VL470M *** FREE SHIPPING ***

Product Review (submitted on May 3, 2010):

I bought this TV (VL470M) about 2 weeks ago and I’m very happy with it. It replaced a 42” Hitachi Plasma which was about 3 years old. The picture is better than the Hitachi and it doesn’t give me problems with reflections from some of the lights in the room. This is a problem with plasma, although I must say this was not a big problem, somehow the eye ignores most of it, unless you consciously think about it.

I’ve had my eye on Vizio for a couple of years and I bought this TV because Vizio makes TV’s with picture-in-picture which takes input from two set-top boxes. There are not many TV’s made today which even have PIP and on most TV’s one of the pictures has to come from the TV tuner, which limits the channels you can get. The Hitachi had PIP but it had this limitation also and I finally got tired of it.

There are many ways to get PIP on this TV, but to get HD channels one input has to be HDMI and the other has to be via the component input. You can’t use two HDMI’s inputs at the same time for PIP. This works fine and I don’t notice any difference in the picture quality of the HDMI versus the component input. We have cable and DIRECTV.

The only problem I had was that the remote really does not handle the PIP functions easily. To change the audio from one picture to other one, for example, it takes 10 keystrokes. Obviously, this is ridiculous. Fortunately I had been on the Vizio website and I knew that they have other remotes. I checked the user manual which they have on the site and I ordered a remote which handles PIP as it should – all the PIP functions are on the remote – no extra keystrokes.

Not all Vizio’s have the PIP function, so if you need this study the specifications carefully on their website and also look at the manual which you can access also – it’s under “support” when you click on one of the TV’s.

I have a home theater system, but I checked out the TV speakers and I would say they are pretty good.

I was very impressed with the Vizio customer service. I sent them an e-mail to check on the PIP functions before I bought the TV. I thought it worked as I wanted it to from studying the manual, but I wanted to be sure. They got back to me in one day.

I also sent them an e-mail suggesting they sell this TV with a better remote. Again they got back to me within 24 hours.

I am about to order a 37” TV for the bedroom – so you know that I’m a satisfied Vizio customer.