Vizio GV42L & L42 42" LCDs - Page 64

Thanks for the info. I want to pick up on in the next few weeks, any other suggestions?

Here is a thread talking about the 120Hz machines that out in the wild - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=847961

But you are looking for a 120Hz machine at a very tricky time as they are just trickling out onto the showrooms. As usual, if you are looking for bleeding edge stuff, it's best to hold off. Fortunately, there are lots of promises for 120Hz machines in the next couple of months(July/August).

Thanks, as I mentioned I am new at this. Fortunately I have a 32" crt which is working and has a good picture. I don't mind waiting for a LCD that will be good for watching football games without any problems. I called Vizio and they said that the GV47LF was shipping and the GV42LF was due any day.

Well. I definately love it so far. Pulls the HD channels from my digital cable without a box. Picture is amazing, progressive dvd's on the rgb composite are amazing, but, the remote acts retarded for flipping channels and the sound on surround mode sounds better but has so many glitches that I had to turn it off. When i first turn it on, it kind of makes noises like a heater does when it warms up, basically plastic noises, anyone else get that? You wouldnt be able to hear it if you had the sound on.

I'm finding that I'm getting faint, but noticeable horizontal lines (don't know if this is banding or something else) moving from the bottom to the top of my screen when I'm watching from an S-video source (standard def digital box and DVD player, both hooked up to one S-video switch. However, when I plug in a RGB cable connected to my laptop, there isn't this problem. Is this the TV's fault, or is it the source? Should I take my TV back to get it switched?

It's not the TV. First, take the cable entering your set top box from the house wall and screw it into the Vizio antenna input. Go to VIZIO Menu (4th page) and select Tuner Mode = CABLE as the antenna source; then do AUTOSEARCH.

Even though you don't pay for digital cable, the digital HD signal is there in the cable, so AUTOSEARCH will find about 70 Analog, 40 digital channels, and about 10 HD Channels.
Get rid of the S-Video switch, and go directly from DVD Player to TV. And if your DVD Player does 480p progressive, buy a component cable to replace S cable.
Before you switch to component cable, go into DVD Player menu and change output to progressive 480p. [lcd-bob]

But with my digital cable box, I have at least 200 channels of digital material (timeshifting). Won't I lose access to all that if I plug the cable directly into my TV?

You can still get HD: 2 ways
1. The obvious way is to upgrade CABLE SERVICE TO HD, and get PROVIDER'S HD BOX, acutually an HD Digital Video Recorder (DVR). Connect it to TV with an HDMI or COMPONENT cable.

2. Or, buy a $1 RF Cable splitter (not a switch). Unplug cable company's line that goes from wall to your box. Plug the RF cable instead into splitter in.
Run a cable from splitter out to your same set top box. (Everything works like before if you are running component cable from SD box to TV..)
Run another RF cable from splitter out to Vizio antenna in. Select antenna as the Vizio source and do the Menu search for HD channels per last POST.

On Vizio, you could have these 3 sources available.

1. VIZIO > Antenna Source: Analog, Digital, AND HD TV for watching tons of HDTV shows (NASCAR,Football,SmallvilleHD,JayLeno.etc) on the major networks, ABC,CBS,NBC,FOX,theCW,PBS.etc.

2. VIZIO > A/V Source: You still record shows, and watch recorded shows with S-Video. And use DVD player as before on S-Video.

3. VIZIO > HDMI Source: Buy a 1080i upscaling DVD player (cheap $60). Get an HDMI cable, and hook up this 3rd Vizio source. (And remove the noise-inducing S-Video SWITCH)

Get the most out of your HD TV by watching HD TV SHOWS. But make sure you select the red WIDE button on Vizio remote to see HD in 16x9 wide screen. [lcd-bob]

Hello. I just purchased a GV42L and was wondering if you guys could provide me your ideal picture settings for it. Or, should I just leave it as default? Thanks

LINK

I use the COLOR SETTINGS from the CNET REview http://reviews.cnet.com/Vizio_L42_HD...sageID=2506653 [lcd-bob]
But I watch TV in the day time, not a pitch black room like CNET, I fine tuned my TV for bright, colorful and very sharp picture for both Digital HD and regular Analog TV viewing.

SETTINGS.....HD,,Analog SD
Backlight...... 88,,,88
Contrast...... 85,,,87
Brightness.... 58,,,57
Color .......... 53,,,53
Tint............ +5,,,+1
Sharp........... 3,,,,3

Color Temperature : Custom
Red... 128, Green... 127, Blue... 116

Advanced Picture Adjustment
Black Extender - ON
Adaptive Luma - ON
Dynamic Contrast- off
(All other settings- off)

TV - AUDIO: Surround .. off, Speakers .. ON
BASE ...... 61
TREBLE.... 49

Great to see this thread still going - have a few questions now that i've finally gotten around to setting everything up and hope you can help!

