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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 55 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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55 out of 55 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Watch out for this company."
Pros: Top notch manual and packageing
Cons: HDtuner may show some false contouring in some scenes
Summary: Being a videophile and all I'll give ya the quick heads up.
First thing you should know about this tv. They have a zero bright pixel garrantee. How well their customer service is I'm not sure but that is a better garrantee than any other tv manufactuare has for LCD tv's anyware that I'm aware of. They also have a 1 year onsite tech support if something should go wrong. And one other nice thing is that they are based out of california, I'm not sure where these tv's are made but know that the company headquarters being american based was reassurring to me since I live in the U.S.
Ok on to some things most people don't care about but I found quite impressive. The box the tv came in was amazingly designed in that you unclip 4 plastic clips and the whole top came off with no cutting tape of any kind. This tv had the best instructions and the best packaging I've ever seen. Everything in the manual was easy to understand and the quick guide to the setup was top notch. Any grandmother could set this sucker up in a heart beat. Which is saying alot for the presentation of the packaging.
On to the remote and first impressions. The remote is a universal that you can program it for 4 devices and it's very well laid out and comfortable in the hand. Upon firing up the tv I first tuned in my basic cable channels and then the hd over the air channels. It didn't take very long at all and went very smoothly. The hd tuner picked up all the channels that my media center pc does and the only one I have troubles with is cbs for some reason in chicago they broadcast on vhf and not uhf like all the others. I always have trouble with cbs. I first turned on the hd but nothing in good hd was playing but I did notice that the channel changes were very fast and the tv had a very nice guide description for the hd channels that could be toggled on and off much like using tivo and displaying what is on at the top and being able the minimize it to just show the channel or all the info for what was playing and so on. Next I went on to trying basic cable. It looks ok, merely ok but some channels are much better than others. Like I said I use basic cable and it's not very good. On the bad channels you would kind of get a slight blurring effect but on the good ones that was almost non existent. Later that night I checked out some of the hd shows and noticed that the hd tuner does a adequate job but the picture never quite looks as sharp as the newer bravias or sammys but it does look good overall, just not great.
Onto the 360. I read somewhere that this tv's picture is much crisper on the hdmi than the components and that the difference was more than you would normally notice. After hooking the 360 via components I noticed that the tv didn't have the same clarity as my dell w2600. It was very good and almost as good but you could tell that the dell was better. So next I hooked up the vga adpater, I tried the 1360*768 resolution since the tv is native 1366*768 but for some reason it made picture off center and could not be fixed. I then switched to the 1280x720 res and was really impressed straight away. I made some minor adjustments and then ran the gammut at it. First of I played all my downloaded hd trailers and was blown away. Over the vga it actually now looked better than my w2600. All the videos just popped off the screen. I then played the beginning of Kameo just to check out the colors. It looked fabulous, again I was floored. I then fired up my media center pc and played some of my hd tv shows. Like prison break and house. It's funny because my recorded shows over the MCE actually looked a tiny bit better than what was currently on the hd tuner. After a bunch of playing with MCE, which worked perfectly at the 1280x720 resolution( my prior westinghouse had issues with MCE and the vga adapter) I tried a dvd. That didn't work out so well. For some oddball reason the DVD was not filling up the whole screen. I then tried it with the components and it worked fine but still wouldn't with the vga adapter. I do have another dvd player hooked to the tv so this didn't bother me much.
To sum it up this tv cost me $999, has a great warranty, good hd, ok analog though I was using cable so it might be better with something else. But the most important it has a 8ms response time and plays xbox360 games with no blurring whatsoever and looks incredible doing it. My decision to buy this tv came down to a few things. Could I return it?, Would it play xbox 360 games well?, and would the hd tuner be any good. Well I'm not gonna return it and it plays xbox 360 games superbly using the vga at 1280x720 and the hd tuner is good but merely acceptable to me. It does it's job but will never stun you like the bravias and sammys. My MCE hdtuner actually does a better job.
In the end I'm happy and this is a tv manufacture worth looking out for in the future. With their superb quality I'm sure we'll be seeing more of them.
- 3 replies to this review
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When I am in need of a T.V that has a good manual and packaging i might think about buying one, but otherwise these T.V's suck, save you money and buy a Samsung.
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I have a SAMSUNG 26" CRT HDTV. It's the only HDTV I've owned so it's all I have to base my decisions on. I bought it specifically for my Xbox360, and I have enjoyed it quite a bit. I was at Wal-Mart last week and was looking to update my HD experience to a nice 32" LCD. After looking at all the display models sitting next to each other playing the same video, it was easy to judge the picture quality of each. Now, I had never heard of VIZIO before last week, but let me tell you, the VIZIO L32" HDTV was producing the best, brightest, crispest picture of all the display models. I was excited to see the price tag was only $884 with all the inputs it offered. They only had 2 left in stock so I placed one in layaway. I'm selling my SAMSUNG to a buddy at work and I can't wait to pay off my 32" VIZIO. I'll post my own review of the set once I get it. Probably within a month and a half....hopefully sooner.
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I wish I had seen this review the other day. I own the T.V. (bought it for my xbox 360) and I was thinking about buying the VGA adapter for the 360. I put it off, now I wish I hadn't.
I'm also pleased with my purchase.
Vizio L32:
