HD Content is the future, or the present actually, but it’s still not as widely adopted as we think it is, according to Nielsen as of November 30th 2008, only a little over 23% of the households in the United States have an HDTV. If you think about it that’s really low, but prices are coming down, and there are some companies that are putting out very good, large screen HDTVs for under $1000, one such company is Vizio. They haven’t been around that long really compared to other manufacturers, but they’re giving us a good product at a lower price than the competition.

Today for review I’ve got a 47" LCD HDTV from Vizio that retail for under $1000, and that’s even after taxes! The Vizio V047L is an excellent television in my opinion, the picture is beautiful, and it’s got numerous inputs for all of your components. There’s one glaring problem with it though, the sound from the built in speakers is just terrible, but since it’s inexpensive compared to others out there, it’ll leave you with money left over to get a nice surround system to go with it.

Read on…

I thought about doing an unboxing for this TV, but it was just too big to handle, so I’m not going into that too much. I decided to forgo a lot of the pictures, it’s a black TV, not that much to really look at.

The box is huge as expected, it’s got four small plastic clips towards the bottom, you unclip those and the box can lift off of the base for easy access to everything inside.

It does come with a steel cable to attach to your wall to anchor it just in case, and having three small children this was something of a must for me to do. I’ve got a small corner style entertainment center that suits what I have just fine, and it holds up the Vizio well. I like having it in the corner as it’s less likely my kids can get back there, or next to it for something to accidentally happen to the TV or to them.

On the front of the TV we find all the little logos there, nothing special, just lists features really.

One thing I immediately found out that I didn’t like about this TV is that the border, where the logos and beveled part are, has a high gloss finish, if you get the light just right you get quite a bit of flashy glare off of it. The gloss also seems to attract dust as well, kind of annoying to dust it everyday.

The Vizio V047L includes a universal remote, that like most remotes really isn’t universal, I can’t get it to control my Sony BD player or my Sony Audio System, luckily though one Sony remote can control both of them. The remote for the Vizio is rather large, but it’s thin and lightweight and the buttons seem to be placed well, I like the quick shortcut button across the top to switch inputs quickly.

On the left side of the TV, sort of inset behind the display is a secondary set of controls, the basic functions are here for Power, Volume, Channel, Menu and Input.

The right side of the V047L has component, composite and two HMDI inputs for easy access. I have one complaint with this setup, you can’t use both composite and component at the same time because there’s only one set of audio inputs. I was using the side input for my PS2, but I grabbed a set of component cables for it and it’s not a big deal now, as I hooked them up elsewhere.

On the back of the TV is where you’ll find all of your main connections for HDMI, Optical, COAX, VGA, Component and Composite and outputs as well as the main power connection.

Vizio also has a built in cable management bracket as well under the connections. When I took these pictures I didn’t have everything hooked up, so it looks rather clean back there, but now it’s cluttered and I’ve got wires everywhere.

Specifications:

Vizio 47" LCD FHDTV

MODEL – VO47L
MSRP: $1,149.99

With Full HD you get razor sharp clarity, crisp and clear images and an absolutely amazing viewing experience

Enjoy the breath taking picture of VIZIO’s 47” VO47LF 1080p Full High-Definition Television. With enhanced picture quality technologies such as automatic color equalization, you’ll see details that you’ve never seen before. Designed for maximum versatility, the VO47L FHDTV is equipped with a wide variety of input interfaces including now Four HDMI (v1.3) inputs, perfect for High Definition Satellite or Cable Box, gaming consoles, and HD-DVD players, and a component HD connection for other devices and an RGB input for your computer. Go ahead, plug it in. We’ve even thrown in an oversized cleaning cloth.

VIZIO – Where Vision Meets Value.

>Additional Features:
* 178 Degree Viewing Angle – Our LCD HDTV’s deliver a viewing angle of up to 178 degrees, resulting in crisp and clear pictures that are visible from any seat in the house.

* Integrated Digital/QAM television tuner – enjoy high definition and regular television programs with or without paid high definition service.

