Geeks.com was so kind as to send me the Vizio VX32L for review, a 32″ widescreen LCD TV capable of doing 1080i. At USD 469.99, this 32″ LCD television is quite affordable, so read on to find out if it is worth your money.The Vizio VX32L has the following specifications:
- 32-inch diagonal viewable screen
- Color TFT Active Matrix LCD
- 16:9 aspect ratio
- Native resolution 1366 x 768
- Integrated NTSC/ATSC/QAM HDTV tuner
- Supports TV formats: 480i, 408p, 720p, 1080i
- Supports PC Resolution: 1366×768, 1024×768, 854×480, 800×600
- Anti-Static and hard coated surface
- Pixel/Dot Pitch: 0.51 mm (H) x 0.51 mm (V)
- 8 ms response time
- Colors: 8 bit 16.77 Million colors
- Brightness: 500 cd/m2
- Contrast Ratio: 1200:1
- Viewable Angle: 178 degr. (Horizontal and Vertical)
- Picture-in-Picture (PIP)
- Picture-outsid-Picture (POP)
- Closed Caption (CC)
- V-Chip
- 3D Comb Filter
- Zoom
- Freeze
- 3:2 or 2:2 Reverse Pull-down
- Progressive Scan Video
- Two (2) Built-in 10 Watt speakers
The television has a silver backplate, and the foot and speaker ‘beard’ are also finished in silver. The bezel around the actual display has a black piano finish, which looks quite stunning if you ask me – but as always, looks are extremely subjective. A fold runs through the middle of the speaker beard and the stand, which I find another nice touch. The Vizio logo doubles as the LED power indicator; it glows a soft white while powered on, and a very faint orange when powered off. This is yet another nice design touch. Luckily, the TV is large enough to have an internal power brick (don’t you just hate those external bricks?).
The build quality appears to be fairly good, although it cannot beat the quality of more expensive brands like JVC, Sony, or Philips. It is nothing to worry about, however, and squeezing the casing here and there reveals little in the forms of movements or squeaks (I hate squeaks). In other words, in this case, affordability does not mean bad build quality. The stand is removable, and you can use any VESA stand or wall mount instead.
In the television’s box you will find the TV itself (that was a relief), a power cord (yet another American power cord I do not use; I could move to the US and I would not have to buy a single new cord), a composite video cable with an RCA audio cable, the remote control (incl. batteries), and a manual and quick start poster.
Before I start talking about the TV itself, I want to focus on something else, something many electronics manufacturers get flat-out wrong, even the more expensive brands: usability. More specifically, the usability of the manual and the actual device combined. It is rare to find a manual that perfectly corresponds with the actual device it details, but Vizio has done this in such an outstanding way it almost made me cry tears of happiness. All the connections (more on that later) on the backplate are strictly colour coded, and these colour codes are re-used militantly throughout the manual and the quick start poster. In addition, the language used in the manual and quick start poster are clear, to the point, and understandable for even people with reduced brightness (like me). The manual also has a clear and detailed table of which connections give the best image quality, something less tech-savvy people will certainly appreciate.
So even though Vizio is a rather young American brand (founded in 1999, located in California), they seem to get something right that few of the established brands seem to get right: proper manuals. It is hard to precisely put into words what makes a manual ‘good’, but you can take it from me that Vizio is doing it right. Consumers seem to like Vizio, by the way, as they outsold all the bigger brands in the 2nd quarter of 2007 in the US.
Back to the TV. It has quite the number of I/O ports:
- Two HDMI with HDCP
- One analog stereo audio for HDMI inputs
- Two component YPbPr plus stereo audio
- Two composite video
- One S-Video
- One 15-pin VGA
- One service port (for qualified engineers)
- One analog audio out (RCA)
- One 5.1 SPDIF digital optical audio
Obviously, the best way to connect video equipment is to use HDMI – sadly, my digital TV decoder (via cable) does not have an HDMI output; it only has a SCART port carrying S-Video or composite video signals – about the worst ways to transfer video. There is little I can do about this, apart from buying an HD decoder with HDMI support (EUR 200, out of the question so soon after the holiday season). Luckily, however, this brings me to another strong point of the Vizio: even though I am using a composite video cable (video experts will cringe, this is the worst possible way to transfer video apart from drawing it out yourself), image quality is still acceptable. I asked various friends and family members what they thought of the image quality (to eliminate possible rationalisation interference), and they were all positive. Of course, using HD content, or even using either HDMI or component cables, would yield much better results.
