has become a challenge, especially with a remote control. The XMB gives access to a wide array of content with only a few buttons.

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USB Viewer

Enjoy digital photos on the big screen. With the USB Photo Viewer, the user can view photos instantaneously by connecting a digital still camera via USB and selecting “Photo” from the XMB menu. Thumbnails of the photos stored in the digital still camera will appear on the screen, from which the user can choose to view full screen or as a slideshow.

You can also select your favourite photo as a standby screen just pressing favourite button during thumbnails display, full-screen view and slideshow. Share your fun memories with family and friends on BRAVIA.

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DLNA Certified

DLNA Wireless Technology can transform your BRAVIA into a wireless hub allowing you to view photos and listen to music from another device such as your laptop or camera. Only compatible with DLNA devices.

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Photo TV HD

Photo TV HD picture processing technology designed to faithfully reproduce the natural beauty of your still images when viewed on your HD Ready 1080p BRAVIA LCD TV. Whereas all other TVs have technology designed to optimise video images, the BRAVIA Z4500 has BRAVIA Engine 2 for viewing videos and Photo TV HD for viewing still images.

In order to enjoy PhotoTV HD, the PhotoTV HD-compatible TV and device need to be connected either with component or HDMI. Connection through component requires the user to manually select the Photo picture mode. When connected via HDMI, the television will automatically switch to Photo mode.

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Picture Frame Mode

Picture Frame Mode offers you the opportunity to decorate your room with BRAVIA, like a painting or photo in a frame with superior colour reproduction from BRAVIA. By selecting the image to be displayed and the duration time on your menu screen your TV will show either a still image or slide show in it’s full glory at reduced power consumption, rather than simply having a black screen sitting in the corner or on the wall in your room.

You can display your favourite photos from in USB memory or preinstalled images on BRAVIA.

1. Push “Home” on the remote control
2. Select “XMB”
3. Choose “Picture Frame” Mode

The picture you selected as Picture Frame appears on the screen.

You can select either one of the 6 default pictures or your own pictures using the USB port..

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‘Sony’, ‘like.no.other’, ‘BRAVIA’ , ‘Live Color Creation’, ‘Motionflow’, ‘Full HD 1080’, ‘Bravia Engine’, ‘24p True Cinema’, ‘x.v.colour’, ‘Handycam’ and ‘Xross Bar Media’ and their logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Corporation. ‘PlayStation’ and ‘PLAYSTATION®3’ are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Blu-ray Disc and the Blu-ray Disc logos are trademarks of the Blu-ray Disc Association. ‘Freeview’ and its logo is a registered trademark of DTV Services Ltd. ‘HDMI’ and its logo is a registered trademark of HDMI Licensing L.L.C. ‘DLNA’ and its logo is a registered trademark of Digital Living Network Alliance. All other trademarks acknowledged.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Superb Full HD television
This is a great piece of equipment. The picture quality, especially when showing Blu-Ray films, is excellent: sharp, clear and bright. Watching films feeaturing bright sunshine or other lights you almost have to look away at times. There is also a theatre mode that reduces the full-on brightness and gives a picture more like that in a cinema.

The sound quality will probably not be enough for audiophiles bent on a surround sound home theatre set, but the integrated speakers (left, right and subwoofer) are very good indeed. There are various virtual surround sound modes where tricks with timing are used to simulate sound coming from the side, or indeed the rear (although this latter is less convincing if your sofa is very close to the back wall). Again, with Blu-Ray films, if you select the HD soundtrack such as DTS HD Master Audio or TrueHD, you will be surprised at just how good the internal speakers can sound.

Set up and operation are fairly simple and intuitive. I just found it a bit slow and awkward to sort channels. The BRAVIA link is useful if you have other Sony products, particularly a Blu-Ray player. The remote control is nicely ergonomic and comprehensive, with a backlight feature for viewing films in darkened rooms. I also found a nice touch in that the Sony logo is a lamp which fades in and out when the TV is turned on and off.

The 200HZ Motionflow feature is good to have for sports and action movies, although I have yet to notice a big difference between the maximum motionflow setting and the standard immediately beneath it.

All in all a very impressive TV. Wholeheartedly recommended

The Best Tv & Picture I've Ever Seen
An avid fan of home cinema and What Hifi reader. Spent ages choosing a new tv, reading reviews and blogs etc and i LOVE this one. The picture is just awesome. 200hz screen is brillinat for sports or fast moving pictures with NO hint of blurring. The sound from the speakers is far better than other screens at this price. The USB input to display photo's etc is great and the xbar set up is so easy. The remote is intuitive and is back lit for when watching movies in the dark. My PS3 looks fantastic on it as does any DVD or any HD content icluding SKY HD whichs looks superb. I could go on forever, it is a great set. Use the THX set up disc from any Star Wars DVD to tweek the settings and you'll have a superb TV.

Fantastic picture, great features, good sound
I bought the Sony 46-Z-4500 to replace a 32" CRT Sony IDTV and I must say it is very good. This is my fourth Sony TV.

What I really like is the quality of picture. Using the built-in digital tuner is quite a lot better than through a Humax PVR which interestingly was better than the using the previous TV's internal tuner. Motion flow really seems to work with fast moving scenes too as there doesn't seem to be any of those horrible digital artefacts. For such a large screen it is surprising how good a low resolution image can be made to look. As you can imagine, viewing full 1080p/24 Blueray disk source is fantastic. The colour balance and contrast are superb.

Sound quality through the internal speakers is acceptable for general day to day viewing although not as good as the previous 32" CRT TV. For films the scale of the sound isn't great, so I'm waiting the arrival of a new surround sound amp to hook up to some existing 5.1 speakers.

There are two options for Electronic Programme Guide (EPG). One has picture in picture (PIP), but a large part of the screen has an advert and is generally really cluttered. The other standard Sony look which is my family's preference doesn't have PIP.

I have my TV connected to the home network and have viewed photos and tried listening to music served from a Vista laptop. Photos are very good. As the sound quality for the TV is nothing to shout about, until I get surround sound up and running there is no point is listening to music through it. There is a USB socket on the side too and that works equally well for photos and music. There is no option to view video over the network.

I'm really pleased with the purchase and have already recommended it to friends and colleagues.

My rating is:

Picture quality: 5/5
Sound quality: 3/5
Features: 4/5

Overall: 4/5