Specification:
Size: 47-in*
*Viewable: 46.96-in
Tuner: Integrated NTSC/ATSC/QAM HDTV Tuner

Supported TV Formats:
1080p, 1080i, 720p, 720i, 480p, 480i

Native Panel Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Supported PC Resolutions:
1920 x 1080, 1366 x 768, 1024 x 768, 800 x 600

Specification:
Panel Type: 47" Diagonal*, 16:9 Wide Screen, Color TFT Active Matrix LCD
Panel Specifications: Anti-Static and hard coated surface
Pixel/Dot Pitch: 0.5415mm (H) x 0.5415mm (V)
Display Compatibility: FULL HDTV (1080P)
Signal Compatibility: 480i (SDTV), 480P (EDTV), 720P (HDTV), 1080i (HDTV), 1080p (FHDTV)
Response Time: 5ms
Colors: 16.77 million
Brightness: 500 cd/m2 (typical)
Contrast Ratio: 6500:1 (with DCR)
Viewable Angle: 178° (horizontal and vertical)

Inputs:
RF (F Connector for internal tuner): 1
HDMI with HDCP: 4
Analog Stereo Audio for HDMI Inputs: 0
Component YPbPr plus Stereo Audio: 2
Composite Video: 1
S-Video plus Stereo Audio: 1
Computer RGB plus Stereo Audio: 1
Service Port:

Outputs:
Analog Audio out (RCA): 1
5.1 SPDIF Digital Optical Audio: 1
Headphone (Stereo Mini-Jack): 0

Weight:
Gross: 90.3 lbs
Net: 77.56 lbs
Without Stand: 67.2 lbs

Dimensions:
Carton: 54" x 38" x 14"
With Stand: 44.5" W x 29.8" H x 10.5" D
Without Stand: 44.5" W x 28.5" H x 4.5" D

The picture is beautiful for gaming, movies and live TV, the pictures I’ve got here don’t do it justice really.

I really didn’t have to change any setting at all to get the picture to look good, but yo can there are many, many settings to play with and several presets as well for gaming, movies and sports. Depending what your doing at the time the menus will change slightly, like if your watching regular TV and you hit the menu button the option for channels comes up as well.

On thing I found interesting and useful is that you can name the inputs, makes things a bit easier.

When you are choosing your input a window pops up on screen, you can scroll through them, or you can also just use the input shortcut buttons on the remote to select them.

Here’s the presets that are available for the picture:

When you’re watching TV you’ve also got access to the information about the channel as well, just hit the info button and it’ll pop up for you:

Overall I love this TV, the picture is outstanding, the colors are sharp and crisp and vivid, the blacks are black and the whites are nice and bright.

Now the sound is a different story, the built in speakers are horrible honestly. I threw in Guitar Hero Metallica in the Xbox360 and turned up the volume, it was extremely distorted and just sounded very, very bad. Luckily though I don’t use the built in speakers, I’ve got a Sony Soundbar HT-CT100 sound system, and using that changed the audio completely of course. I’ve got my Xbox and BD player hooked via HDMI to the Sony system, and then I’ve got the optical audio out of the Vizio V047L going to it as well, much, much better sound.

I like my audio to be clear, the highs high and the lows low, the built in speakers of the V047L are just horrible sounding to the point I couldn’t stand it for more than a few minutes.

As for hooking my computer up to the V047L, there is no DVI port, but there is a VGA connection and of course you can use one of the HDMI ports as well. Many newer cards today come with a built in HDMI connection or include a DVI to HDMI adapter with them, so not having the DVI connector is not a big deal really. I found playing games on the Vizio to be enjoyable and would love to just leave my PC hooked up to it, but alas, I can’t do that, other people need to use the TV as well.

The viewable angle of the Vizio is fine, I had no problems with any fading or contrast issues unless I was far off to the side, where I have the Vizio setup viewing is not an issue for the seating arrangements.

Besides playing PC games on it I also played Xbox360, Wii and PS2, it worked fine for all of them. Since the Xbox can output to 1080 of course it looked much better than the other two, but the Wii looks very good as well, only the PS2 looked a bit off even using the component cables, but I believe that’s more to do with the system than the TV. Playing games on the Xbox is awesome, there’s no ghosting or anything like that, the V047L has a 5ms response time which works well for gaming, every game I played on it in HD looked beautiful, colors were crisp and bright.

Conclusion:

The average price for the Vizio V047L is about $950, which is very a very good price for it, you’ll likely pay quite a bit more for any other brand TV of similar size and features. It’s a good thing though that it’s inexpensive as you’ll need to invest in speakers if you want quality sound to go along with the outstanding picture.

One other small complaint I could have is that there aren’t enough component connections on this TV, it would be nice if there were more. Yes there are four HDMI connections, but many things, even newer items don’t use them, like the Wii, there’s no HDMI for it. Presently I’ve got three devices that use component but only two connections on the TV, but I figured a way to fix that problem, but more on that at a later date.

Pros:
Beautiful picture
Easy to use and setup
Connections available on back and side
Many, many options for configuring picture

Cons:
Speakers are very bad
High gloss finish produces glare and attracts dust
Not enough component connections

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance