Vizio 42in Gal series 1080p - $1139

[hytek369]

i just got mine today. its beautiful

 

[Pardus]

they had in stock at my local store, was $1199.99+tax - no rebates or coupons, they had no idea what i was talking about.. so i try to order it online just now and shopping cart is $1199.00, don't see any $150 off anywhere. the 15% coupon is on a future purchase as well and gets mailed in a week or so. sears should just make the price $950 and they will sell a ton of these. anyone buy the extended warranty from sears?

 

[TheShiz]

they got rid of the $150 off online. what I am wondering is if you can still get the %15 off, then also get another $150 off for using a sears card. who knows, i'm going to try to order one if the 15% off email ever comes through.

 

[gotrdun]

So is this deal officially dead?

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: gotrdun
So is this deal officially dead?

No, some of the 15% emails are trickling in. Over at avsforum.com in the thread for this TV, some people have had luck calling Sears customer support line, telling them they are either having problems ordering online, or haven't gotten the 15% email after so many days, and they are getting credits back to their cards. Meaning, they have to pay the full amount at the time of the call, but the 15% is being credited back to their card after 3-5 days.

This isn't working with everyone, though, so YMMV. Hell, even at $1200, it's still a great price.

 

[Basilisk]

Picked it up last Wednesday... but only carried it into house last night. How lame.

Plugged it into an outlet and attached my regular Comcast cable. It spent 5-10 minutes scanning the channels, finding both the Analog and Digital signals. The power-up cycle was only a few seconds -- nothing like a friend's [Scientific Atlanta] digital-cable tuner's half minute or so.

No dead or frozen pixels that I observed.

I didn't find my DVE disc so I couldn't accurately set colors/contrast/black; fiddling with the controls didn't reduce my sense that it wasn't as dark a black as I'd like, but I didn't put in a serious effort, yet.

The remote took a little getting used to, but the controls I needed were there -- when I finally found them. Picture modes were intuitive, allowing me to adjust all the encountered issues w/o effort.

The speakers seemed clear and loud enough for the first broadcasts I was viewing, but I quickly switched over to my stereo's speakers anyway.

I've only checked out the Digital stations so far. 'Didn't watch any fast-action presentations, like sports or action movies. The only picture oddity I saw was in one program [Sopranos?] -- in true HD I think, not just digital 480i -- where every time the lady turned her head fast her face's details were of reduced resolution until her quick movement ceased. I don't know enough about HD to guess if that's in the signal's encoding or the TV's decoding.

The Digital channels were as crisp as could be expected: "Scrubs" seemed no better, but no worse, than an analog image, as was true of several programs, so I presume they were broadcast as 480i. A few other shows had the sharper details of HD. At no time did I see any large-block pixelation like I've occasionally seen in stores; I presume these indicate signal problems. Showing my ignorance of HD: I'd worried that lower-res' channels wold have that blurred appearance I've seen in some stores -- where it looks like the screen has been coated with Vaseline. That never occurred on the Digital channels...but maybe it will when I turn to Analog ones.

Not much of a "review", but it's all I can say for the moment. I'm pleased with the TV, and can only fault its black level -- and that should be improved on with the DVE calibration. By this weekend I'll probably be ordering a DVD player that better matches the sets ability... and I should get around to attaching my computer's DVI output Thursday evening.

 

[CPA]

The website still advertises the $150 off any TV over 40" In-Store, if you use your Sears Card. Or you can get 18 months zero interest.

 

[blurredvision]

Well, I picked this unit up last Friday, the 17th, and am having major backlight bleeding problems. It's to the point where the upper right and left parts of the screen are washed out looking during night-time viewing. I'm comfortable with backlight bleeding for the most part, but on my particular set, it's way out of hand. However, the TV looks fantastic and does everything I want, so I'm hoping that I'll get a better unit when I take it back later this week for another unit.

 

[dafuzzbudd]

i bought mine in NJ store Wednesday night
it was 1150 - 150 for signing up for a sears card.
plus something like 6-8 months no interest
i was talked into getting the $300 3 year warranty
total = 1390 after tax

there were ads for this offer that included free delivery, free 1yr warranty and free $100 pizza when buying a $200 or more audio setup. you need all three to qualify for this rebate which was not clear on the ad but told to me by the rep.

1 yr is good enough so i want to do this and basically get a free sound system instead of buying the 3yr. i inquired about returning the tv and getting this audio + delivery deal but she said something about delivery not being available because of a limited quantity of tvs.

she told me some bull about calling me up when available. she said i have 30 days to do this exchange. ill be coming in next week an inquiring about it.

anyone have experience with sears rebates?

 

[allisolm]

This TV is advertised in my newspaper for $1099.99 8/25/2007 9AM-noon for Sears Super Saturday Sale.

 

[luv2liv]

people who bought this.... can you verify it works for pc at 1920x1080 via DVI?

oh, it doesnt have dvi inputs, im reading the specs now. what about the vga port? has it been confirmed?

 

[dafuzzbudd]

it has 2 hdmi
i thought it was practical to get dvi --> hdmi cables

 

[TheShiz]

i'm pretty sure you need to go dvi -> hdmi to get 1080p from a computer

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: luv2liv
people who bought this.... can you verify it works for pc at 1920x1080 via DVI?

oh, it doesnt have dvi inputs, im reading the specs now. what about the vga port? has it been confirmed?

I can guarantee mine works at 1920x1080 connecting my computer with a DVI-HDMI cable. Gorgeous. Didn't do anything further than Civ4 Swords, so I cannot comment on any possible FPS issues. The solitary issue I had was that small red text on green background ("your troops took collateral damage") was unreadable from 6 feet away, but I'll blame my eyes/glasses. I expect the manual is correct in saying the VGA will support this if the video card/GPU does.


A curiosity: I scanned up and down the cable channels a bit, and... well, some had the mushy look of 480i, so I was wondering -- not having read the manual yet -- is it intermingling the Analog and Digital stations, sorting the combined feeds by channel #? That is: (a) I didn't intuit a way to -switch between- analog and digital cable stations on the remote; and (b) some stations had a slightly blurry look while others didn't suggesting the TV was feeding both analogue and digital in sequence. Clearly many of the sharp ones were digital as the channel showed as ##.#. Well... those stations which were slightly blurry were not at all bad -- I've seen much worse in the stores on other TVs.

A disappointment: the first clear presentation problem showed up as I tuned in Charlie Rose (PBS interviewer) and the show had fairly close up images of the guest. There was a very clear problem in presenting the skin tone shading: a false contour/shading area, where one area of slightly different skin tone was presented in a distinctly different color was there throughout the interview. I didn't find any setting that improved it in the limited tests I made. That's the only time I've seen this occur in ~4 hours of viewing different programs.


Still haven't had a chance to calibrate it.