Official Vizio GV52L Owner's Thread - Page 7

I need to call Comcast and upgrade my box to an HD one once I get the TV uncrated and tested. Does the Comcast STB have Component or HDMI outputs?

If you go on the RemoteCentral website they have a forum on setting up these things. They don't seem to have anything good to say about Vizio. It does seem Vizio does NOT support discrete on/off ir commands or discrete input selection commands. BUT you can use the trick of an 'Anchor' command. Most TV's will switch to the tuner when you send a channel up or channel down, or enter a station number via the numeric keys. THEN you can just issue the correct number of input select commands, since your desired target is always the same number of presses away from the 'tuner' selection.

My Comcast STB is the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD box (1080i) and it has both component and HDMI outputs. I am having great results using a 6 foot HDMI cable I got from monoprice.com.

Also, I am seeing no sync problems, strange noises or problems of any kind at the moment. The one problem I initially had was a line of white pixels at the very top of the picture and sometimes a colored line on the left side of SD pictures. This was easily solved using the vertical and horizontal adjustments in the menu.

I think the Sharp has better PQ, however banding is a major issue with Sharp. And also factor in the extra $800. Overall, I think Vizio is the better buy at this point.

One thing I didn't note earlier, there is some noticeable edge enhancement. Hopefully Vizio will update the firmware to make this removable? Possible?

Noticed the remote missing buttons too. (items such as all the PIP options). Cool thing is my Vizio L32 remote has the buttons, and it works with the V52. I programmed the L32 remote into my Pronto TSU3500 remote, and I have all the missing buttons and they work great with is TV.

1st impression was just like my L32. Got it home. Kinda disappointed. Then adjusted the set. Turned on Jay Lenno. Now Happy.

This is a question perhaps for LCD-Bob. It appears to me that the image on these TV's (including the GV42 and GV47 which I own in different rooms) is smaller than on a regular TV. Whenever I watched football or other sports, the athletes seem small. It seems to have reduced the size of the subject on a very big screen. Am I imaging this or do these Vizio's reduce the size of the image. I've read about overscanning, but wouldn't that make the image bigger. BTW, very pleased with the Vizio GV52, right out of the box (reference my post on Page 1).

It may be that the Vizios has less overscan compared to other analog TVs you've been accustomed to. I know that my Sharp has less overscan than my Vizio hence the football players on the Sharp should be a little smaller but it's something I don't notice. I do notice that on the Sharp, the little box where it displays the current score is farther away from the edge of the screen. As such, on the Vizio, the scorebox is closer to the edge.

So far I am pleased with this set over the 47 but their is a backlight buzz below 90 just like the 47. In a quiet room with no AC running and tv put on mute or inbetween voices with no music their is a backlight buzz. Others please see if your sets do this. If not then please walk up to the set with no sound and a quiet situation and put backlight to 100 then back it down to 80 and tell me you don't here anything at all coming from the set. I can here this from 10 feet away in a quiet situation. Vizio tells me this is normal just like the 47. Like I said otherwise I am very pleased with set sofar.....Thanks

My friend replaced his 27inch CRT (4x3 TV) with a new 32 inch 16x9 HDTV. He noticed during a football game that the players looked small. Take out a ruler and measure the height of the players (or any vertical object) on the screen and you'll find the larger 32 HDTV is no larger vertically than a 27 inch screen. This is of course because the 32 inch HDTV gets it 32 diag number from the extra horizontal width. The multiple is approx 1.2, to transfer equally in vertical size from 4x3 to 16x9 HDTV. (Ideally with no overscan on either TV. Actually though, factor in CRT's typical 5% overscan and the CRT image is larger.)
So if you have a 36 inch CRT (4x3), you need at least 43.2 inch (36x1.2) to have the same vertical height football players, etc. The advertised HDTV size gives people a false expectation how big the picture will look. If in Walmart, someone tells me they are upgrading their 27in CRT to a 32in HDTV, (27x1.2-32.4), I immediately tell them if they want to see an improvement in size viewing experience, get at least 37in HDTV. [lcd-bob]

They had an HD-DVD playing at the Costco in Carmel Mtn yesterday.

