The Short Form

$1,400 ($1,700 list) / VIZIO.COM / 888-849-4623

Snapshot

Vizio’s first 120-Hz LCD isn’t perfect, but its good overall performance and affordable price make it a tempting HDTV option for tough times

Plus

• Crisp high-def picture detail • Good screen uniformity and viewing angle for an LCD • Natural out-of-box color • Great value

Minus

• Just-average black-level performance • Smooth Motion/Real Cinema feature generates picture artifacts • Can’t separately adjust picture presets for each input

Key Features

• 120-Hz display • Smooth Motion processing •Inputs: 4 HDMI, 2 component-, 2 composite-, and 1 S-video, RF Ant/Cable, PC RGB • 44 x 29¾ x 10 in, 62½ lbs (w/stand)

Whenever the economy takes its inevitable cyclical trip southward, consumers make compromises, and they also start shopping around to find better deals. You might have had your eye on a Lexus, but those new Hondas all of a sudden look good. A new iPhone would be cool, but maybe next year's model will be even slimmer -- and cost less. Word is that the new LED-backlit 120-Hz LCDs finally give plasma a run for its money, but what about Vizio? I hear it's also got a new, inexpensive 120-Hz TV.

Vizio made its name by selling flat-panel sets at prices that are substantially below the more well-known brands -- usually through bargain-club outlets where HDTVs are just one of hundreds of product categories lining the forklift-friendly aisles. And while price is usually what draws attention to Vizio sets, our past reviews have also found that they deliver solid performance. The 1080p SV-470XVT ($1,400) is Vizio's first stab at a 120-Hz LCD model. As you might expect from a company that has led the charge in beating HDTV prices down to affordable levels, this 47-incher sells for almost half the cost of similar-size, similar-feature models from such big-name brands as Samsung, Sony, and JVC.

While Vizio TVs have always been average-looking, this new model is eye-catching. A gloss-black 11⁄2-inch-thick bezel surrounds the screen, while a slightly taller strip housing the set's speakers runs along the bottom. The right side has an unusually well-equipped A/V convenience input with both composite- and component-video connections and not one but two HDMI jacks. (There's a second pair of HDMI jacks on the back panel and another component-video input as well.)

Vizio's remote is a bit flimsy, and the tiny buttons for controlling features like picture-in-picture selection, picture mode, and aspect ratio are concentrated in a dense, non-backlit cluster at the bottom. To switch sources, you either hit the Input button and scroll through an onscreen menu, or select from the row of direct-input buttons at the top. And once you locate the Wide button, you can change the set's picture-display modes. For standard-def programs, your choices are Normal (4:3), Wide (16:9), Zoom, and Panoramic stretch. With high-def, however, options are limited to Wide and Zoom -- a meager picture-formatting assortment.

SETUP

The numerous picture modes include a Custom preset and ones tailored for various sports like basketball and golf. But if you want the TV to put out a natural-looking picture, you should begin with the Custom and Movie modes. Settings for each of the Vizio's presets can be customized, and the TV remembers the adjustments, but your modifications can't be stored on a per-input basis -- the changes that you make to a particular preset apply globally to all of the TV's inputs.

I was surprised by how easy it was to get the Vizio's picture looking good. Its Movie preset only required a few basic tweaks, while the Normal color-temperature mode delivered natural-looking color right off the bat. The Advanced Video menu includes Color Enhancement, Advanced Adaptive Luma, and Enhanced Contrast Ratio settings. For my viewing, I left these switched off: The Color Enhancement options made hues look overly rich or unbalanced, while Advanced Adaptive Luma altered the set's gamma and Enhanced Contrast Ratio made dark images appear too dim.

Another setup feature worth mentioning is Smooth Motion, which has three options in its menu: Low, Middle, and High. These work to control the level of judder smoothing in the set's Real Cinema processing, which provides Off, Precision, and Smooth settings.

