vizio sv470m lcd panel price

I bought this also on the cyber monday. We"ve been postponing the upgrade to HD for a long time waiting for the price to come down and the quality to go up. I"ve used vizio plasmas at work and panasonic screens for various AV productions. And I"m a videographer so I"m pretty picky. Also, I have no affiliation with Vizio nor do I care about the success of any particular product. This is simply my honest review!

Packaging: Vizio"s packaging is excellent. As one reviewer said there are 4 plastic tabs that hold the bottom of the box to the top. Pop the tabs and lift. Unit inside was very secure.

Picture Quality: Wow - that"s the short answer. The picture, color, contrast, and overall image quality on this set is fantastic. For my first HDTV I will say I"m impressed. I wanted LCD for the wide viewing angle - got it. I wanted the higher refresh rate for sharpness - got that too. Good, even brightness and contrast - yup. There was one really weird thing that bugged me about the TV. We watched an SD DVD and the motion was surreal. At first I thought it was just getting used to HD output, but there was something really unnatural about it. After some fiddling around and experimenting I discovered that in the menu there are 2 "effects" to tinker with: smooth mode effect and real cinema mode. Do yourself a favor and turn these off from the get go. I"m sure that in the preset scenes these are either on or off, but I found it so distracting that I didn"t want to watch what was on the TV. Turned it off and was blown away. I have a samsung home theater in a box set (HT X50) and it has an HDMI out on it. The output is 480p. There was some noise on screen due to the TV"s scaling the standard def image up, but in the menu there"s a setting for noise reduction. I cranked it all the way up and watched Oceans 11 on regular DVD. The quality was easily passable for 720p. VERY IMPRESSED.

Conclusion: Ignore the weird naysayers in the forums and comments. TV"s have come a long way and this one is not an exception. I am happy and for $650 after tax I have NO regrets. The biggest question I have is in terms of the product"s longevity. Vizio has often come under fire for product durability. But I wanted at least a 47" TV and didn"t want to pay more than $650 for it.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A is not the hottest looking television on the showroom floor, to be sure, but it"s certainly not ugly. The front is surrounded by a shiny, plastic bezel that is prone to picking up fingerprints. The base does not swivel, which is of particular annoyance due to the hard-to-reach back ports.

The back of the Vizio SV470XVT1A has some particularly poorly placed ports. They"re in the center of the panel, and they face upwards. Because the base doesn"t swivel, you have to reach blindly around from the side and try to jab the cables into their ports.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A are simple, with a small selection of ports on one side and on-board controls for the other. As you can see from the pictures, it"s not a particularly slender, but that"s what you can expect for the price. Ultra-thin TVs come at a premium.

The controls on the Vizio SV470XVT1A are what you"d expect – basic controls for power, channel up/down, and volume. There"s also a strangely placed and unusual port labeled "TX Input." This is for use with select Dolby surround sound systems.

The remote control for the Vizio SV470XVT1A is quite thin and lightweight, with excellent button layout. Our only complaint is that the target range for pointing the remote at the TV is incredibly narrow.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A ships with an instruction manual, remote control, batteries, cleaning cloth, and an HDMI cable to get you started. All in all, this is a good starter kit.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A is not a "beautiful" TV, per se, but it can blend in nicely with the background of your living room. It"s certainly not as attractive as some of the ultra-thin TVs, nor does it share their slim profile, but that"s what you should expect for this price.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A was not able to achieve the deep blacks of its competitors, as evinced in the chart below. Frequently, LCD televisions are cited for not having the same great black levels as plasma TVs, but we"ve seen manufacturers able to leap that hurdle in recent times, though the best performance is frequently limited to their most expensive models. Clearly, the Vizio SV470XVT1A was not a beneficiary of these advances in technology. At best, it was only able to produce 0.42 cd/m2.

The peak brightness performance of the Vizio SV470XVT1A was about average for an LCD of its size, price, and class. Peaking at 292.47 cd/m2, it won"t necessarily burn your eyeballs off, but hopefully that"s not the watermark of a pleasant viewing experience, is it?

The Vizio SV470XVT1A managed a weak contrast ratio, all told, considering the rather poor black levels and the unremarkable peak brightness. By comparison, you can see that similar TVs had a much wider contrast ratio. Practically speaking, this means you can expect less detail in the shadows as well as the highlights. In our viewing experience, however, the tonal range at least looked smooth, and we"ve certainly seen TVs with much less shadow detail.

Tunnel contrast examines how well the TV can maintain a consistent black level, regardless of how much white is on the screen. Most TVs do just fine, and so did the Vizio SV470XVT1A. If you"re watching a murky noir thriller, and the detective suddenly points the flashlight directly at the camera, you"re not going to lose any of that shadow detail in the corners.

