...If by that Roy you mean all this 'motionflow rate' stuff is a load of old spheres then I could not agree more.
https://sony-eur-eu-en-web--eur.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/84351/kw/Motionflow
This statement from the Sony article above for instance...
"Normal TV signals comprise 50/60 successive frames every second (50Hz/60Hz)."
....is complete and utter tripe! - Really! Shockingly incompetent rubbish!
In the UK, and most of Europe HD television programmes are delivered to the broadcasters by production companies to a mandated standard... ITU-R BT.709-5 Part 2.
1920 x 1080 pixels in an aspect ratio of 16:9
25 frames per second (50 fields) interlaced - now known as 1080i/25.
colour sub-sampled at a ratio of 4:2:2
Here's the BBC's position on it... http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/production/articles/technical-requirements - You'll get a near-identical document from any of the major broadcasters - If we don't deliver programmes to that standard none of the BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 or Channel 5 will broadcast them! Similar standards apply in the former NTSC countries where the frame rate is 30Hz
- There would be nothing 'normal' about a 50/60 FPS TV picture...
The fact that the writer apparently doesn't know their fields from their frames is an indication of the 'salt' of their marketing and engineering departments!
The full specs for the sets in question are here...
https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/televisions/x8300c-series/specifications
"Sure it might be relatively easy to do on the assembly line. But no value engineer worth his salt would let it happen with no price differential, and no marketing man worth his salt would allow it either, as it just muddies the customers otherwise clear choice."
I assume you're self employed, retired or own your own business? - Or possibly work for an SME that still has actual humans running it?
Marketeers, in my experience, very often have grasp of a rather fanciful 'reality '- many aren't particularly honest people either. Something similar can be said of certain styles of 'by rote' management. - Thus the popularity of tripe like NLP and the tendency to shoot down realism ( or rather any sign of non-complaince) as negativity. - Engineers worth their salt? They can be fired from the trap just as easily as a clay pigeon ; and often are for their troublesome ways. All that is fed from the demon of 'corporatethink' and injelitance...
See C Northcote Parkinson for further details!
People who actually are 'worth their salt' and and are prepared to make a stand against bad decisions are not encouraged or, very often, not even tolerated in big corporations. Thus, in order to keep a roof over their heads, folk get so used to handling invisible cloth they just keep stitching... Never mind the quality; feel the width! Some get so used to it they actually start to beleive their own BS!
I would suggest that the general situation here is that a load of yah-yahs and stuffed shirts from Marketing have pressured an 'engineering' team hand picked for their compliance rather than competence... And I'm afraid - yes - it's a very dishonest game. - But if you can screw and extra forty quid here and there out of folk for something that just doesn't matter...
But there you go... Sony HAVE produced these variants... And I'm afraid the legal position remains that there must be some technical variation between them.
