Just bought a Vizio TV any thoughts?

[Salamok]

My wife just let me buy a Vizio (model sv471xvt), our old tube TV has been slightly on the fritz but prior to this purchase she had made it known that she just didn't think we could spend $1000 on a new TV (while I wanted to spend closer to 2k). 

Anyway we are in costco and she springs it on me that gee that 47" vizio sure looks nice (priced at $1099) and says if I want that we can get it.  I stare at it and everything around it (sony & samsung 46" models) for 45 minutes or so and agree that the picture quality looks almost on par with both of those (and clearly better than the other Vizio (non 240hz), Panasonic and LG sets) and a billion times better than the 32" toshiba tube I have been using for the last decade. 

I have had it for a few days now and while the picture has impressed me it does have a few quirks that may or may not have anything to do with the TV:

1 - Occasionally HD programming will have a thin green line across the very top of the screen.
2 - Some Non HD programming has a line of static accross the top of the picture (similar to green line in height but limited to the width of the 4:3 frame and filled with white noise).  I have set the non HD stuff to maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio as I don't like everyone on my TV to have the proportions of George Costanza.
3 - Might be some ghosting (only evidence so far is occasionally seeing 2 tennis balls flying around at 120mph during the US open).  Oddly sometimes there are no duplicated tennis balls on even faster shots, it isn't super frequent or extremely noticeable.

You think these are TV defects or Signal Defects?  I am probably willing to live with them unless I find an equivalently priced set that doesn't have these flaws and/or worse flaws while maintaining picture quality.  At this point my main concern is longevity, this thing seems better built than my parents 52" phillips LCD but I don't know a ton about Vizio or if I can expect this thing to last 5 years.  Is there a better 46-47" set I could have gotten in the $1200 and under price range?

On the upside costco matches the factory warranty so it is good for 2 years and the return policy on TV's is 90 days so I sort of have an option to change my mind while I try this thing out.

[Viin]

I've seen #1 and #2 on my Samsung, but usually only for a specific show (I don't ever see it constantly with one channel). I believe it to be a signal issue, or recording issue when the show was record to the DVR. However, I've probably only seen both 4-5 times since I bought HD programming a year and a half ago.

Do you have any reason to believe that your signal might have problems? Say, during a wind storm or rain storm? (Is this live or DVR shows?)

[Salamok]

Do you have any reason to believe that your signal might have problems? Say, during a wind storm or rain storm? (Is this live or DVR shows?)

So many repeats on cable+on demand programming I didn't bother to get DVR, so all live via TWC.  My thinking that it is signal/source related is due to it always happening on the same shows and the troubleshooting guide for the TV points the finger in that direction.

Wish I could shift the picture up 2 pixels, I'd rather lose 2 pixels of height on everything than get a garbled line on some things.  I don't have it in me to whip out the black electrical tape and cover the top 2 lines of my brand new TV (although I have thought about it).

[JWIV]

are you using component or hdmi for your wiring?

[Polysorbate80]

Your TV may have (and be set to) a mode that allows for underscanning of the image.  OTA programming often has garbage at the sides or tops of the signal that isn't visible when a set overscans.

[Salamok]

are you using component or hdmi for your wiring?

hdmi

Your TV may have (and be set to) a mode that allows for underscanning of the image.  OTA programming often has garbage at the sides or tops of the signal that isn't visible when a set overscans.

does cable=OTA?  Assuming I can find and set it to overscan am I losing anything?

[caladein]

Problem #2 is just the station(s) being stupid.  One the PBS stations in Southern California (KOCE, 50-4) has a data stream like what you're describing at the top of one of its non-HD channels.  I found this helpful, if only because it let me blame the station instead of my TV.

[Polysorbate80]

does cable=OTA?  Assuming I can find and set it to overscan am I losing anything?

yes, cable = ota.  Overscan is (or should be) the "normal" mode(s), it will crop the image a small amount to hide artifacts at the edges.  This is nothing new to HD, TV programming has always been designed with overscan in mind.  Nothing important will be out in that part of the screen.  If you use your TV for a PC monitor, though, you won't get the full screen resolution.

I like to keep mine in "Just Scan" (Samsung name for full scan) all the time.  The occasional odd line or noise doesn't harm anything.

[Trippy]

OTA means "Over the Air" as in TV you get via an antenna.

In addition to having a small portion of each frame cropped when overscan is enabled you also lose 1:1 pixel mapping for material at the same resolution as your TV. Depending on the viewing material, viewing distance, your eyesight, etc. you might not even notice this slight "zooming" that's taking place but if you are a image "purist" it's something you should be aware of.

