Vizio SV470XVT Remote and Calibration

I love the look and feel of the Vizio SV470XVT remote. It is beautifully thin at top and tapers out just enough at the bottom to house the two AAA batteries. Even the way the batteries insert is cool - they drop in from the bottom rather than popping in from behind. The remote is not backlit, except for the center ring, which is really a directional arrow pad with a centered select button in the middle. It's technically capable of controlling a few other AV devices, but ultimately you'll want to get a good universal remote control to handle those duties. I didn't like the positioning of the input selection buttons at the top of the remote as they are a bit out of the way. Additionally, there are no direct inputs for each input, merely each input type. This means that you'll need to hit the HDMI button 4 times to get to HDMI 4. Taking up prime real estate is the 5.1 audio button, which is useless unless you have the optional 5.1 Surround Sound Upgrade (which I've not seen anywhere, including the Vizio website).

Below the Volume and Channel controls you'll find a whole transport section which is also a dual-use area for functions such as Wide (scaling), Info, Audio, MTS and PIP controls. Below that, at the very bottom, are the controls for selecting and using other programmed AV devices. It's an acceptable remote, but it could be a lot cooler.

Calibrating the Television

We calibrated the display using Datacolor’s Colorfacts Professional 6.0 software and found that while the set was a tad "blue" to begin with, we were able to quickly dial it in to very reasonable levels. The SV470XVT has Red, Green and Blue controls but they are not separated into Gain and Cut controls. The biggest items we wanted to test were the new 120Hz modes and the display's ability to process (correctly) 480i DVD content. Let's face it, there are a lot of consumers who will purchase this TV who many not necessarily be interested in updating their DVD players just yet. For those using Blu-ray or higher end upconverting players, I wanted to make sure the new 120Hz processing didn't compromise the already pristine image.

CIE Chart – Color Reproduction & Saturation Potential

After measuring the primaries of the SV470XVT, we noted that it really nailed both Red (almost) and Blue (completely) with Green coming in a tad more towards Cyan (which I prefer to drifting towards Yellow). What this means is that the Vizio has excellent color reproduction - better than several more expensive displays we've tested this year.

In comparing the CIE charts of the Vizio vs the recent Mitsubishi LT-46148 LCD review, you can see that the SV470XVT stacks up pretty well in terms of color reproduction:

 
Mitsubishi LT-46148 LCD (left) and Vizio SV470XVT (right)

ANSI contrast was measured at 324:1 with Color Temp set to "Normal" and with Contrast and Brightness correctly set for night time viewing. The backlight was also set to 0 – its lowest setting. This is a respectable real-world contrast measurement, but we've seen better and you'll see tons more from a plasma or LED-backlit model. What's interesting to note is that even if you adjust the backlight from 0 to 100 (we tried it in steps of 30) the contrast ratio stays about the same and Black and White levels remain properly calibrated. This is rather freeing and means that users should feel free to crank up the backlight to 100 during the day and then bring it all the way down to 0 at night.

We ended up setting Brightness to 35 and Contrast to 52 and set Color Temp to Normal. At this setting, measured color temperature was 6200K. In Warm mode it dropped to 5300K (perfect for Black & White movies). Setting it to Cool yielded 8700K color temperature (which is lower than many other sets' Normal settings). With our colorimeter in place, we calibrated a custom color temperature by setting Blue to 86 (Red and Green stayed at the default 128) and got the following measurements:

Not bad considering there are no Gain/Cut controls

Color temperature maintained a steady ~6500K from 30 IRE to 80 IRE.

Calibration overall is only possible in a limited way. The HDMI and component inputs are shared, so even settings like Brightness, Contrast, Color, Tint and Sharpness cannot be changed on a per-input basis as we'd prefer. One saving grace is that Color Temperatures do differ from HDMI to component, so you can have custom configurations for each.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary Results

Perfect Score is 130

Vizio SV470XVT Benchmark Score: 61 (acceptable, but plan to use a decent DVD player)

* Display defaults to a setting where edge enhancement is painfully obvious. Adjusting the Sharpness setting to "1" alleviates the problem and allows it to pass this test. We failed it since the default settings failed.

Comments on Bench Testing

Sharpness is simply set too high by default. Drop it to 1 and you'll immediately notice a decrease in perceived standard definition noise and edge artifacts. At the default setting you will literally see jaggies on any high contrast edges. All Moving Zone Plate tests failed miserably, both with and without Smooth Motion engaged.

Smooth motion is a tough nut to crack. After trying tons of combinations on both standard definition and HD content (it affects both) my final determination is that it should probably be left off. Even at its lowest settings it results in unpredictable artifacts on high contrast edges in motion. You may luck out depending on what type of content you are watching, but since I have some excellent sources I'd probably bypass the feature until it is perfected. 120Hz Smooth Motion is something I wanted to use. It certainly did stabilize some moving images across the screen, just not without introducing artifacts - such as with race cars going around the track (I'm a closet NASCAR fan). Once I deactivated the feature, motion blur returned, but the tearing stopped. If you are going to use the system, be sure to place Real Cinema Mode on Precision as it produces slightly less tearing. Note that without Real Cinema Mode engaged, the Smooth Mode Effect feature really doesn't reduce motion blur.

Smooth Motion set to High (it's a cool feature, but notice the artifacts on the bottom #11 square)

Smooth Motion Off

When playing 480i sources via the component video input we noticed a lot of cropping. The SV470XVT took off 25 pixels from the left, 22 from the right, 10 from the top and 15 from the bottom. None of the Wide modes fixed this and I triple checked to make sure the obscure scanning settings were optimized (they were). There was absolutely no cropping via HDMI.