Thomas J. Norton

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent UHD performance
Solid build quality
Good value
Minus
Limited streaming apps
Less-than-perfect 4K upconversion

THE VERDICT
It’s not without minor flaws, but the second UHD Blu-ray player on the U.S. market delivers a stellar picture from UHD discs at an attractive price.

The launch of Ultra HD Blu-ray players has now progressed from a slow drip to a trickle. Samsung was first with the UBD-K8500 (reviewed in our June issue and also available at soundandvision.com). At CEDIA, Sony showed its upscale UBP-X1000ES but won’t have it out till next spring and hasn’t announced pricing. Oppo’s new player is expected sometime this fall. And Panasonic’s own high-end DMP-UB900, at $700, became available in late September as we were going to press (watch for a future review).

2D Performance
3D Performance
Features
Ergonomics
Value

AT A GLANCE
Plus
State-of-the-art local dimming
Class-leading HDR brightness
Above average off-center viewing
Minus
Price

THE VERDICT
With the top manufacturers jostling for a view from the top of the Ultra HD pyramid, Sony has taken an express elevator and is racing fast for the checkered flag. But enough with the mixed metaphors. If this TV isn’t today’s best LCD UHD/HDR set (and perhaps the best of any type), it’s not for lack of trying. Sony has given us their best technology here, and it shows.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2016, Sony demonstrated a prototype of a future LCD TV design incorporating what the company called Backlight Master Drive. We found it dazzling, as did most of the show-goers with whom we spoke. Nevertheless, we all looked at it as a “show car”—something that might appear in a store near you in a couple of years, if ever.

HDMI is a nightmare. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it works but limits the information it transports from the source to the display. And sometimes it doesn’t work at all.

Take your pick, but the truth sits somewhere between these two statements.

Or was. Or will be. Star Trek Into Darkness is the second installment of the “new” Trek saga. In the first, director J.J. Abrams cleverly (or alarmingly) rebooted the whole thing through some sort of time-warp, high-tech thingy. The Enterprise is now far more advanced, and some of the relationships are very different, particularly between Spock and Uhura.