When the camera panned across a mtn peak I noticed that it was not smooth; noticeably jerky.

Is that "judder?"

Hard to say without seeing it myself. The only time I really notice judder is when watching the closing credits of a movie, and even in that case IMO, I don't find it overly objectionable. Otherwise, its really not that noticeable IMO. If you saw *noticeable* shaking then it might possibly just be in the source. But maybe your definition of "noticeable" is different than mine

BTW, the ability to accept a 1080p/24 input will not remove judder. If the output refresh rate is 60hz (like all Vizio TVs to date), then the TV will have to add the 2:3 sequence (introduce judder) to pump the frame rate to 60hz.

No TVs output a raw 24 hz frame rate - that would be way too slow.

If you're concerned about judder, you need to look at TVs with a 120hz refresh rate.

Normal?! Didn't Vizio replace power supply parts for people that had this problem on the '47 and it fixed it? If I have this problem someone's gonna make a service call to my house. (Or the sets going back to Costco).

Yes, if I have my ear an inch or 2 away I can hear a buzz. If I take a step or 2 back i do not hear it. I turned on my 32" LCD to see if it buzzed as well, and it does.

Something that is not very noticable to me.

Hello all. After several months of considering different brands and sizes I finally bought a GV52L from a Costco here in San Diego yesterday afternoon. It is my first HDTV.

Here are some of my initial observations, and a couple of questions:

- My set also had the static line across the top that others here have mentioned. The "Vertical Set" adjustment took care of it though, no problem.

- HDTV programs look great. "Concert for Diana" is on MTV HD as I am writing this. The depth and clarity are absolutely stunning, especially the depth. When the camera pans across the crowd it is a near 3-D experience.

- SDTV programs look pretty terrible. I understand most people do not buy 52" HDTVs to watch regular TV shows, but does anyone have any suggestions about what can be done to enhance the appearance of standard definition broadcasts? The number of HD programs, at least on Cox Cable here in San Diego, is pretty limited.

- I have a question about connectors. Is HDMI necessary to obtain a 1080i signal? Or will component connectors suffice? The cable company only provides component cables with their STB, a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3250HD. How do I know if what is coming through the set is a 1080i signal or something else?

Thanks, I'll post more after I play with the set a bit.

Bought the TV and upscalling DVD player yesterday afternoon and set up last night. I have no idea what I'm doing and basically turned it on and the picture looks really good to me.

Question about playing DVDs. Is the HDMI cable for pic only or pic and sound. For some reason I can't get sound out of the TV when playing a DVD. I do have the red & white cables going into my stereo receiver and that works, but for my wife I also need to have sound come out of the TV because she won't deal with the receiver.

I've noticed a huge difference in PQ on SD cable signals between using the TV to receive the analog signal vs using the cable box to feed the set with composite video. (SD digital cable box). I suspect that the cable is sending a digital version of the same signal that the box is using when available. If you are connecting your tv directly to the cable to receive analog signals and have digital cable try getting a STB (you'd need that anyway to get HBO/Showtime, etc) and see if you don't get a good picture that way.
I bought my '52 yesterday and hopefully will get it setup tonight. I'll reply back about the PQ though the cable box vs direct after I check this out. I will upgrade the cable to HD and the HD set top box might even do a better job on SD because it will have component video output (or even hdmi).

IIRC you might have to go into the setup menu on the tv and/or the dvd player to enable audio via hdmi.

Until you figure out a feed that improves SD, you could use the remote's "- zoom" button as this will shrink the picture to 36 inches which will look twice as good. [lcd-bob] Yes, Component cables do carry 1080i. If you hit the info button on the TV remote, it wil tell you what resolution,1080i, etc, is being received.

I had backlight buzz on my 47 at anything below about 94-97 backlight setting. Vizio sent a tech out who replaced my power board and that did absolutely nothing for the buzzing noise.

I took my 47 back last week and picked up a 52 yesterday. The two reasons for returning the 47 were the size and the buzz. It sounds like I've fixed the size problem but may still have the buzz with the new 52. Honestly I kind of learned to live with the buzzing 47 in the end. It was just the beginning where it bothered me since I was doing some late-night low-volume watching of my spankin' new HDTV. In normal situations with any sort of ambient room noise you could never hear the buzz. Just knowing it's there drives me just a little nuts though.

