My new TV arrived yesterday! It is a Vizio VF552XVT, and at 55 glorious inches it’s a considerable upgrade from my previous 37″ Vizio. In fact, it fills the space of my living room quite nicely:
I’ve notably invested in a wall mount from Monoprice. This was both scary and difficult to install, especially seeing as the poorly-written instructions from China caused me to break one of the lag bolts off in the stud (I soon found better advice from the people who had rated the item on the website). But at the end of the day I got it up there and it seems pretty sturdy, and it’s super-convenient and easy to pull the TV away from the wall when I need to mess with the cables, or tilt it in any direction I please. Plus it frees up the top of the cabinet that my previous TV called its home.
Some things that are neat about it:
- It refreshes at 240 Hz. I don’t personally put much stock in the difference between 240 Hz and 120 Hz, but compared to my previous 60 Hz television there’s a definite difference in the fluidity of motion, to the point where it almost actually lowers the cinematic quality by making the people seem too real and alive… it’s a lot more like they’re actually there, which I suppose is the idea, but it suddenly makes them look like performers on a set instead of characters in a legitimate world of their own.
- At 55″, you really notice the difference between 480 (standard def), 720 (high-def), and 1080 (super-high-def?) resolutions. In fact, most TVs smaller than 42″ or so that support 1080 signals actually downscale them to 720, because you typically can’t tell anyway at that size. I didn’t realize all cable “high-def” broadcasts were only at 720, which on this TV is visibly blurrier than the 1080 signal from, say, a Blu-ray disc.
- This is an LED TV, which supposedly provides better black levels than traditional compact-florescent back-lighting (because they can dim the LEDs selectively when parts of the screen are darker). This isn’t the kind of thing I normally notice or complained about on any of my previous LCD televisions, so we’ll have to wait and see if it makes an actual difference to me.
- I waited for this model to come out because (at the same price as the previous-generation model) it has Internet connectivity to it. In fact, the remote control has a slide-out keyboard (which is absolutely terrible) and is Bluetooth instead of IR (which is extremely nice since I don’t ever have to aim it at the TV). The Internet features are (unsurprisingly) poorly designed and implemented in terms of user interface, but the advantage of it being software is they can keep pushing updates to me as it improves.
My plan of attack continues to be to run an Ethernet networking cable under the condo crawl space and into the living room, so all of my devices can be hooked up to the Internet without the encumbrances of wireless. I’m also hoping to run an HDMI cable so that I can plug my computer directly into the television, so I can watch anything can be downloaded to the computer directly on the big screen. Hopefully when the cable guy comes in a couple of weeks to reroute the cable I can make my changes as well.
In other news, my grandmother has been doing much better. She’s no longer in the ICU and is in a private hospital room where they are attempting to ween her off oxygen and build up enough strength for her to be discharged. Don’t know how long that will take, but it appears she is out of the woods for the moment, which is a tremendous relief to everyone.
I’ve been doing more of the improv performances at SecondStory this round, and while they are smaller shows than Theatresports at Unexpected they’re also more intimate… plus I’ve had some good friends in attendance and it’s been a swell opportunity to keep in practice. This weekend I’ll be doing both of them respectively on Friday and Saturday; Saturday will be my first Theatresports performance of the new year and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.
Dan.
Hey Dan,
Added your blog to my Google Reader awhile ago. =) Just wanted to point something out on the 240 Hz refresh rate…
Check out NVidia NVision Goggles. They basically do 3D by alternating shutters on the eye, so you need 120 Hz to get 60 Hz per eye. The neat thing about your 240 Hz is you can now have 2 people seeing 3D on the full screen at the same time! Or you can have 4 people seeing 2D on the full screen at the same time!
Reply
Dan Posluns Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Well I know that the 240Hz is not actual but simulated “by combining advanced 120Hz technology with scanning backlight”, whatever that means, so I’m sure it’s not actually capable of displaying four separate images.
I’m not even clear whether the TV is capable of accepting a 120Hz signal. I can hook my computer up to my TV over HDMI and have it connect at 60Hz (NTSC), but I don’t know if a protocol even exists yet that supports 120Hz communication. Perhaps this is the distinction that the new “3D” TVs are providing, then?
Dan.
Reply
Interestingly enough, I found this article which talks about the exact phenomenon I was describing, where television looks “too real”: http://www.lcdtvbuyingguide.com/lcdtv/120hz-240hz-60hz.html
After the novelty wears off I might actually switch it back down to 60 Hz for when watching television.
Dan.
Reply