The white falloff test is the opposite of the test above. We see how well a TV maintains consistent peak brightness, regardless of how much black is on the screen. The Vizio SV470XVT1A was even less susceptible to this, and managed perfectly even whites.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A has moderately good uniformity. If the screen is all white, you cannot see any irregularities. If the screen is black, however, there are some noticeable blotches of brighter areas. There"s no distinct pattern to it, just a general unevenness. In everyday viewing, thankfully, it"s hard to see the problem.

The greyscale gamma test examines how smooth a TV can transition from shadows to highlights. We look at both the slope of the curve and as well as the shape. For the Vizio SV470XVT1A, the slope measured 2.89. A very good performance is within 2.1 and 2.2, so this is a little steeper than we"d like. The problem appears to be in the shadow details (the lower left portion of the curve). After a certain darkness, the Vizio just can"t find any more detail, thus the tail of the graph is flattened out. Moving from the left side to the right, the curve then rises too steeply, losing some of the detail in the mid-tones. Those little bumps in the slope are places where you can expect to see some color banding.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A is a 1080p TV, but much of the content you"ll end up watching is likely of a lower resolution. We test the TVs for how well they perform this processing. Overall, theVizio SV470XVT1A did well, showing very little overscan, artifacts, or other strange anomalies.

Viewing 480p content, the Vizio SV470XVT1A lost a good chunk of the picture to overscanning – 3% all around the screen. However, sharpness and legibility remained good.

The color temperature test measures how well a TV can maintain a consistent color temperature across the signal range, from shadows to highlights. From the graph below, you can see that the Vizio SV470XVT1A barely strayed into a "perceptible" error until the signal was very, very bright. This is an excellent performance.

From the graph below, you can see that most of the Vizio SV470XVT1A"s color range is smooth. Yes, we see some flattening out in the lower left, meaning you"re going to see some loss of detail in the shadows (several other tests confirmed this weakness). Then there"s the more obvious problem in the upper right side. The blue channel peaks up pretty early, ceasing to retrieve any detail after a certain brightness level. The red channel is only a little better. Only the green channel produces smooth detail all the way up to the brightest possible signal.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A performed reasonably well when its color performance was held against the rec. 709 color standard. The green point is a little oversaturated, as is the blue. The red channel, however, matched up well. The white point, that circle in the center is quite a bit off, shifted too far into the blue.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A produced sufficiently smooth motion that you"d never have reason to complain. People frequently think they"re spotting blur caused by their television, when it"s more frequently a blurring from the source material.

There was very little in the way of motion artifacting on the Vizio SV470XVT1A. Many TVs create false coloration, jaggies, or blinking areas, but we saw almost none on this TV. Of course, if you turn on the special motion processing features too high, you"ll see some strange ghost images and other artifacts, but you can just turn the features off.

The viewing angle of most LCD televisions is pretty poor compared to plasma (or, of course, the glass tube TVs you grew up with). Compared to similar LCD televisions, however, the Vizio SV470XVT1A did not fair terribly. The TV lost more than 50% of its contrast at 25.61 degrees from center (in either direction).

The Vizio SV470XVT1A benefits from having an exceptionally low-reflection screen. When the screen is all or mostly white, and a light is pointed directly at you, the viewer, you can"t see a thing. Even when the screen is black, it"s hard to see yourself. That"s great, because too many TVs practically double as mirrors. When the screen is all black and a light is pointed directly at the TV, you will see a glare, but that"s all but impossible to avoid. Overall, this a great performance.

The video processing options on the Vizio SV470XVT1A are many, but the usefulness is limited. A lot of these effects do more harm than good, we"re sorry to say. Particularly offensive is the smooth motion, which produced an unnatural look to movies and TV when the featured is turned up too high.

The Vizio menu and instructional manual do not provide descriptions for the many picture modes of the Vizio SV470XVT1A. The bevy of sports mode is outlandishly unnecessary. We do our best to describe it.

The remote control for the Vizio SV470XVT1A is incredibly thin and light, considering how large HDTV remotes frequently are. We can"t, however, speak for the build quality. It bends and twists easily in the hand, and one accidental boot heel could probably crack it.

The button layout on the remote for the Vizio SV470XVT1A is smart. In a natural position, your thumb can easily reach and distinguish the volume and channel up/down controls. Choke up a little and you can hit the menu button and 4-way directional pad. The d-pad itself clicks when you push it, which some people like and others hate. You get tactile and audio feedback, but if you"re clicking a lot, the sounds is aggravating.

The remote for the Vizio SV470XVT1A can programmed as a universal remote. There are pretty good instructions in the manual that explain the programming process step by step.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A has a healthy number of input ports, spread across the back and the side. In total, you"ll find: 4 HDMI ports, 2 composite video ports, 2 component video ports, an S-Video port, a VGA port, and 4 analog audio ports. There"s also a USB port on the back, but it"s a service port only and not for multimedia use.

