Do TVs have different model numbers/names in different countries?

Hello!

I've been window shopping for a new TV and looking at the recommendations for televisions from Rtings and similiar websites. A Sony tv called "XBR55X900E" was recommended and had a good price in the US. I thought even once you tack on the You Live On A Pirate Island tax and the currency is converted it would likely still be a good price for such a nice TV so I set to looking for it locally and found nothing. In fact I found that it seems like the taxonomy for Sony TVs seems to be totally different in this country. So much so that I'm not sure if this similar TV here is even the same one that was recommended to me.

If this is the case and they all have different names this is a huge pain in the dick as it means any article/resource on TVs from the states (ie. all of them) effectively needs to be translated for me to even begin looking at them.

Whats going on here?

@hayt: Maybe something about your television tuner being different? Australia uses the DVB-T standards (and was a PAL country pre-HD), whereas the US is an ATSC country (and was NTSC pre-HD).

Yeah, it seems they do run different model names down under (and likely in other regions too). I'm in the same boat as you: in Aus, shopping for a TV, finding the region differences to be a minefield. I've even known some TCL social media reps to claim that a model being sold in Australia was the equivalent of the one getting recommendations from Rtings and CNet, which it turned out not to be. (And it's frustrating that TCL aren't selling that model here.)

fwiw, I think the two Sony TVs you pointed out are basically the same, and I've heard from local sources it's good.

(Obviously I don't think this post answers your question properly. Hopefully someone can.)

Yes, they do. At least Samsung and LG TVs do that I know of for certain. Pretty sure in their case it's to prevent Koreans from finding out how much their local electronics magnates are overcharging them at home.

@hayt: As someone who lives in the UK, yep the model numbers are completely different outside the US. For me, it made websites like Rtings completely useless to the point where I literally couldn't find latency data on any European or UK-specific model numbers. I gave up and bought the LG B6 because at least that basically has the same name here (they still fuck with the last letter).

Also the prices in the US are crazy cheap comparatively.

They can even differ by store. One of the TV's I was looking at had a different model number at one store because they wanted a cheaper remote included in theirs.

In this case, what @gundamguru said is correct. With the Sony models, XBR is just the North American version of the KD. The reviews you read for the X900E will apply to the XBR and KD

Model names do tend to differ when it comes to US to EU. Like sometimes a EU set might be assembled here in Europe and maybe have a different speaker setup and TV tuners. I guess that might be why they do that, but I'm not sure. It's a mess for sure when trying to research TV's.

It's not just Australia and the EU. They are often different here in Canada to. They are usually pretty close (sometimes they just tack a CA on at the end), but it can be a pain when you want the XTJEGLA4893782 and the only one you can find is the XTJEGLB4893784.

They definitely do, probably because of different power and signal types. You will probably need to do the research yourself and compare and contrast, for 4k the things you want look at are wide color gamut, peak brightness, panel type, and for games input latency. Hopefully that info is on the official websites and then compare that with stuff on a site like rtings to find the right model or the closest to it.

Thanks everyone! I've found the local mark up for TVs is preeetty brutal (around 600 aud extra) but at least I know i have to commit to scanning the specs of everything.

As a sidenote if anyone has any recommendations please do share them! Extra special bonus points if you are an Australian with a suggestion.

They do, they need to differentiate between models down to region specific internal component differences. Generally speaking however the things that matter to you (picture quality, latency, etc.) aren't impacted by these differences. It's more to cover things like power supply variances for different electrical standards and differences in receiver hardware for specific regional UHF frequency ranges.