HD Feed: September 22

Sony NZ has still to finalise the price of its first 4K consumer TV but already CNET reckons it will be surpassed by the much cheaper XBR-HX950 HD TV. “Yes, the XBR-HX950 is smaller and lower-resolution, and yes, it’s still extremely expensive at a beginning list price of $US3,500,” CNET says. “But I expect it to have better picture quality than the 84-incher, along with just about every other LED TV.” That’s because it will have “full array” local dimming rather than edge-lit. It will come in 55- and 65-inch screen sizes but don’t look for it at your local Sony Store — Sony NZ says it’s not part of its range for this territory. As for the likely price of the 4K XBR-84X900, which Sony will show to media next month, you can probably expect to pay $30K+, given the US sticker price is $US25,000 and Sony’s 4K projector sells here for $35,000.

Tonight’s episode of Boss on SoHo (Sky 10, 8.40) opens with Mayor Tom Kane watching the interrogation of the man arrested for trying to kill him. “But like all good things on Boss, there’s something murky and untrustworthy in the apprehension of the suspect,” says Screen Rant, which also warns of “earth-shattering revelations” before the hour’s over. It screens midway through TV One’s scarcely fresh MasterChef  Australia finale (it aired two months in Oz), which the network precedes at 7pm with the return of the sickly sweet Annabel Langden The Free Range Cook: Simple Pleasures. Meanwhile, MasterChef Australia has become the first Australian light entertainment programme to reach one million Facebook “likes.”

Rating a mention: Castle fans desperate to see what happens after this week’s season-four finale should check out this fifth-season premiere clip at Entertainment Weekly, which the mag refrained from commenting on because it was “too cute, too fun, too full of joy, and, simply, too perfect” to spoil … Deadline reports Battlestar Galactica‘s Ron Moore is adapting the 2001 Heath Ledger movie A Knight’s Tale as a series for ABC … And according to The Hollywood Reporter, Guillermo del Toro is adapting his book trilogy, The Strain, at FX with Lost’s Carlton Cuse .. While Dallas fans await its roll-out on TV One, TV Guide reports another original cast member has signed on for its second season: Audrey Landers, who played Cliff Barnes’ lover, Afton Cooper.

The second half of TV3’s X Factor USA narrowly won the 8.30 hour on Thursday but couldn’t top TV2’s reality duo of Police Ten-7 and Motorway Patrol in its first hour. However, it was a tight contest, with TV2’s target 18-39 viewership dropping nearly two points from 7.30-8.30 and X Factor’s rising by virtually the same amount. TV3’s Smash, however, wiped out any gains the network made by averaging only 1.6% – 2.7% of the key demos– which was half what TV2’s Fringe rated an hour later (3.5% – 5.8%). It was a similar story of TV One’s Auckland Daze, which averaged only 2.5% – 4.1% after Mrs Brown’s Boys 6.8% – 11.6%.