I am very new to all of this but I am trying to learn as much as possible. I just bought the 42" lcd and the picture just doesn't look good. Now, i do not have it hooked up to an HD reciever yet, but I expected the picture to look better than it does. Can anyone help with some prefered settings for this? Images look like cartoons at times and people can look orange with the color set at 50. I have to move it down to about 40 to get it to go away but then the rest of the picture looks dull.

Thanks for any help.

For a start set contrast to around 75 and leave your color around 40. Sharpness to 1 and backlight to 65 for day and 20 at night. Set the brightness to around 45.

I'll give it a try. Thanks

I tried the above suggestion, but I'm still having the same problem. Do you think this is because I don't have HDTV hooked to it or the TV. The guide says since the LCD is so much better than a crt TV that you could notice more flaws. But I didn't know if that is just a line or if it is true? Anyone else have any experiences with this model. I'm thinking about returning it and picking up a plasma.

Any suggestions?

WOAH!! Hold on to your horses, rhoadsn1. There may be nothing wrong with your set. The problem most uninformed people have with HD is that regular Over-The-Air, regular cable, and regular satellite broadcast in 480i to be in compliance with all the old TVs (NTSC standard 480 vertical lines, refreshing every other line during a refresh). HD tvs (both plasma, LCD, and DLP, others I don't know about) have at least 720 vertical lines. This causes a regular picture to have to cover almost 2 pixels on the TV for every pixel that is broadcast. The best analogy I can think of is using digital zoom on a low mega-pixel camera. If you zoom too much, it's VERY grainy. Same concept. If you could get the proper amount of content to match what the TV is capable of showing, it will look GREAT. Not sure about the orange issue, but I'm sure it is part of this low resolution signal being shown on a high resolution screen. If you purchased a good up-converting DVD player, or an HD-DVD player, or just plain stuck a good pair of rabbit ears on the TV, you could see the difference. Terestrial HD is just as good as many of the DVDs I've watched. You litterally plug a coax cable from your antenna (be it outside of your home or on a shelf by your TV) and do a channel search. You should get a few analog channels (what you would have gotten on your old set) and some new digital channels (could never see these on your old tv, require a new type of tuner). Of course, this depends where you live. Your area may not have too many HD broadcasting stations yet, or if you don't get good channels on your regular TV, you probably won't get them on your HD set either. This is simply a reception problem. But if you DO get plenty of channels and live within 45 miles or so of a major city, I bet you get some. You'll see the difference.

Just keep in mind that as the stations broadcast in HD, their shows are not all formatted for wide-screen 16:9 yet. You have have to put up with some 4:3 standard definition programs for a while. If you do any of this and still have the orange issue, I would call Vizio and see if they can resolve it, and finally take it back if nothing else works or you are running out of time.

I just purchased a 42" Vizio from Wall-eyed World and could not be happier for the money. I live close to Fort Worth Texas and receive upwards of 27 terrestrial HD stations (1/3 are in spanish I think) and also have an Toshiba AC-2 DVD player connected to it and it is BEAUTIFUL. I'm sure I have some screen correcting to do, but I still think it is 30x better than my old 27" CRT from 1988. For tracking sake, my parents purchased a 37" Vizio for their bedroom 2 weeks ago and they have had no problems with their's either. Might be possible you got one of the few bad ones, but from what I read, the bad ones are "very" few.

I'm no expert, and some of my above info may not be 100% accurate, but it steers you in the right direction and answers your question.

Good luck.

P.S. I'm not defending the Vizio against other, higher quailty sets. For the money (of which I don't have much right now), I think this brand is a great buy. If you have more money to spend, look at the higher brands to make sure you get the best bang for your buck. For me, this brand/set is plenty.

Thanks for all the help. I'm going out today to buy a upconversion dvd player and surround sound. Hopefully I will get to see what this TV can do.

The guide says since the LCD is so much better than a crt TV that you could notice more flaws.
Woah! LCD displays are NOT better than CRTs and I don't think I'd trust a manufacturer that tried to make that claim.

Yes, LCD's are thinner, lighter, draw less current, but in terms of "quality", a CRT blows them away.