My Vizio 47″ LCD HDTV GV47LF Review

Time to upgrade
Last Christmas my mother bought me a 37 inch LCD TV (L37). I picked it out after I did some research, and at the time price was the biggest issue. It was about $700 dollars shipped from TigerDirect. I moved into my new apartment and after some hard work I received a raise at my job. The TV is great, but it was small for my living room…well too small for what I wanted.
I did 4 or 5 months of research for a 46-52 inch LCD TV. My conclusion always came back to the Vizio GV47LF. 47 inches is 10 inches bigger than the TV I currently had and it had 1080P resolution, 2 HDMI inputs, 2 component inputs and great ratings from other satisfied customers. After watching the market for these 4 or 5 months, the price hadn’t really changed too. I already had a Vizio and Vizio is a product of Samsung, which is a widely known brand and their TVs that I had seen in the store looked incredible, rich and vibrant.

I finally bought the TV, the last week in October. I knew that the price couldn’t go down much more. I received the TV and took off work to make sure to be there for the freight delivery. I hooked it up and within minutes of having it delivered it was on, watching HD cable. The TV broke 15 minutes later and wouldn’t do anything but flicker. At this point it was a $1150 blue strobe light. I had a third party company, provided by the Vizio warranty, come out and try to fix the TV without any luck. My experience with the third party company and Vizio’s customer service help was excellent; they were all very helpful and nice. I called Vizio back and requested a new unit, they scheduled to come pick up my old, broken unit and deliver a new unit to me. It wasn’t until November 22nd, almost a full month, before I had a working TV. The lesson for me was to make sure I know who the supplier is. The supplier, which I shall not name at this time, had a great rating – that is why I decided to purchase from them, plus they had mail in rebates to recover most of the shipping cost. I may have just gotten a lemon and maybe when the repair man came to fix the TV, the wrong parts were thought to have been broken, therefore the wrong parts were replaced.

It is now December 18th and I have been more than happy with this TV. The hook ups are easy to get to, the case is thin and shiny, bright (500cmd), contrast is nice (800:1) and also has a dynamic contrast option, and the HD channels are incredible. I will only watch a show that is not HD if it isn’t available in HD. I do not like to watch non-HD TVs when I am out at a restaurant because they are so boring and dull. HD always looks great, football and basketball are great and with the screen being so big, at some camera views it seems like you are there. There have been a few times when watching the news I felt like the news anchor was sitting in my living room, the lighting was just right and the size of the news anchor was in approximate size of what they would be if they were literally sitting in my living room. When playing Hitman 2 on the old Vizio, I could never quite adjust the picture good enough to be able to see through the dark corridors in the game unless I washed out the picture. The contrast ratio (the difference between the black and white pixels, measured on…) is nice because I can see in the dark without having to make any adjustments in the picture from the normal settings.

I didn’t used to understand the need for an HD DVD player or a BluRay player, but with the screen so big and being used to the HD channels, you can notice – not so much that the picture is bad, but that it could and should be better because it is on DVD instead of through the TV. This article is what really brought my attention to the DVD resolution. I haven’t bought a DVD in a few years so the newer non-HD DVDs are probably better than the DVDs I have, but my next purchase for my home entertainment system is going to be an HD DVD player.
The only aspect of the TV that I do not is the sound. You cannot adjust it anywhere near listenable; to me anyway, it’s very MID range no matter how you adjust it. I turned the speakers and I just have the sound go through my center channel. The speakers are detachable but I left them on because I like the silver to go along with the black, which the case is. My center channel was purchased at least 6 years ago and a subwoofer that I just purchased about 10 months ago.

I would recommend the Vizio GV47LF to anyone. Make sure the source you are buying from has good credentials and I recommend to have separated speakers and subwoofer, such as an all-in-one home theater. Vizio has come a long way with their TVs and they definitely have the best bang for the buck. Be on the lookout for the new Vizio Gellevia 52 inch LCD that came out recently. It has 4 HDMI inputs, 2 component inputs.