While the Sony Bravia XBR-84X900, the 84-inch 4K flagship television will probably have to wait till its 2nd revision to feature NFC tech, the smaller siblings, the Bravia XBR-55X900A and XBR-65X900A will feature the bluetooth based tech from the very beginning. For those not familiar, NFC stands for near field communication and is based around bluetooth. What the technology offers is a simplified way of pairing two devices by taking profiles and pass codes out of the equation. Instead, when two devices are touched by one and other, the bluetooth profiles are automatically connected and paired. In fact, even if bluetooth is off on your device, the simple process of touching the devices will automatically turn on all the needed functionalities of your device like its bluetooth. (Hello security issues!) In fact, those of you looking for a demo of the technology need look no further than after the jump where we have further details and a video demo.
As the above video shows, getting content from the Sony Xperia Z to an NFC enabled home theater system is a breeze. With so much of our content now on our smartphones and tablets, Sony wants the same ease of transfer to come to their flagship Bravia televisions. When the Bravia XBR-55X900A and XBR-65X900A launch this spring, each model will feature a NFC enabled remote which acts as the bridge between the television and your NFC enabled device like the Xperia Z. This of course makes perfect sense as it would be silly to have to get up and touch your phone against your television. Instead, chances are that the TV remote will always be in arms length.
Like the demo above, to play your music, videos, and or photos on either Bravia 4K models, you simply need to tap your phone to the televisions NFC enabled remote and all the required pairings will take place. It should also be noted that NFC is not a proprietary Sony tech and that Sony has abided by the open standard. In layman’s terms, any NFC enabled device will be able to talk to Sony’s 4K XBR line of televisions. I was told from Sony engineers at CES that the remote could not be purchased separately and paired with older Bravia televisions, due to other tech built in the new generation of TVs. While not advertised and the engineer wouldn’t go into further details, the XBR line of televisions with NFC probably equally offer a discreet bluetooth chip which acts as the bridge between the NFC enabled remote and television.
Discuss:
Should Sony expand NFC tech to their entire television line?