Totally not worth the hype. Totally regret getting this. The A650 smokes it. Plus I have sparkles everywhere. Save your money for the A650 and a home theater system. I enjoy Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 .
no white cloud and no sparkles. I’ve only had this tv for a week, but I haven’t had any problem at all with a white cloud or sparkles. I think it’s too expensive, but I also wanted many of the features that Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 offers and that I haven’t seen from any other maker in this size and with a picture this realistic. I’ve had three Trinitrons over the years and quite a few other Sony products. Except for one experience with a telephone that only lasted a year, I’ve never had a problem. This is my first HDTV and I’m still working through trying out all of the features. I’ll write more when I’ve had more experience with it.
Update: Now that I’ve had more experience with this TV I really love it! Watching the opening ceremonies from the summer Olympics on this TV was an amazing experience.
I’ve only had one problem: occasionally the audio would just stop. If I changed the channel Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 would come back immediately. I went to the Sony support site today and found out that they have a new software update for this TV. You can either download the update to a flash drive, or call Sony and have them send you a flash drive containing the update. That’s the route I decided to take as Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 will give me a Sony flash drive to use just for future updates. (The software update covers the audio problem and a few other issues that I haven’t experienced with my TV.)
Great Sony TV – (Not) an Energy Star TV. I received the Sony KDL40-Z4100 two week ago and Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 is definitely a great TV. Delivery was great, worked right away, good and easy menu control, picture is perfect and we really like the design. We were first not so sure about the silver but no regrets.
So, with everything so great why only 3 stars…
Well, one of the decision factors I put into researching LCD screen TVs was their power consumption and Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 should have an Energy Star rating with low standby. Looking at the specs and also at www.energystar.gov Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 shows on power ~150W and standby 0.11W.
While setting up the TV, I enabled the TV Guide which is one of the default options, kind of a nice to have I thought…
Just being curios I started measuring power consumptions (using P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor) on my home theater system and even with everything in standby Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 showed around 30W. After unplugging one device after the next the Sony TV was the only device left and still 19W (the TV was in standby). After doing an online search I came across the following website http://www.deviceguru.com/hdtvs-dam-pops-energy-stars-bubble/ which pointed Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 to the TV Guide. Apparently having TV Guide enabled will increase the standby consumption to around 20 W for 75% of the time. The website also describes how to disable the TV Guide. Now having disabled the TV Guide standby is at less than 1W.
Not sure who to blame, Energy Star for certifying Sony BRAVIA KDL-52V5100 or Sony for building a 20 Watt powered TV Guide. 5 Stars for the TV, 0 Stars for Energy = 3 Stars