PERFORMANCE

To test-drive the Vizio, I dug out Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm on Blu-ray Disc. In the scene where the brothers (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger) are forced by Cavaldi to go sell "the oil of snake" in the village of Marbaden, a wide range of dark shades could be seen in the carriage they spill out of, as well as in the black clothes worn by both Cavaldi and the shifty, folklore-collecting siblings. But darker scenes didn't come off with nearly as much detail or depth on the Vizio. When the brothers later enter the trapper Angelika's cottage to seek her help as a forest guide, the shadowy corners in her dim abode looked somewhat featureless and flat.

While really dark scenes stretched the Vizio's abilities, its natural-looking color made less- murky shots in The Brothers Grimm look stunningly good. For example, in a scene where Cavaldi bursts in on a dinner party thrown by General DeLatombe, differences between the French general's slightly swarthy skin tone and the fairer faces of his Parisian guests could be seen clearly. Meanwhile, colors such as the red velvet and gold trim of the attendants' jackets, and the green and purple grapes lining the table, looked rich and resplendent.

Switching to high-def cable, I continued to be impressed by the Vizio's picture. When I tuned in to Game Four of the American League baseball playoffs, the Red Sox were stumbling badly against the Tampa Bay Rays, but the team nonetheless looked great on the Vizio's 1080p screen. (And this was with the Movie, as opposed to Baseball, mode selected!) The green turf showed plenty of texture and detail, and wide shots taking in the whole field and the bleachers beyond looked punchy and showed a good sense of depth.

Standard-def programs on cable and DVD also looked good on the Vizio -- as long as I stuck with its HDMI connection and avoided using the component-video inputs, which served up notably soft-looking pictures. The performance of the set's Smooth Motion/Real Cinema processing, meanwhile, proved inadequate at all settings. Even the Low mode lent film-based images a too-fluid and overly sped-up look with either the Precision or Smooth Real Cinema options selected. And I also spotted frequent picture artifacts such as stuttering and blocky "halos" in shots with horizontal motion with Real Cinema switched on.

BOTTOM LINE

Vizio's first 120-Hz LCD TV can deliver crisp, punchy-looking pictures with natural color on a wide range of programs. And with a street price of $1,400, it does so at a considerably lower cost than its big-name competition. Despite a few qualms, I found that the SV-470XVT's generally satisfying performance makes it a fine option for sports fans and casual movie and TV watchers alike.

TEST BENCH

Brightness (100-IRE window): 57.4/38.5 ftL

Primary Color Point Accuracy vs. SMPTE HD Standard

Color	Target X	Measured X	Target Y	Measured Y
Red	0.64	0.78	0.33	0.35
Green	0.30	0.29	0.60	0.67
Blue	0.15	0.11	0.06	0.01

The SV-470XVT’s Movie picture preset delivered the most accurate color when the TV’s Normal color temperature was also selected. With those settings active, grayscale tracking ended up being +/- 633 degrees K of the 6, 500-K standard from 30 to 100 IRE — below-average performance. Manual adjustments made to the red, green, and blue controls in the set’s Normal color temperature submenu improved grayscale tracking to +/-313 degrees K from 30 to 100 IRE. Color decoder tests revealed only a slight +2.5 percent red push for HDMI, and +2.5 percent red and green push on the component-video inputs. Even with the TV’s Color Enhancement mode switched off, its red, green, and blue color points still all showed relatively high levels of oversaturation as compared to the SMPTE HD specification.

Overscan — the amount of picture area hidden behind the edges of the TV’s screen — measured 0% for 1080i and 720p-format high-definition signals with the Wide mode selected. The set fully resolved 1080i and 720p test patterns via its HDMI inputs, although a 1080i resolution pattern looked booth softer and noisier with a component-video connection. DVDs watched via the same input showed considerable resolution loss, measuring somewhere around 375 lines — well below the format’s full detail level. Screen uniformity was excellent for an LCD display, with gray full-field patterns showing no sign of tinting or uneven brightness. Off-axis viewing was also good, with picture contrast remaining solid up to 30-degrees from center.

Tests of the Vizio’s video processing delivered mixed results. It passed all of the tests contained on the Silicon Optix HQV high-def test disc, but failed several tests on the DVD version of the same, performing particularly badly on the flag and detail chapters. The set’s noise reduction mode worked well and didn’t introduce significant detail loss at any setting.

— Al Griffin