Vizio L42 HDTV

The Vizio L42 HDTV looks quite stylish but it is certainly not the most stunningly beautiful TV around. The L42 is packed with a black frame surrounding the 42-inch-diagonal screen mounted just over silver speakers. The most prominent thing on the frame is the HDMI and Vizio logos. The L42 measures about 41.3 X 29.8 X 11.4 inches (WHD) with the stand and weighs 73.3 pounds. Like all the other flat-panel HDTVs, the L42 can also be wall mounted. The remote of the VIzio is nothing to talk about and comes without any back light. There are too many keys and at times it can be tough to differentiate between them. One of the good things is the direct access keys for different inputs.

Vizio has included enough features to satisfy just about everybody without missing anything major. You can choose from three color-temperature presets or adjust red, green, and blue gain yourself in a fourth custom mode. There’s also an adjustable back light control that allows you to turn the intensity of the lamp behind the screen up or down. It’s worth noting that backlight and color-temperature settings are global and cannot be saved individually for each input.

Other features include picture-in-picture, which offers a side-by-side option, too. There’s also a freeze mode that’s handy for catching quick information, such as the fine-print of disclaimers in drug ads. Vizio’s selection of aspect-ratio controls is average: three for high-def sources and four for standard-def. And as its name indicates, the L42 HDTV is in fact a full HDTV, meaning that it includes an ATSC tuner for grabbing over-the-air high-def and digital stations.

As for its connectivity, you can find a wide array of inputs at the back. These includes the requisite pair of HDMI jacks. Other inputs include two component-video, one A/V input with composite and S-Video, one A/V input with only composite video, and one VGA-style RGB computer input. There’s also a single RF input for connecting an antenna or cable, an analog audio output, and an optical digital audio output for passing surround soundtracks from over-the-air HD sources.

The Vizio L42 HDTV’s image quality was very good for the price, with relatively deep blacks, accurate primary colors, and solid standard-def reproduction. It exhibits some murky shadow detail, and its out-of-the-box color temperature definitely needs adjustment – which you can do so with its set of image enhancement controls.

However, once adjusted, the L42 HDTV exhibited commendably accurate color for an LCD. Likewise, details are good as what you would have expected for an LCD of 1,366×768 resolution. On the HD-DVD, the blades of grass and trees looked sharp and lifelike. With standard-def sources, the Vizio L42 HDTV also did a solid job.

Sources:
http://tech.yahoo.com
http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com
http://review.zdnet.com