Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100

Formats (10.0)

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 is a full 1080p HDTV, which means it can natively display the highest quality of HD content currently available. This content is typically only available from Blu-ray discs. The KDL-52V5100 is also capable of displaying 1080i, 720p and 480i/p content. It can also playback content that is supposed to be viewed at 24 frames per second either natively or using 3:2 pulldown. The KDL-52V5100 does not support a wider color gamut such as xvYcc.

Photo Playback (2.5)

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 can play back photos located on USB devices plugged into the USB port on the left side of the HDTV. Unfortunately the photo playback options are limited and the interface is poorly designed. When a USB device is plugged in you are shown the folder heirarchy available. When we navigated to the folder with our pictures, however, we did not see the photos. Instead we had to go to the Tools menu and choose Select Photo Files to view them. Why this extraneous step would need to be added we don't know.

Once you do have the photos displayed on the screen as thumbnails you can view them full screen or rotate them via the Tools menu. You can also add them to a slideshow, but unfortunately there's no option to add them all to a slideshow so you'll have to do this individually for every photo, another annoyance. Once a slideshow is playing you basically have no control over it from this interface. If you go to the main menu and choose USB you can adjust the slideshow speed, but there's no options for transition or to play music. Overall it's just a poor effort for photo playback on an HDTV.

Music & Video Playback (3.0)

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 does not support playback of video but it can play back Mp3 music files. We found many of the same annoyances we saw with photo playback, in this case you can't just navigate to a folder with your music files but instead have to choose Select Music Files from the Tools menu. Once you've done this you see thumbnails of the music files available with album art displayed if it has been embedded into the file. You can play a file by pressing the center select button and then skip between tracks using left/right or up/down on the directional pad. There is no support for playlists and if you want to shuffle songs you'll have to go into the main menu and make this adjustment under USB options.

Streaming Playback (0.0)

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 does not support streaming playback from online sources.

Additional Media (0.0)

The Sony Bravia KDL-52V5100 does not have a built-in DVR, DVD or Blu-Ray player.