Hopefully I will get my TV set up tonight. I spent all last night hanging some cabinets that go on the wall over where my TV is mounted. With that out of the way it's TV time.

I picked up my set yesterday, and I have a backlight buzz below ~67...

On another note, does anyone know which VESA wall mount (VESA 600 or 800) we need for this? Gonna get one from monoprice...

Thanks

Picked up the TV Monday 10 AM
Unpacked in the garage and set the TV on a furniture dolly.
Will stay in the garage for a few days for initial checkout and burn in. Much easier to return from here in case of problems

1 Used a rabbit ear VHF loop UHF ant and did initial scan, logged all local DTV stations. Set B/L to 25
2 Very nice PQ on DTV SD and DTV HD
3 Hooked up the HD-D2 HD DVD player via HDMI 1
3 Ran the getgray cal disk IRE 0 t0 100 patterns. Display uniformity is excellent, no pixel defects at all.
4 Checked color and tint with blue glasses .. the factory default (50) seems right on.
5 Using the BTB pattern checked brightness, also very close at default setting.
6 Same with contrast, peak white shows very nicely.
7 With the D2 at 1080i the overscan patterns show zero overscan. Checked this with DVE HD .. no overscan.
8 Getgray has a lipsync test, the V52 is right on.
9 Ran the HD HQV test disc. The 52 is definitely better than the V47. The stadium pan is very smooth, no moire, only the slightest hint of jaggies on the third bar of the jaggies test.
Video reslution passed 100%, Film resolution showed slight strobing but only on the horizontal lines. The V47 has significant strobing on the vertical and horizontal lines.
Keep in mind that this test is suspect since some $3000 scalers fail this as well as I have posted earlier.
10 Watched CSI Miami HD rerun on CBS, very sharp image. Unfortunately this program has poor color fidelity, will wait for House and Boston Legal...these have excellent color fidelity.

Ran a check with 'Chronicles of Riddick' HD DVD.. looks very good.

Will not be able to do a gray scale calibration with the colorimeter until the set is in the house near the conputer.

No cable in the garage so only watching OTA broadcasts.
For those concerned about SD looking poor I have this comment: the SD PQ is very source dependent. Analog cable often stinks to high heaven. I run the SD tests using SD program material transmitted over OTA DTV stations. Here, if the source is decent, the V52 does an excellent job on SD material.

Conclusion: It's a keeper for me

Your dvd player is probably not sending the audio through the HDMI cable and I'm pretty sure the Vizio will accept audio via HDMI. You have two options: 1) Go into the dvd player's settings and choose 2-channel PCM audio output (not 5-channel); or 2) You must hook up the red/white cables to the Vizio's RGB mini-plug input and set audio to RGB. That should do it. Now you gotta find a red/white - mini plug cable.

Well I am the previous owner of a GV47. I owned for almost a full 90 days however I returned it as I had a VERY uneven backlight with severe clouding and streaks during night time viewing in dark scenes. I have been looking at several HDTV's for a while now so I feel I am pretty well qualified to describe the new Vizio. I have Time Warner digital cable and Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player.

First off, this thing is HUGE. I didn't realize how overkill it was until I put it up on my wall. It looks monstrously bigger than the 47 I would have never thought 5" would do so much. I am viewing this TV at about 10 feet eye ball to screen and while it is the perfect size picture for watching HD movies it is too big in my opinion for watching SD material. I will be playing with the zoom feature and will probably be watching SD material shrunk down to a more enjoyable size as SD material has tremendous artifacting and pixilation at this size and viewing distance. I don't know how much of this can be improved on by the TV as I really think this is just a result of digital cable at 480 lines with a lot of compression. At 52" and 10 feet you really see the quality of the source material as even HD cable looks far more noisy and artifacted than a real high definition disk where those 1080 vertical lines makes a huge difference on this big a set. IF you own this set and you do not own a HD DVD or Blu Ray player you are robbing yourself from the experience of this TV as everything else looks so overblown up and pixilated.

