The wait is over. Sony has finally announced its two latest flagship televisions, the Master Series Z9F LED and Sony A9F OLED. Rightfully named the ‘Master Series’, these televisions feature the Sony X1 Ultimate processor and has been built to provide image quality similar to what only professional studio masters can deliver.
Two years after Sony’s Z9D TV’s launch, then named the best LCD/LED TV of all time by reviewers, it seems like the new TV series will dethrone it.
The Master Series elevates the 4K HDR home viewing experience to a whole new level… Sony’s approach is different from any other in our industry… Our engineers specifically designed (the Master Series) from input they received from the creative community. – Mike Fasulo, The COO of Sony Electronics in North America
Z9F 4K HDR LED TV
The Sony Z9F TV seeks to bring deep blacks and contrast delivered by OLED, together with the best of all the qualities of LCD TV, like brightness, HDR, a wide range of colors.
An important feature of the TV is the X-Wide Angle technology, whose aim is to provide a solution to the poor off-angle view typical of LCD panels to date.
As mentioned before, the Sony Z9F is powered by Sony’s new X1 Ultimate processor, yielding even brighter images, more intense HDR highlights, and detailed viewing. It also comes with an auto-calibration system that uses CalMAN software and supports a fresh feature, the Netflix Calibrated Mode.
This is an all-new feature that the Sony Master Series TV line and Netflix have collaborated to create, in order to bring back Netflix’s compressed 4K HDR video to almost master-quality levels by making use of Sony’s X1 Ultimate processor with a picture preset mode. This is exciting news for Netflix viewers, who will get to stream shows in nearly Ultra HD Blu-ray levels.
Sony A9F 4K HDR OLED TV
Sony’s most recent TV in the OLED line, the Sony A9F is also run on the brand new X1 Ultimate chip, for brighter and more refined picture quality, with dark blacks and bright whites. But the catch is that the TV has an enhanced Sony’s Acoustic Surface technology because of the addition of a third center-mounted actuator, where the screen is also used as a speaker, by setting these actuators behind the OLED panel.
A subwoofer on the rear side of the television boosts this sound. Earlier, two actuators on either side emanated stereo sound. Now, while the center actuator there will be even better sound quality, while a second subwoofer is expected to provide a bass boost.
The TV can even serve as a center channel without an extra speaker, in a multi-channel home-theatre speaker system. This will give the feel of sound being emitted directly from the image, instead of from the sides of it.
Last but definitely not the least, another new touch from Sony, the X-Motion Clarity engine, will take care of vibrations from the sounds, for a clearer audio.
Now we await the full specifications for the TV series to see how well they perform in this tremendously competitive market.