Bought a GV42L - inputs are as follows:
Comp - Comcast Moto HDDVR (tried through hdmi and thought component looked better) and Xbox 360
HDMI - powermac g5: dvi to hdmi cable @768P (1:1 pixel mapping) - rca cables for audio
RCA's - various legacy gaming systems "dc, ps2, nes"

A few things i'm looking for help with:

1) I've configged the moto input so that i get crisp blacks and great picture on the HD streams, but when the box swaps back to 480i, the black levels seem to "lighten" and the picture is no longer as good - aside from the obvious resolution differences. I've tried leaving the cable box on 1080i/720p instead of switching resolutions on sd channels, but the channels look much, much worse (tons of noise, text is illegible, etc). any way to dynamically configure 480i vs HD streams? Same issue happens with the xBOX - 720P input looks gorgeous, as soon as it switches to 480 (for dvds) the picture looks washed out. thinking of getting an upconverting dvd player to play thru my free HDMI port (happy to hear recommendations on a great value player that works well with this tv), but would prefer to have my existing components look nicer if possible! any of those "advanced" settings help here?

2) audio lag through the TV - know some moto boxes and specific channels are to blame here at times - but also notice it through the HDMI port/rca from the mac (the test is that i have the audio splitted from the computer, which has its own speakers - while the video is in sync across both sources, the audio in the TV is behind the audio that doesn't run through the tv and its noticeable enough to be distracting when watching a movie. turning on the surround mode on the speakers actually lessens the lag - but does not eliminate it. is this a common problem, and are there any advanced "factory menu" settings i could access to tweak this? if not, is it worth returning over? clearly bypassing the tv audio for all inputs is the easy solution here - but i'm running out of inputs on my receiver and would like to use the tv's inputs if possible.

3) video lag - prevalent for all game systems when the audio is also plugged in to the tv (dreamcast through rca, ps2 through rca, xbox through comp). so much so that you can tap and release a button before the action is executed on screen. however, unplugging the audio from the corresponding input in the tv and running it through a receiver results in no video lag when gaming - my theory is the tv is doing some weird compensation processing when working with audio and video, but doesnt need to do that when its only working with a video source. Again, is this common? can this be fixed by going to a calibration menu - should i return it over this?

Thanks for your help - when this thing looks great its great.

love those settings! thanks!!

I bought the GV42L and I'm having problems using PC input.

First I tried DVI->HDMI but I read you can't get the correct resolution so I abadoned that.

I bought a 15ft VGA extension cable. It goes into a 6ft VGA cable which plugs into a DVI->VGA adapter going into my 6600gt. I've used dual monitors with the adapter and 6ft cable so I know those work. But when I hook up my GV42L with this setup, it detects 60hz and 1366x768 (the correct resolution) but 2 problems occur:

1. There's faint scan lines going up the TV.
2. The screen is shifted a bit right on the TV (it doesn't start right at the left side).

Could this be a problem with my extension cable hookup or something else? Oh and I'm using the latest nVidia drivers.

Thanks!

swalk,

For what it's worth, I've got a evga 8800gts with the latest drivers connected via a 35' dvi/hdmi cable (monoprice) and the driver works perfectly. I never got around to connecting my 6800 via that route, but I recall the option of "Dualview" in the NVidia Control Panel being the choice I would have gone with to tweak each "monitor" independently. Good luck.

TTx

1. Sometimes I get horizontal scanning lines on my display over VGA too...for me, this was solved simply by changing the outlet that I plugged the display in to. Perhaps the problem has to do with grounding.

2. What happens when you reboot your computer?

I just tried the TV again about a day later and the scan lines are gone. I did reboot since then but other than that I didn't do anything differently.

And the shift I solved by just adjusting the horizontal shift on the TV. I didn't see it at first .

Thanks for the help.

Oh, and this TV looks great with 720p content from my computer!

Need info about the Vizio VU42LF. If this is not the correct thread, please redirect me.

This past weekend, I helped my daughter & her fiance purchase the VU42LF at Costco for a very reasonable $999. Out of the box, it looks great. I am looking for recommended starting settings for this TV. I see that most members on this thread are using the CNET settings as a baseline for the other 42" Vizio LCD sets. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I fixed my scanline issue by disconnecting the built-in speakers. I use my home theater amp and speakers, so it was of no consequence.

AVS- Vizio 42 VU42LF 1080p Thread http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=860144

After about 2 weeks with my tv I am now running my sound through my home theatre sound system, but the lip syncing is soo bad. I can fix it on dvds thanks to an option in setup, but my digital cable (no box) is pretty bad. Are there any fixes anyone knows about? I had to run through the stereo because of all the buzzing and distortions the factory speakers put out.

