SV471XVT Calibration & Benchmarks Tests

Calibrating the Television

We were excited to break out our new CalMAN Professional Software with NIST Certified Chroma5 meter and get to work on the Vizio to see how well it performed. What we found was that the display looked pretty decent out of the box, with a green emphasis across the mid and high ranges. That's not the preferred deviation (though it looks great for sports in general) so we set to work on tweaking the display as best we could. Setting the correct Black and White levels were key (we now use the excellent Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark) and we began all of our calibrations from the Movie Mode.

CIE Chart – Color Reproduction & Saturation Potential

After measuring the primaries of the SV471XVT, we noted that it performed a little better than the SV470XVT, however we also were aware that we were using a different meter and calibration system to test it. With that said, we simply are going to acknowledge that our current system is known to be highly reliable and accurate.

In comparing the CIE charts of the current SV471XVT vs the SV470XVT, we can see that our measurements indicate a very nice ability for the Vizio to achieve near-reference color. 

Vizio SV470XVT (left) and SV471XVT (right)

ANSI contrast came in at 935:1 with Color Temp set to "Normal" and with Contrast and Brightness correctly set for night time viewing. The backlight was also set to 20. We found that adjusting the backlight really didn't do much to effect the contrast ratio, it merely raised the black level reads while simultaneously raising the peak white level measurement. As a result, feel free to crank up the backlight to 100 during the day and then bring it all the way down to 0 at night. Even in Vivid mode the ANSI Contrast measured just 1040:1, though the peak white level was much higher, allowing for easier viewing in daylight hours or in rooms where light control is not practical or possible. To achieve the correct levels we set Brightness to 51 and Contrast to 51 and set Color Temp to Normal. Color temperature was best in Movie mode, with it coming in almost right on D65. Vivid, Game, and the 4 Sports modes all had color temperatures in excess of 10000K. Standard mode was around 6700K and provided only a slightly more visible picture than Movie mode.

With our Chroma5 colorimeter in place, we calibrated the set and were able to get the following results:

Not bad considering there are no individual Gain/Cut controls

Gamma ranged, but averaged around 2.25 through the midband

Calibration overall is only possible in a limited way. Beside the fact that Vizio doesn't provide RGB Gain/Bias controls in the user interface, the HDMI inputs are partially shared, so even settings like Brightness, Contrast, Color, Tint and Sharpness cannot be changed on a per-input basis as we'd prefer. The way it works is that HDMI 1 has its own settings and then HDMI 2, 3, and 4 are tied together. It's an obvious cost-savings decision and we can't fault them for that given the price.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Vizio SV471XVT Benchmark Score: 95 (rock on!)

* Tested using 480i via component video and HDMI inputs

Comments on Calibration and Bench Testing

Sharpness was defaulted at 4 and this time around we felt that this was OK, seeing very little difference between any of the settings from 4 and below. Any higher and you get edge artifacts or ringing around high contrast areas.

Smooth motion is starting to grow on me, however it is still plagued with an inability to accurately and sufficiently generate interframe information for quickly moving objects that pan across the screen. My continuing determination is that it should probably be left off, though we encourage users to play with it and determine if they like it.