Vizio GV47LF

CNET editors' review

Native resolution, which on HDTV spec sheets usually refers to the number of physical pixels used to create the picture, comes in two basic flat-panel LCD flavors: 1,366x768 and 1,920x1,080. The latter, known as 1080p, has become increasingly common even among relatively inexpensive models, and Vizio's GV47LF HDTV is one example. Another is the Westinghouse LVM-47w1, which we reviewed last October and considered a good value. The Vizio has better styling and a more consumer-friendly feature set compared to the Westinghouse, and while both offer decent, if not spectacular, picture quality, we give the slight nod to the Westinghouse. Both sets also compete directly against similarly priced 50-inch plasmas, such as Vizio's own P50HDM and Panasonic's TH-50PH9UK, both of which scored better in our performance tests. But if you definitely want a 1080p LCD, and the slicker looks and built-in HDTV tuner of the Vizio appeal to you, then the GV47LF HDTV is still a solid bargain.

Design
In our opinion the GV47LF HDTV is the nicest-looking Vizio design yet, but the difference between it and, say, the 46-inch GV46L HDTV is still subtle. The 47-inch model shares the Vizio line's black frame set atop a silver base that incorporates speakers and the stand, but the frame itself is a bit thinner than before and encased in clear plastic, which shows around the borders as a subtle, classy accent. In another slick design move, the controls on the panel itself aren't buttons but rather touch-sensitive areas of the frame that light up when touched and tastefully disappear when not in use. We wish the glowing Vizio logo did the same.

With the stand and speakers attached, the GV47LF HDTV measures 44.5x31.4x10.6 inches (WHD); divested of stand and speakers the panel is a trim 44.5x26.9x4.5 inches. We like the ability to strip off the speakers, especially if you're going for an "all-picture" look and using an external sound system anyway. Naturally, Vizio sells custom wall-mount brackets if you'd like to go that route.

Unlike the exterior, Vizio's remote and menu system haven't changed a bit. The clicker is still crowded with buttons that in some cases serve more than one purpose, and while the backlight behind the keys is great, we wish there was more differentiation to make navigating by feel a bit easier. We like the direct-access buttons for different input types, though. The menu offers a fairly painless way to access the TV's controls, and we appreciate that it doesn't obscure the screen during picture adjustments.

Features
The main difference between this Vizio LCD and previous models is the pixel count. The screen of the GV47LF HDTV displays 1,920x1,080 pixels, allowing it to supposedly resolve every detail of today's highest-resolution sources: 1080i and 1080p. As always, other sources are scaled to fit the available pixels.

We say "supposedly" because the Vizio GV47LF HDTV didn't actually pass the test to determine how many pixels it can resolve in 1080i mode (turns out that doesn't matter much; see Performance for more). That's because, unlike most 1080p flat-panel HDTVs, it lacks a dot-by-dot aspect-ratio mode (which would display 1080-resolution sources without scaling) when fed 1080i sources. It does do dot-by-dot (in the "wide" setting) with 1080p sources, however. With all HDTV sources, the Vizio offers two aspect ratio choices, "wide" and "normal"; with standard-definition, the number increases to four.

Otherwise the GV47LF HDTV shares the same features as most other Vizio sets. It includes an HDTV tuner, which allows it to tune over-the-air HDTV channels, along with a QAM tuner for digital cable that, depending on your cable service, might let you tune some unscrambled HDTV channels. The Vizio also include a versatile picture-in-picture control that lets you watch two sources simultaneously.

Picture controls start with three preset video modes and a fourth custom mode that lets you adjust the rest of the picture parameters independently for each input. In addition to the three color-temperature presets, we liked the fact that you can adjust red, green, and blue in a custom color-temperature menu, but unfortunately it's not as effective as we'd like.

There's also a selection of so-called advanced picture controls that we mostly left turned off for critical viewing. The Black Level Extender is said to improve detail in dark areas, but we couldn't detect any difference so we left it off. The White Peak Limiter is said to do the same thing in light areas, and again we left it off since it had no visible effect. A control labeled "CTI" (Color Transient Intensity) supposedly corrects for errors in fast-moving scenes, but again it had no effect we could discern so we left it off. The Low Flesh Tone control simply intensified reds and made them appear pinker, so we left it off. We also turned off the dynamic backlight and Adaptive Luma controls, which are both said to change the picture according to what's on the screen.

The Vizio GV47LF HDTV's connection bay has everything we'd expect. It includes a pair of HDMI inputs which can take 1080p sources (at 60 but not 24Hz), two component-video inputs, one A/V input with composite video and one with composite and S-Video, one RF input for cable for antenna connections, an optical digital audio output, and a VGA-style PC input for PC connections.

If you're connecting a computer, you'll probably be disappointed that the VGA input maxes out at 1,360x768 resolution (which did look pretty good) instead of the full 1,920x1,080. We did connect a PC via HDMI and got 1,920x1,080 resolution, but the image didn't look as sharp as the 1,360x768 version. Again, we believe this has to do with the lack of a dot-by-dot mode, although perhaps people playing with picture settings, either in the Vizio or in the video card's drivers, can achieve a better-looking higher-resolution computer image. All-in-all, shoppers looking for a big computer monitor would be better served by the Westinghouse LVM-47w1.

Performance
While certainly not the best-performing LCD we've tested, the Vizio GV47LF HDTV held its own in the picture-quality department. Color accuracy was a strong point, along with decent standard-definition picture quality. On the other hand, we'd like to see somewhat better black levels, which would also improve saturation, as well as better uniformity. Overall it's still a better performer than the 46-inch GV46L HDTV, however.

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.