Anyway, the GV52 has significantly better sound quality than the GV47. We are talking night and day difference. GV52 probably has one of the best speaker setups of anything built into a flat panel on the market. The blacks on the GV52 are quite noticeably darker and blacker. I feel the picture is richer and more saturated looking giving it better depth and color intensity. I popped in the HD DVD version of Training Day, the picture was stunning in all the bright scenes, and as good as anything, you can find on the market. The black is absolutely an improvement over the GV47 however when watching the TV in the dark it is still not a true black but still a dark grey even with the backlight at 0 and the brightness/contrast turned down a few clicks. GV52 still lacks the ability to produce the deep blacks of Sharp or Samsung. On a brighter note, however the back light uniformity on my set is picture perfect from corner to corner in a pitch-dark room with a black screen. No clouding in the corners at all. I made sure to transport the set upright the entire time so this may have something to do with it. Unfortunately as mentioned earlier in the dark scenes, there does seem to be considerable shadow detail that is lost and there are plenty of these scenes in training day. The blacks appear to be a bit over saturated and I would love to hear any tuning adjustments from future guru's to improve on this drawback as it is really the only flaw I can find with the TV PQ. So far, in playing with adjustments, the only way I can bring the shadow detail back is to turn up the brightness and contrast to where the TV looks washed out and the blacks are significantly greyer. This may make or break it for some people if you can live with the lack of shadow detail against black backgrounds this is a tremendous value for the money. I really hope some of the guys in here come up with some settings to clean up this problem as much as possible.

HDMI connectivity has been perfect and the on screen menu is far superior to that of the GV47. Overall, the set for sure has an overall newer generation look and feel about it. There are independent adjustments to move the picture left right up and down. By the way I also noticed the white bar noise at the top of the screen when I had the Cable DVR set to up convert SD to 1080i. Go into the DVR/Cable box settings and have it force SD programming to 480p and you will not have this problem and this will also unlock all the picture modes for SD 4:3 programming built in. If you are still unable to fix this problem, you can always shift the image up.

Anyway, so far this is my input if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to answer them I know there is many excited prospective buyers out there looking for some owner insight.

FYI there is no speaker hum whatsoever however; there is backlight buzz when the backlight is set less than 90. I really feel this is inherent in all Vizio's due to the type of transformer they use to modulate the backlight. Bummer but it seems to be the way it is. On the brighter side, the PQ with a 90 backlight is much better than it was on the GV47, which would wash out with so much backlight so in most room lighting you will be more than happy with the backlight at 90 PQ.

Compared to the V47:
Much better sound, the surround adds punch and improves bass
Much improved info banner, now eminently readable and shows program content on DTV stations. More info than the 47 shows
Superior remote, good back lighting and more readable button legends
Channel switching seems faster
No PIP on the remote, some space sacrificed for the cable box commands. Need to go to the menu to activate PIP. Fortunalely the SWAP command is still on the remote.

PS My V52 is a H25, June 2007 build

Cathmother what are your opinions on the low shadow detail/overpowering blacks I mentioned in my post?

How do you do PIP if there's not a button on the remote?

catmother just said two posts above yours that you go into the menu and activate it there. Seems rather annoying to me, but not much I can do but complain.

Bamboo, I have got mine to work. Select Method 3. Where it asks you to set a button to get into the input menu( use the input button) and for the selection/toggle of inputs again use the input button.

Mine does that as well. I pushed my input cables firmly in place and it seems to have helped..weird

I just got a response from Vizio regarding the price jump at Costco:


Dear Mr. ******,

Thank you for your recent VIZIO inquiry, we value your business and
hope
your are pleased with the performance of your new VIZIO.

Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the unit pricing of purchases made
at our retail partners and we apologize for the confusion.

Please contact me should you have any questions or need further
assistance with any of our VIZIO products.

Best Regards,


Melissa Shanahan
Sales Manager
VIZIO
39 Tesla
Irvine, CA 92618
Direct: (949) 428-2502
email: melissa.shanahan@vizio.com
www.vizio.com

Pretty much no response, and no help at all.

My TV is going back just before 90 days for sure.