Vizio E701i-A3 Owners Thread - Page 14

I am experiencing the same issue with my set. I'm on firmware version 1.1.3.

Has anyone that has experienced this issue found a solution? Has anyone updated to 1.1.4 and has that fixed this problem?

Thanks in advance

I think Menu --> System Setup --> HDTV

Rick

Oddly enough I just got ARC working, not even sure how. I was fidgeting with some RCA cables attached to the receiver I had hooked up to the tv/cd input and somehow the arc kicked in and has been working since. If you have an Onkyo, you might want to try playing with your hdmi connections and RCA settings.

I picked up a 701 on "Black Friday Saturday" at Walmart, and surprised my wife with it on Christmas morning, hung by cables from the wall header and displaying the old Yule log fire. It was a hit!

I've spent the past week dialing in my calibration, and love the set, having not found any serious issues, only two minor ones, with only one left unresolved.

The resolved issue may be of interest to some of you: I had a need to send HdMI audio to te Tv from my Windows 8 Media Center, and have that audio them be re-transmitted out the tv's optical port to my 5.1 Vizio sound bar (which is amazing). The Problem: the TV's EDID does not report that it can accept any signal other than 2 channel audio :-(. I took a chance and ordered a Gefen HDMi Detective, used the built in EDID preset #5 which tells the Media Center that the TV can handle DTS, Dolny and 8 Channel, and to my very happy a,axe net, the TV now passes Dolby 5.1 and DTS directly through the the avian sound bar, and the sound is crazy good. Weird/odd/poor design that the TV's EDID doesn't say this on it's own.

OK, here's the real issue. When I attempt to calibrate the TV with Digital Video Essentials test patterns, all goes well until I get to the contrast adjustment: something is clipping the white signal such that reducing my contrast will not result in displaying them"above white" bar in the test pattern: the "above white" bar and the one next to it are both the same shade of white.

Some,thing in my system is clipping the Above White signal, and I can't figure out what it is (my Radeon 7750 had been clipping the black signal, but I resolved that issue). Could this be internal to the TV, or a setting I haven't yet disabled (I believe I disabled pretty much everything) . have any of you calibrated contrast using an above white signal, and did it work, or was yours clipped too?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Well im out. Hope the rest of you get good sets. The replacement set has terrible clouding/backlight bleed/flashlighting whatever term you want to use and has a big oval shaped spot near the center of screen that is brighter than rest of tv and extremely noticeable on pans when their is a solid color shown. I had 2 bad sets and am not gonna go through the hassle of having another set sent, getting a refund and will wait to see what is shown at CES.

I am out as well. Probably try a eh6000, though liking the idea of the LG laser projector was originally going to with a projector but would burn through the bulbs to fast to be worth it.

I'm out also..... I tried 4 and they all had significant flashlighting clouding issues I wound up buying a 70in Sharp 745u

Care to elaborate on this a bit further?

How does the Sharp 745 compare?

I'm out also..... I tried 4 and they all had significant flashlighting clouding issues I wound up buying a 70in Sharp 745u

I like the Sharp much better overall. Color fidelity out of the box was better on the Vizio but the Sharp offers alot more calibration options to get everything tuned in. Here are my other thoughts:

-- Black levels are better on the Sharp
--Uniformity is better on the Sharp, although there is still some light bleed in the corners and sides but not as much light comes through on the Sharp
--It appears the contrast is much better on the Sharp.......it gets very bright and black levels are better also
--I like the aesthetic design of the Sharp better too.....it is thinner has a brushed metal frame
--Apps are about the same since Sharp recently added Pandora and Rapsody

Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd say the Vizio is a 7 and the Sharp a 9

I got the Sharp for $2,399 at HH Gregg....they matched the Amazon price
Edited by RunWhittyRun - 1/2/13 at 8:06pm

How is the viewing angle on the Sharp compared to the Vizio? As I recall seeing in the stores the Sharps seemed to be a little narrower than the Vizio.

I'm also considering the possibility of ditching my Vizio because aside from the uniformity and flashlighting issues I have, I can never seem to be able to dial this Vizio in without sacrificing something. Was thinking about getting a Sharp or just going with my initial plan of getting the Panasonic 65" GT50 plasma.

Wow tough day in 701 land!

