With no fewer than five tiers of 3Dcompatible and 3D-ready sets filling out its current TV lineup, Sony is clearly serious about this 3D thing. Near the top of the heap in terms of features (and price) lie the XBR-LX900 Series models, which come in 52- and 60-inch screen sizes. A 3D-ready TV, the 52-inch XBR-52LX900 that Sony sent me has a built-in IR emitter and comes with 2 pairs of battery-powered active-shutter eyewear. LED modules clustered around the set’s edges illuminate its LCD panel, which displays pictures at a 240-Hz refresh rate. Like other 240-Hz TVs, the 52LX900 also has blur- and judder-reduction processing — Sony calls it Motionflow Pro 240Hz — that aims to improve picture quality when watching video- and fi lm-sourced programs.

Although at 21?2 inches deep it’s not as slim as some other recent LED-lit LCDs, the 52LX900 has an eye-catching design. Its front consists of a full glass sheet with an aluminum edge at the bottom that tapers inward. All control buttons are tucked away out of sight on the set’s right-side panel. A matte black stand swivels approximately 30 degrees in either direction and can also be tilted backward up to six degrees — useful if you own low-profile, Euro-style A/V furniture.

The TV’s rear-panel input section offers two HDMI jacks and a LAN port for connecting to a wired Ethernet network. Additional connections found on the set’s left-hand side include a second pair of HDMI inputs, component- video and RGB PC jacks, and a USB port. Along with wired networking, the 52LX900 has built-in Wi-Fi to access online services and pull video/audio/photo files from a PC running a DLNA server app.

Sony’s remote control is a new design, with a concave face, a non-backlit keypad with rows of like-size buttons, and a second power button strangely situated on the back. Compared with past Sony TV remotes, some of which had a fully backlit keypad, I found this one somewhat difficult to handle in a dark room. Internet-related functions get high priority here, with a total of three dedicated buttons to access Widgets, Web video, and Qriocity (Sony’s own video-on-demand service). But the button I found myself reaching for most was Options. When pressed, this causes a pop-up menu to appear onscreen with shortcuts to functions like picture adjustments that you’d normally have to dig through the TV’s intricately branched XrossMediaBar GUI to access.

The blanket term given by Sony for the media-streaming offerings on its TVs is Bravia Internet Video. The XMB interface groups these by type, with specific columns to access video (Netflix, Amazon Video on Demand, YouTube, Qriocity, Hulu Plus, Michael Jackson — I’m serious!); music and Internet radio (Pandora, Slacker, NPR); Photos (Picasa, Shutterfly, Photobucket); and Yahoo! Widgets/Snippets (Flickr, Twitter, news, weather, finance, etc.). Compared with other “connected” TVs, this is a sizable helping of online offerings, although I still prefer to access such stuff via a Blu-ray player rather than directly from a TV.

Sony’s battery-powered active-shutter glasses for 3D viewing count among the more comfortable eyewear I’ve strapped on, thanks to a soft rubber bridge that doesn’t clamp down on your nose. They also look sort of cool for 3D glasses, which usually don’t look cool at all. A two-setting adjustment lets you adjust the size for smaller noggins (kids, pinheads, etc.).