Sony's new 4K LED TV flanked by Hiroyasu Sugiyama, Managing Director, Sony Middle East and Africa (left) and Prince Mohammed bin Khalid Al-Abdullah Al-Faisal, CEO and President of Al Faisaliah Group Holding Company. Modern Electronics Company, a subsidiary of Al Faisaliah Group, has been the Kingdom's exclusive distributor of Sony products since 1970. Molouk Y. Ba-Isa Saudi Gazette
A few years back, an HDTV was the dream purchase for every household in Saudi Arabia. Now, Sony has introduced their latest object of desire and the new centerpiece of the ultimate home theater – the 4K Bravia TV. “Last year we introduced the first 84-inch Sony 4K LED TV in the Kingdom and it was very successful. In the Middle East, we sold the largest number of 84-inch 4K televisions in the world outside of Japan. Saudi Arabia was one of the key contributors to this record sale. I would like to thank all our customers for this,” said Hiroyasu Sugiyama, Managing Director, Sony Middle East and Africa. “While sales greatly exceeded our expectations, we realize that an 84-inch television is not for everyone. We would like to extend the joy of owning this amazing Sony 4K experience to a much wider range of customers and I am tremendously excited to introduce the new 65-inch and 55-inch Sony 4K LED televisions that will deliver the stunning 4K viewing experience at a more accessible price point.” At a Modern Electronics Company/Sony press conference Monday night at Al Faisaliah Hotel in Riyadh, Sugiyama explained that in September 2012, even before the 84-inch 4K TV was available for delivery, orders were coming in from the Kingdom for the SR100,000 entertainment device. In a nation where movie theaters are nonexistent, setting up a state-of-the-art home cinema is a popular option. The 65-inch Bravia 4K TV (KD-65X9004) will retail for SR30,000 and the 55-inch model KD-55X9004 will cost SR20,000. Still pricy, but a lot less than SR100,000. And with the 4K televisons becoming available at the end of June, Sony has timed the launch perfectly to coincide with the school vacation and Ramadan, when families traditionally spruce up their home furnishings. But what's so special about a 4K LED TV? Sugiyama likened the experience of watching a Sony 4K TV to “looking through a window on the world,” and noted that “no competitor can come close” to Sony's 4K viewing experience. A few years back, consumer electronics manufacturers were heavily promoting 3D TVs. People went out and purchased the displays only to discover that there was no content to view. The same is not true of Sony's 4K TV. “Do we have content?” queried Yoshiyuki Kishikawa, Manager, Marketing, Sony Middle East and Africa. “Yes, plenty because any content can be upscaled 2K to 4K, that's four times the resolution, through the TV's X-Reality Pro Processor.” The most common HD TV format is 1080 x 1920. Multiply the number of lines by the number of pixels per line and you get 2,073,600 pixels per frame. Kishikawa advised that Sony's 4K TV format is 3,840 X 2,160, providing 8,847,360 pixels per frame. That's four times more detail used in creating the image. The Bravia 4K TV's processing engine analyzes, cleans and refines images, restoring beautiful results from any source with more natural detail, richer colors and high contrast. Whether the input to the TV is a DVD or even a low-resolution smartphone video, life-like images are produced on the 4K screen. Sony's 4K LED TV can be used in a smaller room as well because it has a wide viewing angle. Even when seated as close as 1.5 meters from the screen, the image is still breathtakingly realistic and beautifully clear. The Sony 4K LED TV also offers the company's new TRILUMINOS Display that can produce natural color shades, with a particular focus on vivid reds and hard-to-reproduce blues and greens. This allows landscapes and seascapes to appear more true to life. Faces look better too with natural skin tones. The TRILUMINOS backlit screen is unique to Sony and expands the range of colors the 4K Bravia TV can display compared to other televisions. To understand the concept, consider that a TRILUMINOS screen has a wider color palette compared to a standard screen – in effect the screen can offer more color tones and shades with which to create the picture. One other really useful feature of the 4K LED TV is that it is Wi-Fi enabled. All the Bravia X series TVs offer screen mirroring. This mirroring technology works with any Miracast compliant Android smartphone or tablet. Just connect wirelessly and see whatever is on the smaller screen displayed instantly on the much larger 4K TV. For those using a Sony Xperia V, X or Z smartphone, just touch the handset close to the 4K TV's remote control and Near Field Communication (NFC) connects the two devices, enabling what's on the smartphone's screen to appear supersized on the TV. There was a question at the press conference on whether this new 4K Technology is here to stay or it's just a fad. Actually, back in April, Sony announced that XAVC – the key to both the professional and consumer 4K world, driven by Sony, is an open format technology that brings to life the “Beyond HD” vision and has been designed to serve the quality requirements of feature films, HDTV and commercials beyond 1080/50p. With the successful sale of professional grade CineAlta 4K cameras reaching more than 2,000 units' shipment worldwide, the XAVC format has been widely adopted in the marketplace. The format holds various advantages for high quality image reproduction including 4K pixel resolution, 10 bit color depth, wide color space (S-Gamut) and refined gamma (S-log). Currently, over 60 manufacturers have filed a request to become a licensee, and 31 manufacturers' products plan on their support for the Sony XAVC format and workflow. From the camera lens to the TV screen, Sony is supporting and promoting the XAVC 4K format, and there is nothing else like it. This is allowing both broadcaster and production communities to build a future proof catalog of high-end content. Consequently, consumers can be assured that their 4K Bravia LED TV purchase is an investment in top quality home entertainment for years to come.
