Bravo to Sony's LCD TV with Bravia Link

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Another button calls up the unique Bravia Internet Link mode, which I discuss more in a bit.

Good Blur Control and Navigation

To reduce motion blur on the screen, Sony refreshes the picture twice as fast as the typical 60-Hz rate. I frequently suggest that users turn off this increasingly common feature, as the extra processing can actually introduce artifacts when you're not watching movies or sports. But the Sony set does not give you that option. Instead, there are "standard" and "high" settings. While it would be nice to be able to turn off the 120-Hz refresh completely for typical TV viewing, the standard mode delivered a smooth picture without artifacts, while high did a good job of eliminating motion judder and blur in fast-action scenes.

Owners of other Sony products will be familiar with the on-screen navigation controls, which the company calls the XrossMediaBar. For others, it might take some getting used to, particularly if you like to constantly tinker with picture adjustments. I found that the menu icons and text explanations give you a solid hint of where you're going.

High-definition images on the native resolution of 1080p (full HD) look simply stunning. When I watched 300 on an HD-DVD player, the set replicated the gritty feel of a theater. The fashion designs on Bravo's Project Runway, fed by a DirecTV HD DVR, were displayed in all their glory or ugliness. I wasn't as impressed with the set's ability to convert non-HD programming as I have been with rival sets, though this is fast becoming a moot issue with the push to deliver more digital and HD content.

Bravia Gives This Set the Edge

To stand further apart in such a fiercely competitive market, Sony offers its unique Bravia device, a videotape-size box that attaches to the back of the set via USB or HDMI cable. (The box itself features an extra USB port and HDMI switcher to make up for that fact that Bravia hogs one of the set's precious few inputs.) Unfortunately, the box doesn't feature Wi-Fi connectivity, so you need to plug it directly into your modem or router with an Ethernet cable.

Bravia suffers one major drawback in that the connection delivers only Sony-authorized content from the Internet. This was a bit of a problem when the service first launched in August, since many of the short clips from AOL (TWX), Yahoo! (YHOO), and other Sony partners were not very interesting. Nor had some of them been modified to fit the TV's large screen. But within a few weeks, new content began appearing at a steady clip. I liked some of the cooking show and comedy programs, especially because commercials and other extraneous material had been edited out for faster viewing.

You can see where this technology is going, though it may not be worth the additional cost and setup hassles for mainstream consumers until it gets there. Still, Sony is only the second major LCD maker to introduce direct online connectivity without a computer (Hewlett-Packard's (HP) MediaSmart line being the other, with an even smaller selection of video content). So between Bravia and other cutting-edge features, Sony has succeeded in giving consumers more compelling reasons to choose its brand over others.

Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.