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19 out of 21 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Actually quite good, for the money"
Pros: Picture is equal to 37" 720p compitetion but costs significantly less
Cons: Typical LCD issue with less than steller blacks
Summary: In the master bedroom where I've forced my wife to watch TV, soshe can Tivo girly crap in there and it doesn't confict with my manly recordings on the BIG TV. Plus she likes it in there. We had a 38" RCA CRT HDTV with built DirecTV, which really looked good, but weighed close to 250lbs and won't fit in any furniture and probably can't be hung on the wall, which she wanted.
So I went over to Costco and was actually going to pick up the 42" Panny plasma, but it wouldn't actually fit in my car. So I looked at the LG, Sharp, and Vizio 37" LCD's, I'd have picked up the Panny 37" Plasma if they had it. Once I adjusted the brightness, sharpness, and colors to a slightly more sane config, all looked pretty similar under the lights, the LG probably the worst and I couldn't tell the difference with the other two, so the Vizio was it. Basically $899 vs $1199 and equal performance is a complete no brainer, only $200 more than the 32" Vizio.
I should have got a commission since they had a giant pile of 32's by the front door that people were picking up, I told like 10 people that the bigger one was only slightly more expensive so they switched, and then Costco ran out.)
Once I got the set home and hung on the wall, which was a HUGE pita, it actually looks really nice, as in styling. They've rounded it a bit so it's somewhat more streamlined than the competition, which doesn't make the picture look any better. With HD DVD and DirecTV the picture looks quite good. With DirecTV's HD Lite picture 720p really is about the best your going to get. HD DVD is better, blacks still don't really exist on this set, but with the lights down and the backlight toned down you can see a fair amount of black (read dark grey, charcoal really) detail. The old CRT looked better in my opinion, I don't think it resolved as much detail but it was really smooth and film like. I've really noticed that the CRT had quite a bit of overscan and the Vizio shows a pit more of the picture. So that's about it, great value, picture is competitive, why would you buy something else in this category? Sony has some 40" 1080p's but for more than 2X the price there is really no way to justify it at any normal viewing distance, over this unit.
On a side note, the Plasma's do look significantly better than LCD. Not really the resolution, as LCD's are typically one step higher in each size, 1024X768 vs 720p and 720p vs 1080p. But the black levels are much better, so much better that I've decided to not replace my 61" CRT rear projection with DLP or LCos (JVC's 61FN97 was my choice), I'm going to go with the 58" Panasonic plasma. Of course, I'm not buying till March, so I reserve the right to change my mind and go REALLY big, like 70", more power.
