Sony turns living rooms into imax dens with 100-inch bravia barrage
Sony just declared war on movie tickets. The company’s fresh Bravia Theatre line lands today—nine-speaker soundbars, vibration-cancelling subwoofers and 100-inch panels—promising to drag the multiplex into your flat whether you live in a studio or a McMansion.
The bar that maps your couch
Flagship Bravia Theatre Bar 7 squeezes nine drivers—包括 up-firing units—into a 37-inch chassis. Flip it on and 360 Spatial Sound Mapping fires sonic “phantom” speakers around the room, calibrating in 30 seconds to the exact shape of your space. IMAX Enhanced tracks get an automatic EQ bump; rear subs pair wirelessly out of the box. Early demo: helicopter blades felt like they were churning air above my head while dialogue stayed locked to the screen. Price: €1,199, pre-order live.
Step-down Bar 5 drops to 3.1 channels but keeps Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Sony’s vertical-surround DSP. The bundled 6.3-inch wireless sub digs to 30 Hz—enough to rattle floorboards in a Berlin apartment during Dune: Part Two’s thumper scene. Cost: €699.
Subwoofers that cancel themselves
Theatre Sub 9 hides dual 200 mm drivers firing in opposite directions; chassis vibrations are nulled before they hit the cabinet. Result: couch-shaking bass at 20 Hz without the neighbour-bothering rattle. Sub 8 uses a single larger cone and costs €200 less. Both ship 13 May.
Wireless Rear 9 satellites complete the 7.1.2 package. Each enclosure carries a 19 mm tweeter and 55 mm mid-range; magnetic wall mounts included. Pairing? One tap inside the Bravia Connect app—no router needed.
100 Inches of xr silicon
Sony’s screen offensive starts with the Bravia 3 II, stretching to a metre-wide 100-inch option—the largest LED it has ever sold in Europe. Under the hood: the same XR Processor that powers the company’s €4,000 flagship TVs, driving 4K/120 Hz, Dolby Vision and four HDMI 2.1 ports ready for PlayStation 5’s VRR. The 43-inch entry comes in at €699; the 100-inch beast will nudge €3,500 when it drops on 13 May.
Budget buyers get the Bravia 2 II: 4K panel, Google TV, 60 Hz, no XR chip, sizes 43-75 inches. It’s the panel Sony expects to sell to parents upgrading from 2015 LCDs before they notice the soundbar aisle.
Bottom line: Sony isn’t selling accessories—it’s selling an exit ramp from cinema subscriptions. The bundle of a 65-inch Bravia 3 II plus Bar 7 costs less than a year of weekly multiplex tickets for a family of four. Cinema is coming home, yes; the box office may never recover.