To give an example with some made up numbers let's say you are watching some 1080i material (1920 x 1080 resolution source material, interlaced) on a 1080p set (1920 x 1080 resolution TV). With overscan off every pixel in the source is mapped to a single pixel on the display, aka "1:1 pixel mapping". But when you turn on overscan it will crop a bit of each frame, say to 1908 x 1074, chopping 6 pixels off the left and right sides and 3 pixels from the top and bottom (numbers totally made up). Now it has to map that 1908 x 1074 resolution frame to 1920 x 1080 so some scaling has to take place and you lose the 1:1 pixel mapping.

[Salamok]

To give an example with some made up numbers let's say you are watching some 1080i material (1920 x 1080 resolution source material, interlaced) on a 1080p set (1920 x 1080 resolution TV). With overscan off every pixel in the source is mapped to a single pixel on the display, aka "1:1 pixel mapping". But when you turn on overscan it will crop a bit of each frame, say to 1908 x 1074, chopping 6 pixels off the left and right sides and 3 pixels from the top and bottom (numbers totally made up). Now it has to map that 1908 x 1074 resolution frame to 1920 x 1080 so some scaling has to take place and you lose the 1:1 pixel mapping.

Good to know.  I always thought TWC broadcast HD in a 720 resolution and the TV would upscale it to 1080, if this was the case the additional scaling for overscan would be sort of a moot point as long as the ratio stayed the same.  On closer inspection however there is a very bright "1080i" displaying on my cable box's info screen, this would lead me to believe that TWC is sending me a 1080i signal in which case some the added scaling from overscan might be noticable.  I still find it sort of hard to believe TWC is sending a 1080 signal though, maybe the box itself is just upscaling the content from 720.  If this is the case I am not sure what degradation would occur if you were rescaling something that was already upscaled, would it be akin to the artifacts created by saving a jpeg over and over again?

[Trippy]

It depends on the station. E.g. NBC and CBS broadcast at 1080i. ABC and FOX broadcast at 720p. I'd be very surprised if TWC is downscaling NBC and CBS to 720i/p but who knows.

If your source material isn't the same resolution as your display then yes it doesn't matter if overscan is on or not in terms of pixel mapping as scaling has to occur in either case. So yea if TWC is downscaling all 1080i HD content to 720i/p and your set is 1080p then even with overscan off there's zooming going on.

If this is the case I am not sure what degradation would occur if you were rescaling something that was already upscaled, would it be akin to the artifacts created by saving a jpeg over and over again?

It's not the same as reencoding with a lossy codec over and over. It's like taking an image at a certain resolution and then scaling to another resolution using some sort of algorithm like bicubic or lanczos.

[Polysorbate80]

it will crop a bit of each frame, say to 1908 x 1074, chopping 6 pixels off the left and right sides and 3 pixels from the top and bottom (numbers totally made up). Now it has to map that 1908 x 1074 resolution frame to 1920 x 1080 so some scaling has to take place and you lose the 1:1 pixel mapping.

It's more extreme than that, somewhere between 5-10% of the image.  Cable & satellite *should* operate under the same guidelines as broadcast TV, which is why I equate the two.  Unfortunately they don't always; it's not unusual to see the edges of material fall outside the safe area.  It's pure sloppiness on their part when it happens.

Edit: if you're running blu-ray or a gaming system, do it at 1:1.  If you're gaming, also turn off any additional image processing the set may offer.

[Salamok]

I couldn't find the overscan settings but I did find the v-position setting and from what you all are saying it sounds like this may be the better option as well.  I just shifted the image up about 4 lines and problem solved now I have a much less noticable black strip running accross the bottom.

[Nazrat]

I have 2 Vizios and no problems with either. 

I did have significant problems with Time Warner Cable.  So, I replaced them with DirecTV last month. 

Your mileage may vary. 

[Numtini]

It's more extreme than that, somewhere between 5-10% of the image.  Cable & satellite *should* operate under the same guidelines as broadcast TV, which is why I equate the two.  Unfortunately they don't always; it's not unusual to see the edges of material fall outside the safe area.  It's pure sloppiness on their part when it happens.

If you want an example of overscan, take a standard definition widescreen image from a cable channel that's letter and pillarboxed and use the mode that lets you zoom in so it fills the entire screen and notice how much of the picture you lose. It's a lot of image. Enough that it kind of freaked me out at first. But if you look at the channel bug, it's generally exactly the right place.

[Polysorbate80]

That's the way it should work.  No important screen information should fall outside the safe area.  If you've got photoshop laying around, you can open up a 720x480 NTSC template, it should include a couple of rectangular guides.  The outer of the two is "safe action", the inner is "safe title".  For some reason, out-of-house designers can't seem to grasp the use of them no matter how often it's explained to them :P

Safe area is a holdover from the earlier days of picture tubes when some viewers couldn't see all the way to the edges of the broadcast image.  We keep a couple of crappy old monitors around the studio just to test for it.

On the flip side, we also have to test everything in underscan to make sure there's nothing wrong out to the edges of the image, because some people could see it (more now since flat panels are replacing tubes.)