“Disappointed With The Bravia 7 And Had To Return
The Bravia 7 uses the XR Processor. The statement about how it works states the following: “Sony’s famously powerful processing, which uses AI to constantly analyze what you’re watching in real time. It then enhances and prioritizes elements onscreen based on what the human eye is naturally drawn to.”
I didn't see how this could possibly work correctly and I will give you two examples.
1st. Suppose me and my girlfriend are watching one of the late night talk shows and an actress comes out wearing a sexy mini skirt and open toed shoes and sits down to be interviewed. My girlfriend may be looking at the actress's face and earrings, as where I may be looking at her legs and feet. How could the AI processing possibly know where my eyes are drawn to versus the person sitting next to me?
2nd. After Donald Trump got shot I started watching the rallies on TV so I could see if someone shoots him again. My eyes were focused on all the people in the background that were standing behind him. (A tech from Crutchfield told me the AI processing works by enhancing the main subject on the screen (usually a person’s face) and slightly blurring the background to enhance definition and clarity) How could the AI processing know that my eyes were actually drawn to the people standing in the background, behind Donald Trump/the main subject?
I knew it was a bad idea because each person watches TV differently and it couldn’t possibly know where my eyes are drawn to. Well, I was right, it repeatedly got it wrong. It kept enhances certain things on the screen, mainly faces, but at the expense of blurring out other parts of the screen. If you’re watching new content that you’ve never seen before then you might know its happening. However, while watching movies and such that I’ve seen many times before, even commercials it was very obvious, it totally ruined the viewing experience. It's blurring all the little details in the background that I enjoy seeing just to enhance the pores in the person's face that's closest to the camera. One could say that it's ruining the Directors intent. If a Director wanted an actors face closest to camera to be enhanced and the actor standing behind him, mocking and making funny faces behind that actors back to be blurred the Director would have had shot it that way. I don’t want to have an AI generated world forced on me, I just want to be able to see images on TV the same way as I see them in real life.
If you mostly watch cable TV or streaming like most of us you will be disappointed with this TV. The way that newer TV’s do upscaling now is looks pretty bad. The Bravia 7 uses what’s called Reality Creation. It upscales by trying to reduce picture noise and then adding sharpness. It tends to look fake and reminds me of overly sharpened distortion like when you set the sharpness setting too high. My old 2016 TV that uses the older technology does a much better, natural job of upscaling. It’s sad that everyone just accepts this awful picture quality and says, “yeah, it’s not going to look good unless you’re watching 4K content” That’s not true, it all depends on the TV technology. My cable TV picture on my old 2016 TV is really good. I’m actually impressed when you consider the amount of compression that the cable company uses. If my old TV can make cable TV look good then why can’t a 2024 TV???
I have two of the exact same cable boxes so I set up my old 2016 TV right next to the Bravia 7 and set both boxes to the same channel to do a comparison. My old TV blows the Bravia 7 away, the picture is just so much more cleaner/clearer as where the Bravia 7 picture looks too busy and just plain distorted most of the time. I even tried switching the HDMI cables just to make sure one box wasn’t putting out a better picture than the other. The Bravia 7 has a problem with definition, if a person is not close to the camera or zoomed in on they are blurry/look out of focus. If they are moving it’s even worse, then they look like a bleeding pastel painting with no detail and that’s with using the Motion settings.
The TV seems to focus on whatever is in the center of the screen and the sides get distorted. This is really noticeable when there are more than two people in the scene. For instance, I watch the same stock market TV show every morning at 9:00 and there is a man sitting in the middle and there is a man on both sides of him. He is fairly clear where as the guys on both sides of him appear to be out of focus. It reminds me of a fish eye camera lens effect. I was watching a scene where two people were sitting at a table, one at each end, each one was about an inch away from the edge of the TV screen. They looked totally out of focus on the Bravia 7. However, all these same scenes look equally clear on my old 2016 TV. Maybe TV manufacturers should go back to using the older technology that actually worked.
Here is another disturbing statement made by Sony about their XR Processor. “POWERFUL TV PROCESSING: XR Processor intelligently enhances every scene in real-time boosting color, contrast, and clarity.”
I can’t have the TV automatically boosting color and contrast on its own, I need to be in control of all those settings. (I mean, it is my TV ….right?) When I’m watching videos that I’ve downloaded I always change the picture setting for each video to my liking. What’s the point of having picture settings if the TV can just change the picture at will??? The biggest problem that I noticed with this is that every time you change the channel you have to adjust the picture setting. So, you better make sure to always keep your remote control close by.
I personally thought the picture quality was horrible on this TV and returned it. I couldn’t wait to get my old 2016 Samsung back up on the wall so I could actually enjoy watching TV again.
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