The Short Form

Price $1,899 ($1,999 list) / vizioce.com / 714-668-0588

Snapshot

A low price and good performance add up to a great deal in Vizio's newest 50-inch plasma HDTV.

Plus

•Great price •Deep blacks and good shadow detail •Clean upconversion of standard-def programs

Minus

•Some false-contouring artifacts •Too-blue out-of-box color balance

Key Features

•1,366 x 768 screen resolution •Built-in HDTV tuner •Faroudja DCDi processing •Picture-in-Picture •Inputs 2 HDMI, VGA, 2 component-video, 2 composite-video, and 2 S-video, all with stereo audio; RF antenna •Outputs Optical digital and stereo analog audio; headphone •48.8 x 34.3 x 12.3 in (w/stand); 85 lb Full Lab Results

SETUP Configuring the Vizio to tune over-the-air HDTV proved relatively easy. After hooking up my antenna, I selected the Auto Scan feature in the setup menu and it quickly grabbed most digital broadcast stations in my area. The set lacks an onscreen signal-strength indicator, so you'll need to optimize antenna position by trial and error - not exactly the best method. On the plus side, the set's onscreen program guide sifts data from digital channels to give you program information and listings ranging several hours out.

The Vizio P50HDTV offers four picture presets along with a Custom preset that lets you tweak settings to your liking for each video input. Along with basics such as color, contrast, and sharpness, there are adjustments for noise reduction (Motion and Digital), Fleshtone, and Dynamic Contrast, but no dedicated color-temperature presets - an unfortunate omission given the TV's too-cool out-of-box color temperature. A set of red, green, and blue level adjustments in the Custom Color submenu can be used to pull color temperature back towards the 6,500 K standard, but doing this with any level of precision requires special test equipment (see Test Bench for details).