Im on a 90 day warrantee, so...time is of the essence I guess.

Thanks guys!

Fam, I'm in your boat. what fixes it on the xbox inputs is by not running any sound to the tv, and just to the reciever. For inputs where this isnt an option, At times, it can be better or worse and i dont have a way of telling how to make it better or worse.

I called today and the 1st lady seamed to think the delay and noise were related, but then the "level 2" support wanted me to try an antenna trying to blame it on a weak cable signal, but i have digital cable\\internet and all that jazz. I believe if I can have 10mbit cable then the signal strength is ok. PLUS, i get the same delay on the DVD's until I adjust the dvd player settings to a HUGE 150millisecond delay on the video.

Now that I remember that, I may call them back and tell them about the dvd doing the same thing, but I will buy the cheap antenna and try it anyway.

I am debating picking this unit up and replacing my VP50HDTV with it. I am referring to the 42" 720p Gallevia (not the upcoming 1080p one). I like my VP50 ok, it's just the image retention kinda annoys me, plus it's like a good 40 pounds heavier which is annoying (I still move apartments nearly every year).

I upgraded from the 37" Vizio (their old 37L model) to the VP50, but was always "fine" with the 37" size. Obviously the 50" is a huge step up, however, I'm afraid after having the 50" for over a month down, stepping down to a 42" size may bug me. How noticable is it? I mean I guess it's not a big deal as I always thought my 37" was totally fine. and 42" is bigger then that.

1 Last thing, the biggest driving factor for me in this purchase is cost. I could get a full refund (like $1400 from Sams club) on my VP50, and pick up a 42" Gallevia lcd from Tiger Direct refurbished for $699. That's a HUGE savings. I'm not certain if I'm allowed to ask, but does anyone have personal experience w/ Tiger Direct? or Refurb Vizios? I mean if they've been refurbished itd stand to reason if there were any defects with them, they've been recertified and repaired, right? So no biggie?

You feedback's appreciated!

could be very minor scratches on the body (mine looked brand new except for some finger prints). Main issue is a 90 day warrantee so if there is anything wrong with it you need to call and get it fixed asap. Vizio does not offer their extended warranty directly, BUT, when you register online you can buy (from their site) an extended warranty for 100 bucks for an additional 2 years, and even more for a reasonable cost, mind you its through a vizio approved outside company (not vizio directly), but its probably alot cheaper than what tiger direct wants for their outside warranty.

By the way, if you get it you will see that the difference between a 37 and 42 is very very minimal.

Thanks for the input. So how long have you had yours from Tiger Direct? Has it had any issues? Did you get the extended warrenty thru Vizio? Was everything packaged OK? I'm coming down from a 50" plasma to this one if I do this, so Ill notice a difference no doubt, but I think 42" would be a "classier" size and not overpower my room as much as the 50"

I just received my GV42L $699 deal from Tiger today.
Took about 5 days after ordering...
Wife called and said UPS just delivered and the box looks like it fell off the truck and left in the rain. Duck tape on bottom possible water damage corners coming apart...
I took the rest of the day off and hurried home expecting the worst...She was right..box looked horrible, if I had been home I would have declined delivery. I took pictures and decided to open her up. The whole time I'm thinking what future hassle I was going to have to endure with UPS/Tiger.
Well, after opening box, hope started seeping back in. The inside of the box looked perfectly fine. Long story short, except for one small scratch/defect on the right hand edge....It looks and runs like brand new. Not even a finger print. Perfect..no complaints
I will be getting the 5-year in-home extended warranty from Vizio for $150. Fantastic deal and I'm happy so far.


Dave


>>>> Does anyone know what size bolts are needed for wall mount. Largest I had in my Peerless mount kit were M6's and they were too small.

Hmm that doesn't sound too bad then. I just expected horror stories but these dont sound bad at all. So if I do this swap, I'd save $650 more or less. And 42" is by no means "small". I just wish I could get some kind of "security" out of this, ya know? I could just get the VX42 from Sams Club new, and not worry about ever having a problem with their return policy, but I don't like the styling on that unit all that much compared the GV42. Cuz If I got the GV, i'd more then likely not feel comfortable unless I bought an extended warrenty, and with the warrenty, it'd be the same price almost as the VX at Sams club (around $950ish). Hmm. I guess I'm just hesitent, but I could definately use the $ difference.

Well,
I bought the antenna to "test" the sound. Sure enough, the over the air broadcasts did not have lagged sound, it was accurate. Which means, according to vizio, the signal strength was effecting the audio. I screwed in the cable again and used a wrench to tighten it and the sound seams really good, no little wierd noises or distortions or abnormal delays. Hopefully it remains this way :-)

so in summary, screw in the cable with a wrench as finger tightening may not be enough!

The Gallevia weighs close to 100 lbs. It is a heavy mug.