The ports on the back, specifically, are 2 HDMI ports, 1 set of composite ports, 1 set of component ports, S-Video, VGA, and 3 analog audio ports. These ports are placed in a really bad spot. They"re in the middle of the back and the base does not pivot. But you"re not simply craning your entire body around to see them. The ports are also situated near the base of the TV, inside a crevice, pointing upwards. Vizio clearly knew that you can"t see the ports, because they had to put a little map on the back indicating the name and location of each port.

There are two output ports on the back of the Vizio SV470XVT1A, an analog audio out and a digital audio out. There"s also the TX input on the side for connecting to select surround sound systems.

As we stated above, the port placement on the Vizio SV470XVT1A is terrible. What was Vizio thinking? The base of the TV doesn"t pivot, and all the rear ports are placed in the middle of the back, all the way at the bottom, making it nearly impossible to see anything. Then, to compound the problem, the ports are actually hidden under a little divot. Basically, you take the cable in your hand, reach around back, and stab upward repeatedly until you hit the right jack. Vizio, we ask that you please consider basic human anatomy before you design your next round of products. Thanks.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A"s audio quality is above average, but keep in mind that"s only among the low standards that you can expect from most televisions. TVs can never really produce the deep bass of large cabinets, so the Vizio"s low end can sound a little muffled. But the mid-tones and highs sound pretty healthy. The Vizio, like most TVs, has a mock-surround sound mode, which actually works well. It"s no replacement for a true 5.1 or 7.1-channel speaker system.

The menu interface on the Vizio SV470XVT1A is simple and unadorned. Because the remote control needs to be pointed in precisely the right direction for the TV to respond, the menus are sluggish and frustrating. The only possible benefit is that the remote control buttons are so *un*responsive that you"ll rarely hit the wrong button and end up somewhere you didn"t mean. And even if you do, the layout is so simple that you never really lose your bearings.

The instruction manual that comes with the Vizio SV470XVT1A is above average. There"s a good table of contents and a good index in the back. Most of the television"s features are described in at least some detail in the body of the manual, though not always in the detail one would like. Our only negative note about the manual is the cheap, hokey looking photos. Surely someone in the Vizio company owns Photoshop. Comment below if you"d post your own Photoshop tips for Vizio and we"ll be sure to pass them along.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A is a native 1080p television, which is the highest possible resolution for HD signals. Thankfully, the TV has no problem handling 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i signals, which constitutes pretty much every type of input you could throw at it.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A does not have the ability to play back photos, or any other type of media. There"s no card slot, and the USB port on the back is for servicing only.

The Vizio SV470XVT1A is a pretty hungry TV, as far as power consumption goes. Most LCD TVs, including this Vizio, have backlight control, which allows you some degree of regulation. Lower the backlight level = lower your energy bill. Below is a table of our findings.

As you can see from the chart below, the Vizio SV470XVT1A is not the most expensive power consumer of the bunch, but it"s definitely not the cheapest.

The Samsung LN46B750 is a good TV, but it"s also quite a bit more expensive. So, the real question is: is the Samsung $1000 better than the Vizio. If you value the internet connectivity and multimedia ports that the Samsung brings these to the parties, then yes. However, if you just want a big TV that"s "good enough," than the Vizio will more than suffice.

The Samsung LN46B750 and the Vizio SV470XVT1A are similar in terms of their color performance. The color temperature on the Vizio was a little more even, and the color accuracy was a bit better, but it"s hard to tell the difference to the eye.

The motion performance was slightly better in the Vizio SV470XVT1A. The Samsung"s motion was just as smooth, but we noticed more artifacting in the Samsung.

Neither of these LCD TVs was particularly good at a wide viewing angle. Usually, LCD TVs are not. You want a plasma TV for wide rooms. TheSamsung LN46B750 was slightly wider.

The Toshiba 46SV670U is another TV that"s quite a bit more expensive than the Vizio, but in this case the Vizio is probably the better buy. It"s not that the Vizio is so much better, but rather that the Toshiba is certainly not $900 better.

The black levels are much deeper on the Toshiba than they are on the Vizio. And while the peak brightness is about the same, the contrast ratio ended up being much wider on the Toshiba.

Toshiba was not a great performer in the area of color performance. The color temperature was not consistent, especially as the signal got brighter. The Toshiba"s performance chart below are actually pretty funny. Other areas of testing were not as disparate, but we still preferred the Vizio.

The Soy KDL-46VE5 is a little more money than the Vizio SV460XVT1A, but the Vizio is a more enjoyable experience. Sure, the Sony"s black level performance is better, but we recommend the Vizio overall.

The Sony KDL-46VE5 was a great performer in this area, producing very deep blacks and bright whites. The Vizio simply could not compete on the level of shadow detail that you"ll get with the Sony.

There was not a big difference between the Sony and the Vizio in terms of color performance. The Vizio"s color temperature was a little more consistent, but you couldn"t see much of a disparity with your eyes.

The motion performance of the Vizio was better, rendering smoother motion with less artifacting. The Sony, in particular, created a lot of motion artifacts.