Obviously, there are signs that I am using composite video, especially when you are looking at fast moving imagery with bright colours. Especially my favourite colour, red, has problems with this. The problem is that the moving area with the brighter colours ‘tears apart’ into RGB, and even though this is barely noticable during normal TV programs, it gets more clearly visible during, for instance, fast-moving sports scenes. All in all, however, this TV has excellent upscaling technology on board, and the image quality using something as archaic as composite video is excellent.
One note: I am so happy the world is standardising on HMDI/DVI connections. I was getting pretty tired of having to find out whether my SCART connections carry component or s-video signals; in addition, SCART is a European thing, so equipment from the US does not use it. HDMI solves these problems. Rejoice.
The on-screen display of the television is a joy to use. The options are organised quite logically, and the text labels are of a large font size so that they are easily readable. The settings are divided into four tabs: picture, audio, setup, and parental. The TV allows for a lot of tweaking, and it is advisable to spend a few moments with the manual (which is again very understandable and well-thought out in this section) and the remote control to tweak the picture quality – I have been able to improve quality quite significantly just by turning certain features on or off. Dynamic noise reduction, black level extender, white peak limiter, colour transient improvement, and dynamic contrast ratio; playing with these options can really improve the image quality. As is common with just about any TV these days, you can save various presets such as ‘movie’, ‘natural’, and ‘game’.
Two specific things about image quality stood out to me. Firstly, the black areas are truly black. It is only recently that some manufacturers have started to accentuate the importance of black being black, but even this fairly affordable TV gets it right. Sometimes, it is even hard to tell where the black of the display ends, and that of the bezel starts! This is a definitive improvement over my previous LCD TV or monitors.
Secondly: fonts. Dutch television uses subtitles for foreign content, instead of dubbing like Germans for instance do (ever heard Clint Eastwood shout ‘Handen hoch!’? Sure makes me laugh), and as such, I was afraid that having such a large screen filled with standard definition content would ruin the appearance of any fonts (and thus subtitles) on the screen. This turned out not to be the case: fonts are very, very crisp, whether we are talking subtitles or ‘ordinary’ on-screen fonts. This is a very big plus for me (even though I do not need subtitles in English, German, or even French, they are invaluable for just about any other language).
Even though I do not use the internal speakers (I route audio through my component HiFi set), I did perform my usual highly scientific (cough) test for speaker quality: playing Bjork’s “It’s Oh So Quiet” and “Army Of Me”. As usual with internal speakers on TVs and monitors, sound quality was downright appalling for “Army Of Me”, a song with deep bases and a full sound. The high pitched notes of “It’s Oh So Quiet” did better, but still felt canned, as if I was listening to a pair of EUR 3,- in-ear headphones. After trying out some more music, it became obvious that music relying on an overwhelming effect (some would call it wall of sound-ish) such as Marylin Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” or Garbage’s debut album and “Version 2.0” are definitely not suited for these speakers.
I hear you all thinking: “duh!”, but to me, there is no reason for manufacturers of TVs, monitors, and even laptops to include such limited speakers. I have seen some very small and slim design speakers over the years that were perfectly capable of producing decent sound output – not as good as proper wooden-cased three-way speakers (which I would call adequate for a normal household) of course, but still, acceptable seeing the limitations. I still cannot get over the fact that even up-market laptops (MacBook Pro anyone?) or displays are fitted with speakers I would barely want to see fit on my telephone.
Conclusion
For only USD 469.99, you are getting a whole lot of television (at least for Dutch standards, 32″ is reasonably large), with outstanding image quality, a plethora of input options, and a lot of ‘tweakability’ to make the image fit your personal needs. The manuals and the on-screen display are easy to use, and even less tech-savvy people will find their way around this television quite easily. The speaker quality is, sadly, again, appalling, but I hope this will be the next big thing for television makers to overcome.
Product: Vizio VX32L 32″ widescreen HDTV
Supplier: Geeks.com
Manufacturer: Vizio
Price: USD 469.99
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Native resolution 1366 x 768
How this is supposed to display picture with 1080 lines?
thats easy… vertical!
1080i is interlaced, so TVs with 768 lines just have a combined deinterlacer that scales the image at the same time.
Which is a load of shit, as you’re losing data and not actually getting the full 1080 picture.
IMO this should be considered false advertising.
It supports the format, but it sure won’t display it -as-intended- by the format.
Well, on the other hand, they do have to be able to support that signal format, because, at least here in AL, USA some of the high-def OTA channels I get are broadcast in 1080i only. So either the TV supports and downscales it, or no broadcast for you. I’m on the fence if this is entirely misleading or not, though it should probably at least have a footnote indicating that 1080i gets downscaled to 720.
