While my heart is set on OLED, the Z9F looks very impressive for an LED set. Most importantly, Sony fixed the dreaded off-angle viewing issue that plagues every LED TV, where colors appear more washed out as you move towards the sides. That's something that still affects Sony's previous high-end LED set, the X900F. The X-Motion Clarity feature in the Z9F is a holdover from that earlier model, and it helps to smooth out on-screen movement without making everything look like a soap opera (which is usually attributed to overzealous motion smoothing).

"We're never satisfied," Sony Electronics president Mike Fasulo said in an interview. "It amazes us at times -- we present a product that we think is never going to get any better, and then our engineers, working with the content creators, figure out ways to improve it. We're obsessed with that."

The company spent the past 18 months working on the new models, according to Fasulo. And when it comes to taking on Samsung's 146-inch MicroLED TV, he says Sony is already investing in large crystal LED (CLED) screens. Those are targeted at commercial users, but it's not hard to see how that could be scaled down for consumers eventually.

The Bravia Master Series sets are also the first TVs to feature Netflix's Calibrated Mode, which optimizes the picture settings for shows and movies from the streaming service. Based on a few short clips from Lost in Space, the new mode appears to deliver a more-accurate image. And given that most consumers don't spend much time calibrating their new TVs, it seems wise for Netflix to offer a one-click option for better quality. (Thankfully, Netflix's settings also avoid the soap-opera effect.)

Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.