I was looking into WTW clipping as well but I was doing my testing through PS3 media server (and with PS3 of course). I was getting clipping after level 253 and I'm not sure what it is.... I think someone might have mentioned that for PS3 it should not clip if you're playing via DVD/Bluray. I haven't burned my test patterns to DVD yet to verify this. So in my case there is apossibility it could be the TV or just because of my PS3.

Whoah that is what I was thinking about last night too. I got around to loading up some calibration patterns and one issue that seems to annoy me is when I pull up the full white screen pattern, I notice non-uniform white. It's weird off-white... kinda like the center has a large blob slight green tint and the left/right side is a little red tint. Can anyone else check their Vizio and see if this is an issue??


I calibrated a Sharp 70LE640U a few days ago and this white uniformity never stuck out to me as a problem... which means I didn't see this issue at all.

For me, I'm really thinking about going to Sharp. Yeah I mean I got the Vizio for a great price and I totally get it that the TV isn't perfect, but when you're spending that much money you want to get the best you can

In terms of flashlighting on the Sharp, I didn't see much. In fact that was the first thing I was looking for and I didn't see any at first because the OPC was enabled. With it disabled I saw a little but I felt it was less than the Vizio.

I intended to by the 70" Sharp later this year, but when I saw the price difference at Sams I decided not to wait. I got to compare the sets side by side in the store and was shocked to find that I liked the picture on the Vizio better. The blacks were very black and the picture popped more than the Sharp, which I would have never guessed. Granted God only knows how they have the settings in the store on these sets, but I still was able to conclude that the Vizio didn't have any noticeable degradation in picture quality from the Sharp.

I'm pretty happy with my set so far, but I seem to be in the lucky minority that got a good set right off the bat. I don't have any of the flashlight, banding, or clouding problems the others have. I did check before I bought the set and got one with a serial no starting with 47. I'll post a few pics and I apologize in advance for the poor quality. Any of the white lines in the TV are just reflections from the windows behind me which show up a lot more on the pictures than they do to the human eye. Here is a black screen while my PS3 is loading a blu ray menu. It's so black it looks like the TV is off, but you can see the small loading circle in the top right corner to prove it's really on. Sorry they weren't taken in a completely dark room -- you'll just have to take my word for it that it looks just as black when it's all dark.



Here's another one just all black (but still on):



edit: I just realized in these pictures it does look like there is a weird combo of flashlighting/clouding in the bottom corners that I've never seen before -- then I realized it was just the reflection of my carpet. The screen is truly all black.

I upgarded from a 46 inch Samsung LA46B530 and didn't think it through far enough to realize that my stand is so big and the tv is so big that it would cover up my in-wall center channel. I have a wall mount, but I'm going to have to wait to find a new equipment cabinet (any suggestions would be appreciated).

When watching a good HD source such as blu ray, the picture is really great.



I've always hated the soap opera effect... not a fan at all, but just discovered that it actually looks really good in animated video. It does create a weird pseudo-3d effect. I still don't like it for recorded film though.

I've never used a calibration disc before, but I'm thinking its time. Playing with the settings makes a huge difference. I've found that the sharpness setting is complete crap. I've read where others set it around 6-8 and crank it up for HD content. I find it does nothing besides create jaggy artifacts and the picture always seems to be better with it set to 0. I can't tell you all the settings I've gone through and tried, but immediately noticed the set looked very dark when watching low-lit scenes on a TV show. Everything looked shadowy and you couldn't see any details in the dark areas. Cranking up the backlight/brightness really just washed it all out. Once a brightly lit scene came back on, the picture was fine. I was quite disappointed, but then started fooling around with the advanced picture settings and different presets and it seems the problem has gone completely away. I have noticed that sometimes the colors seem dull -- skin tones look very grey and washed out. I really need to get some good settings dialed in.

My biggest gripe with the set is how my HTPC looks. My Samsung required jumping through a few hoops to get it right -- the PC HDMI cable MUST be plugged into HDMI 1, and the name for the input must be set to PC, otherwise, there were lots of goofy artifacts. Apparently the name setting kicks in the 1:1 pixel resolution. The Vizio doesn't seem to have any specific setting or instructions on how to do the same. With the Samsung, the computer display looks like a big computer monitor -- clear picture, no pixelation or artifacts. On the Vizio, the pixelation is very noticable and jaggy. Maybe this is just because it's the same number of pixels stretched out on a much bigger screen... I'm not sure, but it definitely looks more "aliased" and jaggy than the Samsung. Again, these pictures stink, and I had to get real close to the Samsung to get my phone to focus correctly on the screen, but you can see what I'm talking about. Clicking on these images to see them bigger really pronounces the effect I'm seeing.

