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Sony's latest BRAVIA - it's a TV turned photo frame

by Parm Mann on 10 April 2008, 13:50

Tags: Sony (NYSE:SNE)

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It's so pretty, and it wasn't made by Apple

Take a look at this little display of wall-hanging photos courtesy of the marketing folk over at Sony and see if you can spot the BRAVIA.

Sony BRAVIA E4000 series

Did you spot it? Well, yeah, it's not that difficult and it's no coincidence that the non-Sony photos are black and white. The large, outstanding and immediately noticeable frame belongs to Sony's latest designer range of BRAVIA TVs, the BRAVIA E4000 series.

Sony states that consumers can "make an artistic statement" with the E4000, claiming its "unique ‘picture frame’ design enhances any interior as an elegant artwork".

Normally we'd laugh at the extent of the over-exotic marketing blurb, but hey, this thing sure looks pretty. The gorgeously-styled E4000 series doesn't yet have a release date, or price, but when it lands, it'll do so in 26in, 32in and 40in wall-mountable models.

For the truly artistic buyer, there's even a choice of coloured frames; Midnight Sky, Aluminium, Pearly White and Dark Walnut.

What makes the E4000 series that touch more interesting is the fact that when you're not watching Eastenders, you can switch the set over to 'Picture Frame Mode' - yes, a 40in and surely expensive photo frame. Unfortunately, it won't be the best of photo frames. You'll be limited to a choice of six pre-loaded images, or a single image of your own which can be loaded via a USB memory device.

Sony BRAVIA E4000 series

Sony claims that when in Picture Frame Mode, power consumption is 35% lower than watching regular TV. We haven't done any scientific tests ourselves, but we estimate that power consumption would be even lower if you were to just turn the display off, as opposed to displaying that single image of your choice. But hey, who are we to argue with a set that's so pretty?

HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Posted by McClane - Thu 10 Apr 2008 19:24
By displaying a single image does it not suffer from screen burn?
Posted by chrestomanci - Fri 11 Apr 2008 19:36
Displaying a single image won't be a problem with an LCD, after all you don't see a burn in of your windows task bar when playing games or movies. It might be a problem with a plasma, but even there things have got a lot better over the years, and you are not going to see bad burn in like you used to see on old green screen cash points. Slight burn in can probably be corrected in software by keeping track of how much each pixel may have faded and adjusting the brightness to compensate.

Back on topic, I think that using an LCD TV as giant digital photo frame is a very good idea, and I have always wondered why it is not a standard feature on most of them, after all they would only have to fit a card reader on the side, and have a simple upgrade to the electronics & software to support displaying pictures from it.

Probably the main downside with using a TV as a photo frame is that it would encourage users to leave their TVs on all day, which would use up lots of electricity and be bad for the environment. Perhaps there is some energy saving regulation that prevents such waste, and that is why we have not seen TVs as photo frames before now.
Posted by TheAnimus - Mon 14 Apr 2008 16:19
You do actually get burn in on TFTs. My old place i had terrible burn in on two of the 19" NECs, they couldn't of been *that* old either.
Posted by Sinizter - Mon 14 Apr 2008 16:36
If you look at the new airport screens which have not been in use for that long - burn will be evident.

Newer generation stuff is less susceptible to burn, but it takes a lot more abuse.

As for the picture frame, why not have changing pictures - which would take care of the burn problem. Even if one of them was displayed for five minutes at a time it wouldnt be a problem.

Its not a standard feature because not everyone would want to run a picture frame which sucks up around 300W when its on. Every additional feature comes at an additional cost. The large screen TV market is pretty tight nowadays - and prices have to be extremely competitive to compare with cheap tat displays that stores market as own brand displays when 90% of people are confused about what HD means let alone the difference between HD Ready and full HD.