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Ever since LCD’s and plasmas started to dominate the television market the race has been on to make them thinner and thinner – not unlike catwalk strutting supermodels. While the actual screen layer making up the image of LCD TV’s has always been pretty slim, the mechanism by which the screen is lit has always meant a fair bit of bulk behind the screen. With this bulk comes weight, making wall mounting that little bit trickier. Then there’s that inevitable cable-spaghetti to hook up your PVR (Personal Video Recorder), DVD player, Blu-ray player, games console, aerial lead, speaker cables... Sony’s BRAVIA ZX-1 not only makes Kate Moss look plump, but it has a genius way of dealing with said spaghetti a la cable.

My first impression of the ZX-1 came before it was even out of the box. I saw the delivery driver pull up outside and knowing how bulky these things are I figured it would only be the right thing to give him a hand. When I grabbed one end of the box I couldn’t believe the weight – or to be more precise, the lack of it. Well, that would certainly make wall mounting a lot easier than any other 40” (currently the only ZX-1 model available) on the market from a weight perspective as the screen itself is a mere 12.2kg. Upon getting the box open I was greeted by an LCD screen 9.9mm thick. OK, there is a ‘lump’ in the middle of the back, which increases the overall thickness to 28mm, but even then we’re talking super-skinny. I’ve never been hugely bothered about how technology items look as long as they’re not blindingly garish. They’re there to do a job and it’s the performance and practicality that interests me the most. Having said that, the ZX-1 was Grade-A eye-candy alright and would look good in modern and traditional living rooms alike.

One of the ways the boffins at Sony were able to make this TV so slim is BRAVIA Edge LED Technology. In layman’s terms this means the LED (Light Emitting Diodes) are around the edges of the screen and not behind it, which is the ‘traditional’ way of lighting these screens. All the tech-talk aside, the end result is that it works quite well. On close inspection there is some minor backlighting issues around the corners, but this is indeed very minor and something you’d really have to look out for. In normal viewing situations I don’t think this would amount to any major show-stopper.

The other key to the skinny is that none of the cabling, mains power aside, connects to the screen itself. Well, strictly speaking there is a HDMI (High Definition Media Interface) port on the back, but this is not used in every day scenarios, apart from 1080/24p signals. The ZX-1 ships with what Sony call a ‘media receiver’, which in essence is a black box, about half the size of an average DVD/Blu-ray player. All connections to the TV are on this media receiver and it communicates with the TV via radio waves. While this might sound complicated, in the real world it was an absolute breeze to set up. I plugged all my cabling into the media receiver, switched it on and hit the power button on the TV. A few seconds later a ‘LINK’ indicator lit up on the media receiver and the screen itself and that was it – I was in business. One word of warning though, the number of analogue inputs was on the meagre side with just one composite and component input each. For those who move in a predominantly digital world this shouldn’t be too much of an issue as there are three HDMI inputs, but something to be aware of nonetheless. There’s also a standard VGA input for connecting up a computer display and a USB port at the front of the media receiver, suitable for photo viewing. Audio outs include analogue stereo (RCA sockets) and a digital optical out.

This wireless technology does have a few limitations though. When I first set up the screen and the media receiver I had the units right next to each other and I did notice some slight interference on the screen, which was even evident when looking at the still graphic menu of my PVR. I could actually affect the amount of interference by moving my arms around the media receiver, so perhaps the wireless technology still has a few bugs to iron out. Upon consulting the manual Sony recommend 30cm to 20m distance between the screen and the media receiver, so once I’d moved the media receiver box a little further away from the screen the situation improved somewhat. Another limitation of the wireless technology is its inability to transmit 1080/24p signals, so a Blu-ray player transmitting 1080/24p signal must be connected directly to the screen itself via a single HDMI cable.

Seeing as I didn’t wall mount the TV I had the small task of fitting it to a table-top stand, which is included, and contains the speakers as the TV panel itself is simply too thin to house them. The job of mounting the TV to the stand is simple and involves four screws. There are no cables to connect to the speakers – this is taken care of by a multi-pin socket, which simply lines up as you lower the TV to the stand. The speakers built into the stand turned out to be the first truly negative aspect of this review and the only way to describe them would be to say they’re very poor, tinny, lacking in bass and due to their closeness to each other the stereo imaging was pretty much non-existent. Having said that, anyone opting for a TV of this calibre would most likely use dedicated home cinema speakers, either in stereo or full surround. Once I plugged the analogue stereo out to my amplifier and Dynaudio studio speakers it was obvious that the audio circuitry itself is perfectly good – it’s just the supplied speaker system, which lacks in every department.

Despite Sony and other manufacturers making a lot of noise about 200Hz TV screens this particular BRAVIA operates at 100Hz. A little explanation of this jargon might be in order. Hertz is more than a car rental company – in the world of physics it denotes ‘cycles per second’. So, a 100Hz TV screen re-draws the screen image 100 times per second, while a 200Hz screen re-draws the image 200 times per second. The thinking here is that the higher the re-draw rate (sometimes referred to as ‘refresh rate’) the smoother the image, particularly when it comes to fast action, such as sports or action movies with ‘lots going on’. Quite why Sony didn’t include 200Hz technology in the ZX-1 is beyond me, especially when other BRAVIA’s have it, but it must be said that the image was very good and I didn’t detect any jitter to worry about. The black level of the screen was also quite impressive and contributes towards high screen contrast.

The remote control had some lag to it when changing channels or inputs. This was a slight annoyance, but all common in today’s TV’s, which are essentially ‘computers’ insofar that they run software, which in turn takes a while to carry out certain tasks. This is contrast to old fashioned analogue TV’s, which were ‘hard wired’ by their nature. The built-in digital tuner does a fine job and picked up all my Melbourne channels without skipping a beat. We actually had some aerial-wobble inducing winds during my testing, but looking at the screen this was no issue and the picture held solid at all times.

Overall the BRAVIA ZX-1 is a pretty impressive achievement – it looks great, it’s about as slim as these things will ever get and has decent picture quality. The media receiver box eliminates just about all cabling to the screen itself, bar the power lead (and HDMI for 1080/24p), making discrete wall mounting easy and at 12.2kg you won’t need wall bolts the size of spark plugs. On the downside the limited number of analogue inputs may trouble some users, but the three HDMI ports might make this acceptable. The real downer was the pitiful set of speakers built into the stand, but this can be overcome with dedicated speakers, albeit at a price. As long as you can live with these it makes for one heck of a unique TV – and at $5,499,- you would hope so.

GOOD:

-Super-slim design and light weight allow for flexible mounting options
-Generally good picture quality, albeit at 100Hz, but with minor corner lighting issues
-‘Media Receiver’ eliminates most cable-spaghetti

BAD:

-Limited number of analogue video/audio inputs
-Very poor audio from supplied speakers, be prepared to spend a little extra on dedicated speakers
-Some wireless interference between media receiver and screen

OVERALL RATING: 3.5/5

Risto's Technology Blogs

Risto Sampola simplifies new technology for 3AW.com.au readers so you can make the informed purchasing decisions and learn how to trouble-shoot issues you may face with your technology. Click on the image to see all of Risto's reviews and advice sheets.