ALL LCD 1080i TVs have that 1366×768 resolution. All of them. So if you have a problem with it, go knock the door of the HDTV standard and tell them to not allow manufacturers to call it HDTV 1080i. I have even blogged about it months ago:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/07/27/explain-this-to-me-please/
but there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s the way it is with LCDs.
Edited 2008-01-09 20:46 UTC
Say Again???
At the big consumer electronics stores in Germany like Media Markt, etc. there are always a large number of LCD TVs on display. Those that support a resolution of 1366×768 are labelled “HD Ready” and are fairly cheap in price. Then, there are those that provide a resolution of 1920×1080 and are labelled “Full HD – i.e. full 1080i support” (and are a lot more expensive). Usually, the stores are running an HD recording through those TVs. The difference between the images on the “HD Ready” and “Full HD” TVs are like day and night.
How does that figure?
We are talking about 1080i TVs here, not 1080p. 1080p TVs are 1920×1080 but they are expensive. The BULK of LCD sales today are 1080i. And for these TVs, it IS 1366×768, and they ARE called HDTVs. I don’t know how you call them in Germany, but over here they are called HDTVs.
UK shops seem to be similar to Germany, with HD Ready and Full HD labels to differentiate the two types of HDTV
Oh – I just rechecked my info – my bad. I was thinking about 1080p, which are what are called “Full HD” HDTVs over here. “HD Ready” HDTVs here are 1080i and downscale HD to 1080i on 1366×768. I am still holding out for 1080p, though – the image on these is so much better.
Edited 2008-01-09 21:44 UTC
HD Ready in the U.S.A. was given to televisions that didn’t have the HD (ATSC in the U.S.A.) tuner but were capable of accepting 1080i input. Many of those were also noted as HD Monitors.
The nomenclature has changed because those 1366×768 t.v. sets now are required to have the ATSC tuners and are labeled HDTV.
I’ve had one of these for a few months. Comparing the various TVs in the stores(especially the ones right next to it at circuit city), the Vizio came out ahead of the the other cheap brands. Of couse the Samsungs and Sonys looks great, but were asking a lot more. I was actually surprised at the quality of the upscalar, which is where I’ve found that most cheap TV skimp, since nearly every LCD TV in the store made a great HD monitor with a good HD source(except for one really cheap generic set). Since I don’t have HD cable(HD comes from the media center PC or an upscaling DVD player, or game consoles), a lot of our conetent would be upscaled SD, so one thing I looked at was all those nice HD TVs with regular SD content. Again, the Samsungs, LGs, and Sony’s look spectacular, but most of the cheap TVs choked. Aside from the Vizio and one other that I can’t remember the brand, they all sharpened the defects to the point that they looked worse than on the similarly sized CRT SD TVs. The last thing that won over the Vizio for me over the other TV with similar price and picture quality was the number of inputs.
When I did my research, these Visio GV line of TV’s have the best signal processing of any TV outside of a 400% more Sony Bravia.
I tested normal DVD, vs using a name brand DVD-upscaling player and this TV’s own processing was just as good as the upscaling player.
The one thing that kept ME away from LCD/Plasma for so long was the fact that SD content looked like ass on most of them.
But, this Visio handles SD content VERY VERY well and is at least as good as my old tube tv.
OK – so I know that often there are reviews of different hardware on here – but – why would a website that specifically deals with IT related topics – specifically OS’s, have a review about a TV?
pac
Yeah, how about reviewing this as a computer monitor? I am very seriously thinking about using a TV as my next monitor, and Vizio is high on my list. With an antenna it will double as TV in the den as well.
I agree that it would be worthwhile to find out how this particular HDTV (and others) perform as a monitor. I have various PCs (Linux, Windows & a new MacBook Pro) and a large monitor would be great.
PS Otherwise great review Thom
I’m also considering this, but it just seems to me that for sizes over 24″, anything less than 1920×1080 is going to start looking very chunky
Yeah, I think you are right, you’d need at least 1920×1080 for that large of a monitor. Perhaps I will have to wait a few years. There’s always Apple’s Cinema display.
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Yes it is lame, but standard. TVs are often sold by their accepted INPUT SIGNALs rather than SCREEN RESOLUTION.
The screen is only good for 720p. ANYTHING that does not come in as 720p is scaled (up or down)
A 720p signal on a 720p tv will look crisper and sharper then a 720p signal on a 1080p (general statement, not counting overscan, pixel mapping, etc…)
Hey OSAlert is now like Gizmodo, but with more computer stuff. cool
BTW: I grabbed a Sony 40V2500 1080p set yesterday. Very nice on the ps3 and PC
Nice to see they buy an HDTV and throw it in the corner of their living space. Clearly optimal for all to view!