Samsung 47":


Vizio 70":


I guess I can really see on these pictures how bad my settings are on the Vizio as the colors look completely washed out. Any advice on how to dial in the calibration for this set would be appreciated too -- maybe the WOW disc?
Edited by Turick - 1/3/13 at 9:25am

I read somewhere that supposedly the calibration on the WOW disc was not totally accurate. Anyhow you can create your own free ones from here:

http://www.avsforum.com/t/948496/avs-hd-709-blu-ray-mp4-calibration

They have some basic calibration patterns here as well as more complex ones.

It looks like you have the sharpness set too high on the Vizio. I've set mine to 4 but I could probably go a little lower.

Thanks for the link... has anybody had one of these ISF calibrated yet?

I would agree that it would seem the sharpness is too high... but I have mine set to 0. It only gets nastier if you add sharpness.

!!

I just ran through the calibration from what you posted. I couldn't do any of the color stuff because I don't have the referenced filters, but I could set all of the basic settings. I could pass the tests with setting my brightness down to about 25 and my contrast up to 97. Sharpness DEFINITELY needs to stay at 0. I left color at 50 and tint at 0. I also cranked my back light up quite a bit. I turned all of the advanced settings off.

Immediately I noticed that some of the content I was trying to watch was still too dark, so I bumped the brightness up to around 45. Although I can still tell the color needs some work, this was a huge improvement... dark darks, bright whites, picture pops a whole lot more. Even the complaints I had about how Windows looked dramatically improved.

Wow contrast at 97! Are you calibrating during daylight? Not saying there is anything wrong with that value... I'm going to give the calibration a go tonight. When you pulled up the white clipping test, are you able to see if the white color is uniform across the entire screen? Or do you see subtle tints in there?

I just updated this post (UPDATE # 2)

Actually, the WOW disc got a very good review from this forum. Here's the link: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1303667

Turick, could you post your complete settings. Some that you mentioned seem pretty close to the ones CNET recommended in their review (Brightness 50, Color 49, Tint 0, Sharpness 0)). The Contrast does seem a little high at 97 as it appears most are keeping it around 75 - 80) but then again, every set is different. Just curious as to all the settings you have settled on.

I still haven't found the source if the clipping, but here are my numbers:

Backlight: 80 ( still dialing this one in)
Brightness: 51
Contrast: 75 (can't adjust this correctly w/o figuring out where the above-white clipping is taking place
Color: 42
Tint: 0
Sharpness: 0
Most other features disabled

The picture is amazing.

Now if I could only resolve the clipping issue and dial in the correct contrast...

Using my PS3, my settings for BTB and WTW clipping are:
Backlight: 50 (?? Not really sure what the proper value should be but a value > 50 seems to give a nicer white instead of dirty white)
Brightness: 50
Contrast: 67

Ok I pulled up the WTW clip pattern and took a photo of it.

Please note that it is gray rather than white because the exposure on my camera was not very long. Anyways if you sit back a bit and squint at the photo, you will notice the greenish blobby shapes that seems to sit in the middle.



Here's it an altered photo which will help better show the blobs:


These blobs are what seems to be affecting the purity of the white. On the left and right sides the white has a slight pinkish tint and the center is a greenish tint.

I don't recall the Sharp having this sort of issue and for that reason I'm really considering jumping ship.

I believe you need to adjust your red, blue gain and red, blue offset. You'll need something like an eye one or the like. Here's a good link for calibrating gray-scale and color: http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10457

Yeah I see what you mean but I suspect the issue is the screen which is leading to color uniformity problems. If the whole screen was uniformly tinted then I could see that calibrating grayscale would help, but instead I'm seeing two different tints at different positions of the screen. When I walk up to the screen and bump up the backlight, I can see purple blobby shapes which appear to be contributing to the problem.

IMO viewing angle is about the same.............the Sharp may be a few degrees wider, but not much.