47 LCD FULL HD HDTV 1080P-4 HDMI & REMOVABLE SPK review

As always, we began by adjusting the television to achieve the best picture for our darkened environment. On the Vizio GV47LF HDTV, that entailed curbing its blinding light output by adjusting the backlight all the way to zero, then attenuating contrast somewhat to achieve a comfortable peak light output of about 40 FTl. Then we used the custom color-temperature adjustment to try to improve upon the Warm preset, but we weren't very successful. If we adjusted so the bright areas were correct, the dark areas looked too green; if we adjusted so the dark areas were correct, the light areas appeared too blue. We'd like to see full color-temperature controls that independently adjust the bright and dark areas, as opposed to the GV47LF HDTV's single control for red, green, and blue. After fiddling for a while we ended up using the default Warm setting after all, as it seemed to produce the best results, although the average color temperature was still quite blue (see the Geek box). For our full picture settings, click here or check out Tips and Tricks above.

After our picture adjustments, we set up a few similarly sized TVs next to the Vizio for side-by-side comparison purposes: the directly competitive Westinghouse LVM-47w1; the similarly-priced Panasonic TH-50PH9UK plasma TV; and the reference-quality Pioneer Pro-FHD1 plasma TV. We chose to watch Training Day on HD DVD at 1080i to see how the Vizio stood up to the tough competition.

Our first stop in any discussion about HDTV picture quality is usually in the neighborhood of black level performance, and this review is no exception. We could see immediately from the brighter letterbox bars above and below the picture that the Vizio GV47LF HDTV couldn't produce a black as deep as either of the plasmas, and it was also slightly lighter than the Westinghouse. We saw a bit more detail in the shadows on the plasma TVs as well. For example, the folds of Denzel Washington's leather jacket and the shadows on his face during his final tirade looked slightly more realistic on the plasma models than on either the Vizio or the Westinghouse.

The Vizio's color accuracy had its high and low points. As we mentioned above, the grayscale was a bit blue even after adjustment, which lent a noticeably paler cast to Ethan Hawke's skin, for example, than on any of the other three sets. And while color decoding was quite accurate, allowing us to keep the color control at a relatively high level without turning skin tones too red, the images on the two plasma models looked a good deal more rich and saturated, mainly on account of their better black levels. The blood-red couch in Washington's house, for example, appeared deeper with more impact on the plasmas. We did appreciate the Vizio's solid primary color accuracy, however, which made the grass of Echo Park, for example, look natural without any yellow tinge.

In terms of video processing, we did detect a couple instances where the Vizio evinced minor false contouring. When Washington talks to Snoop Dogg, for example, the transition from shadow to light in the wall behind him did show some subtle--but still visible and unnatural--steps as opposed to the smooth gradations we saw on the Pioneer and the Westinghouse. We also saw a few instances of blurring or image lag, such as when the side of the building became briefly indistinct as Hawke leapt from the rooftop, but the Westinghouse behaved the same way.

We also kept an eye out during this incredibly sharp-looking disc for any difference in detail between the 1080p Vizio and the 1,366x768 Panasonic, and in general we couldn't see any. Only when we approached to within five feet or so of the Panasonic's 50-inch screen did the individual pixels become visible, whereas from the same distance the Vizio's pixels were not. Yes, the GV47LF HDTV can deliver an extremely sharp image, but not one that's appreciably sharper than a lower-resolution set around the same size. On the flip side, the Vizio's inability to resolve every line of a 1080i test pattern from our Sencore VP403 signal generator--a test the Pioneer and the Westinghouse sets passed -- did not appear to make its image any softer than those two.

Update 02-02-2007: When this review first published we indicated that the Vizio lacked a "dot-by-dot" aspect ratio mode, but that's incorrect. In fact it does do "dot-by-dot" when in the "wide" aspect ratio mode but only with 1080p sources. In that mode there is no overscan, so we recommend feeding this set 1080p whenever possible.

Uniformity was another area where the Vizio could have used some improvement. Our review sample had light leakage along the bottom of the screen in two distinct places, so lighter areas were visible in the letterbox bars. We also noticed that the upper-right area was lighter than the rest of the screen, which was again obvious in the letterbox bars. The Westinghouse had its share of uniformity problems as well, and was worse than the Vizio in one scene where the camera panned over an overcast sky--we saw subtle vertical variations in brightness with the Westinghouse, whereas the Vizio was much smoother. In general these uniformity issues will vary from sample to sample, and they don't affect plasma TVs.

Off-angle viewing with the Vizio GV47LF HDTV was about on par with the rest of the LCDs we've tested. The image did tend to wash out and become discolored from the sides as well as from above and below, and the Westinghouse was just about the same in this regard.

Finally we looked at the Vizio's ability to handle standard-definition video by going through the suite of tests from HQV via 480i component-video, and the results were half and half. It did an OK job of smoothing out jagged edges in diagonal lines, but details were somewhat soft in the stone bridge and we saw lines of interference on the stairs. There are four levels of noise reduction and while going from Off to Low did quiet a good deal of the snow in the skies and clouds, further increasing the noise reduction didn't seem to have any effect on most of the scenes, and we ended up wanting more in many instances. The Vizio did kick into film mode and engage 2:3 pull-down detection very quickly however.