SCART plugs can carry three types of signal (from bad to good) composite, s-video or RGB (four if you include the stereo audio) Most CRT TV with SCART connectors accept RGB on the first input, this gives a very nice quality picture (you can read a computer desktop) and a lot of DVD players, digital sat receivers can be set in the menu to output RGB instead of s-video.
Problem remains that some tv’s include only one SCART RGB input and that most computer graphic cards need some tweaking (powerstrip) and a homebrew vga to scart cable to output proper RGB signals.
Some tv’s or devices have component video inputs/outputs a red/green/blue connector which is not the same signal as scart with RGB which uses four wires Red, Green Blue and a composite sync instead of Y Pb and Pr
Edited 2008-01-10 10:35 UTC
“HD Ready” and “Full HD” do not (or should not) differentiate between 1366×768 and 1920×1080 panels. They’re not even, exactly, alternatives.
“HD Ready” is intended to notify the potential customer that the TV does not contain an HD tuner: i.e., to get an HD picture out of it, you’re going to require some other piece of equipment (an HDTV cable box, satellite box, OTA receiver, whatever). You can only sell it as simply an “HDTV” if it can actually receive and display an HDTV (i.e. 720p, 1080i, or higher) signal with no external assistance.
“Full HD” differentiates 1080p from the lower HDTV standards (720p and 1080i). IIRC it was originally one manufacturer’s bright idea, but now they all do it. The problem was that simply selling a TV as “1080p” doesn’t sound very exciting. Calling it “Full HD” sounds far better, and makes you feel like you’re getting something you don’t get with a ‘lower end’ model.
If a TV is 1080p but doesn’t have an internal HD tuner, they can call it “Full HD”, but I believe it still has to be described as “HD ready” somewhere by the store / manufacturer, otherwise you could probably complain about the inaccurate advertising.
A 1080p panel in a 32″ TV is usually a waste. People saying that anything lower than 1080p would be blocky are not taking viewing distances into consideration. That’s true of a PC monitor, which you sit about a foot away from. It’s not usually true of a TV, which you usually sit much further away from. You can find tons of references if you Google “viewing distances” “HDTV” “1080p” or something like that, but what it boils down to is that if you sit around 6 feet or more away from a 32″ TV, 1080p capability is basically pointless. Your eyes are not capable of discerning a difference between 720p and 1080p at that distance.
I have a 42″ TV and a viewing distance of around 5.5 feet, so I’m getting some (but not full) benefit from the 1080p resolution of my TV. But if I had bought a 32″ TV, I’d’ve got a 720p panel.
Plug in a PC and think again. BIG difference, even at 6-8 feet. Now factor in 1:1 pixel mapping on a 1080p set and there is an enormous difference. Crystal clear. (excep maybe on a vizio or olevia, etc…
)
There is nothing magical at all about LCD tv’s…Just like a laptop, you can set many source resolutions, but the OUTPUT resolution is always the same, and a source that is the same resolution as the display (native resolution) will ALWAYS look the best.
I already do. I have both 1080p and 1080i sources for my TV. I can see a difference, but not a big one.
Ditto for 720p; I have a couple of TV series for which I have both 1280×720 and 1920×1080 videos available. I can see a difference, but not a large one, from my regular viewing distance.
For 720p (1280×720) a 1366×768 screen is just fine. Since most broadcast HDTV here in the US is either 1080i or 720p. Hardly anyone broadcasts 1080p since they can fit two 1080i or 720p stations into the same bandwidth. So for actually watching TV a 1366×768 set is fine, and most game consoles do better at 720p than 1080p anyway. I’ve been pretty happy with my 32″ vizio for gaming, my Wii (480p only admitedly) looks great on it, and the 360 of course looks awesome.
However, for a computer monitor 1366×768 is kind of small, and 32″ is kind of large. If you want to go the HDTV as computer monitor route, its probably better to save up and get a 1080p set. I did use mine comfortably as a computer monitor for a few months though, so it is possible if you’re feeling poor. Also, the resolution is odd so it can take a little fiddling to get working. I had to browse the nvidia driver documentation to get it working in linux.
If your primary purpose in buying a TV is to watch hd movies, I suppose 1080p is a better option since both formats support it and thats what the movies are encoded for. However, if you’re going to be doing that, you’re probably going to want larger than 32″, and you’re also probably going to be spending significantly more than $500 for a TV anyway.
Well, I don’t know whether it will ever be sold in Italy or Switzerland, but some people really ought to be careful choosing names for products. Some Italian speakers may think there’s something pornographic about it (vizio=vice, perversion) or that there’s something broken in it (vizio=defect, fault, flaw). Well, I had to say it, because it had me in stitches.