Product Review
 

Vizio Gallevia GV47L 47" 1080p Flat Panel LCD TV for $1,599: Just in Time for the Football Season

Part II

July, 2007

John E. Johnson, Jr.

 

On the Bench

Here is the test setup, in my kitchen. I used one of the HDMI inputs, being fed ColorFacts test patterns from my laptop. The first photo shows the sensor on the front of the TV, but I ran the tests with a black cloth over the TV, as shown in the second photo.

First, the data in the uncalibrated condition. I used the Custom mode, with the tint set to 0, and other options set to near midlevel positions. Features in the Advanced Picture Adjust menu were set to Off.

The Color Temperature is high all the way across the IRE field. Too blue.

This is shown further in the RGB graph, below. Blue is way off, green is about right, and there is not enough red.

The gamma is best fit by a value of 1.64, which is too low. Notice that the lower IRE levels are too low, which is that gray level crush I mentioned previously.

The CIE chart (white triangle is the Vizio data vs. the dark triangle which is the CIE 1931 standard) shows that there is enough red and green (but the green tends to be on the blueish side, and the red is a bit orange), but not enough blue (this refers to blue capability, not its setting). Ironic, since the blue was set too high in the color temperature measurement. The CIE standard shows the color gamut that a TV should be able to reproduce. The test result CIE is the gamut that the TV actually can reproduce.

Now for the measurements in the calibrated condition.

The color temperature is closer to the D6500 standard, except at below 10 IRE where the blue leakage takes over.

The RGB lines are now much closer to where they should be.

However, gamma is still too low.

The CIE in the calibrated condition is shown below. It is exactly the same as in the uncalibrated condition. This points out what the CIE measures, namely what the TV is capable of, not what the menu settings are.

Here is the RGB menu with the colors calibrated. The factory default value was 128 for all three colors. These RGB adjustments let you set the overall balance of the three primary colors. Adjusting "Tint" in the main menu is just a way of tweaking the image so that faces don't look too red or too green.

I measured an On/Off Contrast Ratio (CR) of 351:1 in the uncalibrated condition, and 333:1 in calibrated form.

I then turned on most of the Advanced Picture Adjust features, as shown below.

In this situation, On/Off CR increased to 1183:1, and the image was much brighter (137.8 Foot-Lamberts - which is 472.2 cd/m2 - compared to 58.3 Foot-Lamberts - which is 199.8 cd/m2 - with the AI off), due to the AI selection in the menu. The gamma increased slightly to 1.77, but the color temperature and RGB graphs stayed about the same. I decided to use that configuration (AI on) when watching TV during the day, and the AI turned off when viewing at night.

Conclusions

Although having a few limitations, like not being able to adjust the picture when in certain modes, and having more falloff than some (much more expensive) flat panel LCD HDTVs, the Vizio GV47L - which has full 1920 x 1080 resolution - is a steal at $1,599. There really is no excuse not to have a nice big HDTV like this for sports programs now that they are so affordable. Isn't that why we want one in the first place?

DirecTV just announced that they will have 70 HD channels available by this Fall. So, what are you waiting for?

 

- John E. Johnson, Jr. -

© Copyright 2007 Secrets of Home Theater & High Fidelity

Go to Table of Contents for this Issue.

Go to Home Page.

 

About Secrets

Register

Terms and Conditions of Use
 

PAGEFEEDBACK
Our Vault pages may have some display quirks. Let us know if we need to take a look at this page or fix a bug.
SUBMIT FEEDBACK
Connect with us
  • Instagram
  • Google+
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
Secrets "Cave"
Facebook
Close