CHEAP VIZIO VF551XVT – 55″ LCD TV – widescreen – 1080p (FullHD) – LED Backlight technology – HDTV

For years, I’ve made do with the same early-1990s-vintage 26-inch tube television set, waiting for the day to arrive when a big television with a great picture would turn up on the market at a decent price. When buying gadgets, it’s really easy to put off a purchase by saying, “It will be better and cost less next year.” Finally I found a screen that made me say, “It will be better and cost less next year, but only a little better and a little less.” It was time to buy.br /br /The specifications for “high definition” top out at 1080p, unless one moves into the theatrical digital market. It looks like cable television signals, broadcast signals, movie discs, and other media all top out at or below 1080p right now, and that no higher-resolution media are planned for the near future. Thus a 1080p screen is as good as it needs to be for the near future.br /br /Television shows are broadcast at 30 frames per second (technically, 29.97), typically interlaced at 60 fields per second. Films are 24 frames per second. For smooth results with television media, a screen needs to run at a multiple of 60 per second. For smooth results from film, a screen needs to run at a multiple of 24 per second. A screen that runs at 120 per second (120 Hz) can show television material smoothly by repeating each field twice, and can show film smoothly by repeating each frame five times. Thus a 120 Hz screen is sufficient for optimal results with media from both television and film.br /br /As for size, bigger is better, until the screen is too large for comfortable viewing, which depends on room size and personal preference.br /br /Another consideration is inputs. This screen has five HDMI inputs, an RGB analog computer input with analog audio, an S-video input, a DTV/TV input, two component video and audio inputs, and an audio output. One of the HDMI and one of the component inputs is on the left edge (as viewed from the front) of the screen, rather than on the back. That’s a lot of inputs; it covers just about any needs I can imagine.br /br /This screen has numerous user-adjustable settings. In most cases, the defaults appear appropriate.br /br /The “picture adjustment” settings include presets for various types of source material; “standard” and “movie” seem like the most useful ones to me. I adjusted the color temperature setting.br /br /The H/V position and size settings are useful. Some television channels have a few pixel rows of jittery garbage; it’s nice to adjust the vertical position to hide them because they’re very distracting. Some channels have a few pixel columns of green on one side or the other; hiding them makes the screen look nicer.br /br /An important adjustment feature is “viewing mode”. This screen has five settings: “normal” (4:3 pictures displayed with black bars on the sides), “wide” (4:3 pictures stretched to the full width of the screen), “zoom” (widescreen pictures scaled proportionally to the full width of the screen, even if that cuts stripes off the top or bottom), “stretch” (widescreen pictures with black bars on the sides are stretched to the full width of the screen), and “panoramic” (the edges of 4:3 images are stretched, but the center is preserved un-stretched).br /br /Since this is my first high-definition screen (other than computer screens), I’m not an ideal judge of image quality in comparison to other sets. To my untrained eye, it looks great, and in the store it looked about as good as other sets of the same size.br /br /The sound quality seems good for built-in speakers, but a fancy screen like this deserves a dedicated sound system.br /br /Since this screen appears to have all the features it needs for the next few years, good quality, and a very low price, it’s a good choice — at least until something even better comes along.

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VIZIO VF551XVT – 55″ LCD TV – widescreen – 1080p (FullHD) – LED Backlight technology – HDTV Feature

• Size: 55 Inches
• Widescreen: 1080p
• Resolutions: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1920×1080

VIZIO VF551XVT – 55″ LCD TV – widescreen – 1080p (FullHD) – LED Backlight technology – HDTV Overview